WORTH DYING FOR by Lee Child *****

Action packed adventure with John Reacher saving everyone in a small town who are under siege by one disgusting nasty family. Hard to put down.

There's not much else to tell without giving away stuff so it's about Reacher finding this town in trouble, making a few friends then dealing with lots of muscular rough necks (violently), and other bad guys all much deserving of punishment. Well written, great story line, no questions or complaints. EXCELLENT book!

DAUGHTER of DARKNESS by V.C. Andrews ****

Either you're familiar with her stuff or where you been? Prolific writer. Mostly teenybopper sort of stuff or maybe what is labeled chicklit nowadays. This is a strange vampire story. The vampires lead a stranger than fiction life. They go out during the daylight hours, don't much resemble bats, are fun loving daddies and are brought men-only to suck on by their harem of little women. One harem bride decides to break off from the pack in this book. Which by the way is only the sordid beginning. PART ONE<--That's what it should say on the cover but doesn't. Meaning....you don't get all the information you expect at the end of this book. Leaves you hanging mercilessly wondering WTF that was all about and is it possible for the writer to tie up any loose ends at all or does this just go on for eternity.

This book is like watching an accident: You wonder why you are still watching it because you really don't want to be caught looking at it but because you can see things unravel before your eyes it keeps you staring in amazement.

RUSSELL WILEY is OUT TO LUNCH by Richard Hine ****

This is something like a satire on newspaper publishing. First person, a few weeks about a guy who sells ad space or is in marketing. His internal angst isn't quite Woody Allen whiney but almost, if it had gratuitous sex with underage minors it would be spot on.

Confusing and not interesting was some terminology; cost-containment perspectives, brand permission research. People who suck at their job are quickly promoted. Dilbert much?

Adventures, misadventures of Wiley's life, his bad marriage, his friends and colleagues. Sometimes I cared other times not so much. Having also worked for a (smaller) daily paper I felt it was heavy duty pouring on of the 'self-importance'. Meanwhile -at the end the entire thing takes on a circus-like atmosphere with Barbie's singing their way thru ad spots, having limos dropping them at work blahblah, fans screaming at the door...so weird. Must be a NYC thing. Anyways made for some interesting and different reading. Not sure if that's good or bad.

Not a murder mystery...'something else'.

SECRETS to the GRAVE by Tami Hoag **

It was so repetitive to me. I realized I read one of her books before but I made notes along the way before realizing it.

A cop was way over personal with some guy so he could bully him into a fight and beat him up. Who BTW had nothing to do with any murder. Stupid cop.

A man is named FRANNY and a female is MILO. A social worker, Anne, who was a victim in some other story, was in charge of a kid who saw her mom get murdered but of course can't remember or tell anyone WHO it was, and keeps yapping about her cats no one GAS about. No concern there about abandoned cats. This kid knows Anne a few days and calls her mommy Anne for some incredibly bizarre untold reason. The killer is Bad Daddy who the child only recognizes as the killer at the end of the book.

Anne...I wished throughout the novel she would keel over and die. DIE BITCH. She has no backbone, she is a born victim for the writer and everyone down to children has a stab at her. Literally.

Gina fell in a well and ad nauseum I have to hear her stupid internal b.s. along with everyone else's. It's nonstop internal crap. Just so stupid. I wonder why this is a best selling author. Must be good as tranq's or something. I wished for the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Course to get thru it. I skimmed...read first paragraph of chapter, skip to end and read a few there...continue on....less painful. POOR ANNE. O my POOR ANNE!!! She's so stabby!

The DOCTOR & the DIVA by Adrienne McDonnell ****

Not a bad romance novel, atypical in fact. It's about an opera wanna be's life from marriage, to inability to have a child, to outside marriage relationship, to baby, to Italy to sing and whatever happens next. I could really do without all the stupid singing crap but the rest of the story is different from most and I definitely am interested in the next chapter, page etc.

Very soft on the romance and mostly a fiction novel set in the early 1900s. Lots of travel, descriptions of early continents and stuff like that. Sort of like it but would prefer removal of all the gratuitous animal killing for skins, feathers, or butterflies etc.

The FOUR STAGES of CRUELTY by Keith Hollihan ***

Rambling internal dialogue of a female prison guard<--summed up. Lots of rambling. Lots of internal b.s. Story is mostly tell very little show. Guard relates a comic book in a way that makes it sound like a video and says so and so "promised" violence. Yuh? Where dat? I didn't see no puddytat....I mean he never said that.

