The DOLL'S HOUSE by Tania Carver ***

English writers, egads. Sentences like this page 383 'Well we've got our murderer. End of." ????
 End of? Okaaayyyy. There were more in the beginning but I didn't tag the pages. So there's a "copper" named Phil who is married (unluckily for him) to a female named Marina. Marina likes her secrets and never in all the story ever, ever did she tell her own DEAR SWEET suffering husband someone used a date rape drug on her and she thought she'd been raped. NEVER. She never told him at all, a friend of theirs told him. So much for trusting your loving mate. He should divorce her before more crap pops out of that closet. Also for some ungodly reason I thought there was a child involved but after you get  past about chapter four the kid entirely, conveniently disappears for the rest of the novel. Hope these married authors never pop one out. They'll leave it in the car during a heat wave and bye bye kiddie.

Only one murderer used a doll house, actually that would be the murdered person had a doll house set up and eventually was killed because being a transvestite was too horrid a life to live I guess. She set up a nice cozy pink room like in the doll house but in another room and got murdered intentionally. Then the killer decides to keep the doll house and put other bodies in there when he kills again but that's only 2x because then he gets offed.

So many to kill so little time. I really liked the part where the wife Marina was held captive and the kidnapper shoved a ball gag in her mouth. She really needed it and I think it should have remained permanent because she never told her own loving husband about the rapist. She's a real a freak show.

I thought it was interesting enough to finish but hysterical in some places that were meant not to be. So have at it.

SCARLET GOSPELS by Clive Barker **

Usually I enjoy stuff by Barker but this book is really horrid far as I'm concerned. If you're a Christian maybe it'll be interesting to you, for me I could give a shit about hell or Lucifer or anyone wanting to take over hell. The monsters had 40 eyeballs, several mouths, got turned inside out, blood everywhere. Harry, a private detective, for some god awful reason, I think he was following pinhead who had his blind-ghost-seeing female friend and took her to hell with him.

Pinhead was trying to take over Lucifer's place, that didn't go as planned. The entire book was so repetitive, if 3 people went someplace and 3 more people followed he just had to copy/paste the landscape and scenes because it was the same old shit over and over again. Got really fed up with the lack of a real storyline and plot. It was boring me to tears.

So surprised to hate a Clive Barker novel but there ya go. Hated it.

FIFTY MICE by Daniel Pyne ***

Ok, this one is readable (barely) and short. So there's still some repetitive stuff in it and it has absolutely nothing whatever to do with mice except that was his (Jay's) job yet he was fired-so no more mice? and nothing else about the job or mice were important.  His scientist best friend gets kidnapped by the FBI or CIA or whatever, along with Jay.

So Jay apparently is in a bar with a swimming mermaid, sees something (there are at least 3 to 4 versions of what he saw) and is taken into protective custody because shooting starts in the mermaid bar and he sees stuff thru the glass of the aquarium. Pretty much most of the people he touches end up either in witness protection or dead. I have NO FLIPPING idea what the fuck happened in the bar. He made up so many stories and lies and you can never, never trust a liar. This character is so difficult to explain/understand that you want to toss the book thru a window.

There was a bit of tension, he is housed in witpro with an FBI agent who is tasked with watching a non-speaking 8 yr old also in witpro. Eventually Jay, in witness protection decides he wants this pretend family he's set up with in Catalina hiding from....guess who? Most everyone who is guarding him. Absurd. So this Jay liar wants to live with the female agent Ginger (who BTW shot him) and the 8 yr old girl who only speaks to him at first.

Such a convoluted bunch of material to claw thru. I mean red herrings, mice and their behaviors, mazes, liars, more liars, everyone's life in danger. I couldn't for one second tell what the fuck happened and why he's in wit-pro. If I don't know the real story was reading the book a waste of my time? Prettttyyyyy much.

CRASH & BURN by Lisa Gardner ****

This was a page turner, but o so confusing most of the time. You have no idea who is who or what's going on. Who do you trust, who is lying?  It's so twisted and involved. I liked the tempo and speed with the tension but the extremely confusing plot was near to impossible to understand or feel any emotional connection.

Never would anything like this ever take place. First a woman is "taking in" foster kids, which the state checks up on BTW then she's buying children to use as hookers. So all that is very unreal, esp. the location. Put it in the  city of Boston, sure maybe it could happen there but he country in a small NH town it surely would be outed right away. Neighbors may not talk to each other much in NH but they sure the fuck know their neighbors business.

So it's a brain injured girl, married to a boy that she met at this house of hookers and they run off but the guilt of running off after committing all kinds of havoc and the recent brain injuries to "Nicky" jeopardize their idyllic (LOL) marriage. I have no clue how either of them could have stood being together for 22 years with that history, that incredible unbelievable history.

I waited a good month or two before I could read it, was it worth it? Sure at times but the premise was very twisted and difficult to swallow. I mean really really out there. It was better than average. Get it at the library.

BEAUTIFUL YOU by Chuck Palahniuk **

Small and quick reading but some areas are wicked boring. The premise is some guy named Maxwell develops sex toys that no woman can withstand. So he seems to randomly pick some no girl-nobody fits her out with designer clothing and uses her as a sex subject to test his crap on. Well most books nowadays are either about vampires, zombies or sex. So this one has about one orgasm per page, or so.

The girl, Penny eventually finds some guru up in the mountains where Max learned all his sex tricks and invented nano bots so he could use a gameboy-like hand held machine to manipulate populations of women into having orgasms anytime he wants (every man's wet dream, much?) oh yeah and he can make them have such powerful sexual orgasms they can die. Ohhhhkaayyy.

Men are useless objects of meat and if they stick their member into one of these sex toy nano bot women they are likely to have their member dismembered.

Not a fan of sex in my novels. I hated Shades of Gray and this book IMHO isn't worth the time to read. I have no idea why it's published over some authors who spend their lifetime trying to get really good books published. It's a shame really. I skimmed over the last few chapters because it was repetitive and wore me down.

LACY EYE by Jessica Treadway ***

I was almost going to drop this at the beginning because of several reasons. 1) the entire thing is practically all narrative, mostly TELL and no SHOW. 2) It was sort of boring with all the background crap 3) An adult child, with a drivers license no less, still calls her mommy,  'mommy'. WHO THE FUCK DOES THAT? A manipulative child who wants to flatter mommy. But does mommy recognize this? Of course not. Just like she doesn't recognize much of anything having to do with daughter Ding Dong Dawn.

When things get a little interesting; OFF we go on a tangent like on page 49 "After I got off the phone blahblah I thought back to when Joe and I were first married, and the little apartment blahblahblah." I hated that going backwards and remembering the past crap. Just waste my valuable time, dear.

This mommy is as delusional as any one can be, why she wasn't in one on one therapy is beyond my understanding. Dawn gets a boyfriend who steals from the family, Dawn denies it, as does scum bucket boyfriend Rud and the next night they both come to kill the parents and beat the poor little mutt dog with a cricket mallet. They beat Daddy to death with it and then mommy but mommy survives. She kept forgiving Dawn for things like forging her name for loans, being wanted in other states for burglary and owning a Corvette when she has no money and says she is forced to move home. According to Dawn she needs to find a job but sits on her fat ass doing nothing and dear mommy does the same.  Never confronts her at all. Dawn meanwhile begins questioning what mom remembers of the first murder when daddy was killed. Mom has no CLUE why. It's cuz Dawn will have to kill her if she remembers anything of that night.

Finally the only thing that can convince mommy that Dawn is an evil bitch is when Dawn confesses for 50 thousand bucks to a journalist and mommy dearest reads the details of what Dawn and Rud did to them the night of the murder. Dawn ripped the phone cord out of the wall, she stopped dad from getting his inhaler. She was as evil as can be. Mom is still at the end trying to blame everything on 1) baby Dawn not getting enough air at birth 2) Dawn being dumb 3)  Dawn being innocent and easily mislead by her boyfriend.