I'm sick of the jail lingo too- weak sisters. So much tell tell tell....get over it. Brother Mike asks where the injured go...cuz he doesn't know the jail has an infirmary? How long he been there, a day?

When asked who drew the comic this dweeb guard tells who done it (creating a victim) instead of saying I don't know. Why? IDK. Only into it 50 pages -have nothing else to read....since that last book sucked. Now this. Egads.
Must finish....or at least read it till tomorrow....library tomorrow....

Deep Black: DEATH WAVE by Stephen Coonts *

I only got 50 pages into it so can't comment on more than the beginning which FOR ME was full of proper nouns, acronyms and other boring b.s. VERY boring. I usually like the writer so pushed myself hard to get thru those 50 pages and gave the hell up. I tried to stick to dialogue-only for relief but there wasn't even enough of that to keep me between covers. If I need a foreign language name pronunciation book you've lost me.
Kafirnigan, Tajikistan, Vasilyev, Akulinin, Podpolkolnik, Shmatko????? WTF????

The HYPNOTIST by M.J. ROSE ****

This mystery starts out a little hard to get into. Lots of characters, some with pasts. Involves reincarnation stories. This particular book is about old sculpture being stolen more than once in past history up to now. Some people want to protect it, others want to get secret items that delve more into reincarnation from it. Blackmail, FBI, art theft, painters, love, all under the cover. Took me 100 pages to really be interested in the novel/characters. The names are difficult in some cases to say, remember and she varies between first and last.

Some strangeness with people having relationships while being overtaken by some other spirit or sharing bodies, or knowing their 1,500 yr old past and remembering or dreaming about it. Sort of a narrow view of life everafter repeating things over and over thousands of years with the same people.

I'm not done yet and I wouldn't say it's a page turning thrill a minute but it's interesting enough most of the time to continue on. I wouldn't go looking for other similar books, this isn't what I usually enjoy reading.

FULL DARK, NO STARS by Stephen King *****

Yeah....too scary to read at bedtime so I'm switching at night back to the Sheldon revenge novel to keep down the nightmares. Farmer guy named Wilfred offs the wife, his son is in on it and life goes downhill from there. Rotting corpses, rat infested burial area, cows dying. Three more stories. Creeeeeppppyyyyy as Charlie Sheen

The BEST LAID PLANS by Sidney Sheldon ****

A garage find and reading-lite, circa 1997. Easy breezy reading. Girl goes with guy, he wants to be President and dumps her. She gets wicked pissed off and lives a life style to someday bring him down.

I'm not even half thru it but am liking it because it's so easy to get thru. The people are aiming for power and it's a fun beach read, or for bed type story.

THE CABAL by David Hagberg ****

Liked it a lot. Really good page turner which took a couple chapters before I felt hooked. I don't like a lot of names; first, last and titles and this book throws around a lot of that and sometimes uses first names after mostly using last names, just to keep you on your toes. Aside from that -a cabal of VIP gov't types are secretly trying to manipulate our country and others to slow China's production down before it's the end of our exports and production in the US.

It's kind of espionage-y spy, murders etc and aside from asking 'why didn't he kill those 2 guys earlier instead of asking them questions' when they murdered his family cuz he's such a super smart spy and all OR why'd he even go to the funeral with family when he knew people were gunning for him? OR why save all the computer, satellite espionage for the last few chapters? There are a few spots where you're left with these pauses but otherwise quite a page turning adventure.

DJIBOUTI by Elmore Leonard ***

Yeah, stuff I don't GAS about, Somali pirates, 2 people who are doing a documentary about them but it's about them watching the footage? Ho Hum. Ransom, oil tankers, politics. Blahblah....like Charlie Browns' parents......

Usually I like his stuff- not interested enough to finish this one. I really like saying the word Djibouti tho...haha.

THAT PERFECT SOMEONE by Johanna Lindsey ****

Swash buckling (almost) Victorian era romance novel. There are a lot of past history family members and altho there are way too many of them, you don't need to know who they all are. Why half are even mentioned is beyond me.

Otherwise, not a bad romance, women are strong and independent, not needy manipulators so that's nice. The men have flaws, which is realistic and it's not like a lot of romance novels- there aren't too many protesting virgins lying from cover to cover so it's definitely readable if you're into romances. Personally I thought it progressed slowly but some people like it like that.

Julia was 'promised' to Richard as a child, they hated each other and re-meet after 10 years or something and love blossoms from there. Englishmen, nobles, earls, carriages, pirate ships, seduction combine in 400 pages until done=romance novel.