Mom has no balls at all. Not surprisingly she moves in with the older daughter at the end because she's too wimpy and stupid to live by herself. She is quite the dissembler. Have at it. I hated the stupid mom, the evil daughter, her manipulative dangerous boyfriend and most of the people in the entire book. Honestly all the people were kind of the same; easily manipulated stupid dumb asses.

The GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins ***

This book isn't too much of a mystery but there are a ton of red herrings tossed at you while you're reading. This girl, Rachel, was married to Tom. Tom had a girlfriend and cheated on Rachel eventually divorcing her. Meantime Miss Absolutely Gorgeous Blonde, Anna, marries him cuz she's pregnant and feels just wonderful about tossing out the first wife, revels in the house and everything she stole from her. She is bored most of the time, she hires a girl up the street named Megan who begins fucking Tom.

So now of course all of these women are tall blonde goddesses and Rachel the first wife either  couldn't get pregnant or didn't want to cuz she had a misfortune with her first baby so she drinks and gets fat. Normally people who drink don't really eat  much and they get thinner. So don't ask me why she happens to get fat.

Meantime the husband of Megan (Scott) is very controlling and jealous finds out about her screwing Tom, who is a pathological liar. All these people with their stupidities are swirled together until bad things happen. The write NATURALLY is from friggin London. I hate weak stupid women and this book is pretty  much loaded only with weak stupid women. I'm not a fan but the story was ok. I had to wait MONTHS to read this book due to it's popularity and I have no idea what the big deal was. I've read other much better books. Two dangerous controlling men and three stupid ass blondes. It all comes out exactly as you think it will.

The WONDER OF ALL THINGS by Jason Mott ***

This is a story about a teenager, Ava, her sort of boyfriend Wash and her healing powers. She was at a crash site and saved Wash's life, he had been punctured by a steel rod or something and  all the world at large heard the story and came a-begging for her to fix something or someone or other. All anyone wanted was something from her.

Her dad, a cop joins a cult, do not ask me what the reason behind that was. Apparently they all thought (Dad included) that it was her responsibility to save other people even if it meant her own death. Which it did and which she died saving Wash again and her half sister. Because all anyone really cared about her was that she was capable of healing them. Everyone but Wash that is. He didn't want her to die by fixing his illness but she did it anyway and died.

So I really have said this so many times in the past, I do NOT LIKE RELIGION in my fiction novels. If I want to read religious crap I'll go read it. You want to put fiction in my novel I pretty much am not going to like your book. Could have had more stars if the stupid ass preacher didn't talk the stupid ass father into joining his stupid ass church and swearing to kill his daughter to save others. What is the sense in that? How is that a protective father? Or a protect the flock preacher? Or even the step mother knowing it would kill Ava beg her over and over to save her baby if anything was wrong with it.

Let me say this to believers: If god made a sick baby then that's how he wants it. SICK. If he makes a child with a fatal disease then he WANTS that child to die of that disease. How does changing what YOUR GOD has created make you religious? It does not. It actually makes you NON RELIGIOUS. So go figure that out instead of eating fast food and watching sports on tv.

The BLACK ROAD by Tania Carver ***

Well apparently the USA is unable to appreciate their own authors and every book I pick up is from some English writer. This one has coppers, wonder if they're made of pipes, anyways some psychologist on the force has her house and a car burned down, her husband (a copper) is in the hospital so injured he can't help her find their kidnapped child Josie.

Such an involved and bizarre storyline. One innocent guy goes to jail for no reason, he was a half brother when his mom married the other 2 kids (boy/girl) and the 2 children had sex with each other and beat the crap out of the new kid-the names are so mixed up that it's hard to even explain it. The innocent guy gets out of jail, the woman with the kidnapped kid is being blackmailed to say the guy from jail is not mental so he can collect the inheritance of the stepfather, while one of the children (now adults) had been shot by her brother while he killed the parents and she is so disfigured she doesn't really have much to do in the story but make up a name for herself. I mean names and keeping people sorted out shouldn't need mapquest but yah here ya do.

Anyways kid is returned in the end, the daddy wasn't hurt so bad as first thought just enough to stay out of the story for the entire time. Since Marina (ya as in a marina where you keep your boat) tries to remember the case of the innocent kid in jail she thinks and always has that he was innocent. SO WHERE'S THE GUN RESIDUE on his hands for example? What proof did they use to convict him aside from him admitting guilt when he is semi retarded? WTF?

Also Miss Copper Marina sees two dead Rotties and upchucks, some frickin cop she is! LOL
Ok done. Gave it 3 stars cuz I read it all mostly out of boredom and it wasn't horrible. Just so-so.

DEAD OUT by Jon McGoran ****

This was an interesting story with a bit of mystery. It's mainly about bees and how they'r dying off from mites or chemicals. There's a cop on vacation with his on again off again relationship who pretends to be severely allergic to any toxins. As if you can breath outside without inhaling some kind of toxic crap or other.

Anyways rich people on Martha's Vineyard have some 'regular' bees and other companies want to kill them off and make GMO type bees so the real bees are offed and the new bees are too aggressive and kill people if they feel threatened. Interesting stuff to learn about hives, bee keeping and stuff like that. It wasn't bad at all. There were quite a few people but easy to ID them. Went quickly thru the book and that's a sign of liking it a lot. Very good writing and nice story line.

I would get it at the library. If not there it's worth buying.

FALLING FROM HORSES by Molly Gloss *

I'm on page 50 and aside from some guy who wants to be a cowboy in movies nothing is going on. He rode a bus, unhappily I had to read every mile of the ride. It's so fricking boring I am trying to figure out the point. Is it to tell a history lesson about old cowboy movies? WHAT? I don't know.

I don't like it, not a murder, no mystery, no action, just boring internal thoughts of some dope in Hollywood from a farm out west someplace. Nothing interesting here. Move along.

HACKER by Ted Dekker *****

This was really interesting. It involved a girl who'd been in a car accident with her family, the dad and son were killed, the mom in a coma and she was the only surviver. She is a hacker with a friend named Austin. Austin figured out a way to hack his own brain, shutting it off so he could "see" reality sort of in an unconscious level by drilling holes in his head. When the girl Nyah finds this out she wants to go under as well and get her mom out of the coma.

The FBI are after her, a best friend was killed for information they stole off their company computers when she was hacking it to get a job at the company. They sure didn't like that and sent killers after her and her other friend. Took them a long time to find Nyah. Anyways compared to the last two boring novels I was starting to think it was me. It's like if you meet a person who's an asshole it's probably them, if you meet two people who are assholes it's probably them, if you meet three people who are assholes it's probably you. Well I was getting depressed about trying to read unreadable crap books and thought there was a mis fire in my brain. NOT SO!!

Really liked this book and I found it intriguing and futuristic, almost a sy fy type of story and I would buy the book. It's pretty good if you understand computers at all even if you don't it's well explained.

UNCLE JANICE by Matt Burgess *

Everything you need to know is in the title pretty much. Some girl named Janice is an undercover cop tasked with buying drugs, she has or is sometimes a "shadow' who reports to the other cops waiting nearby to arrest the seller. I got to page 100 or so but the repetition with buying, selling, the weirdos the busts and pressure to bust just became too boring for me. Very little action scenes mostly it's about uncles (cop buyers; WTF are they called Uncles?) and sellers and the cops. Didn't ever change, no murder, no excitement nothing to hang my interest on.

Got pretty sick and tired of the same old same old. Very much not my type of reading material.