An Overwhelmed Creative

I like Stephen King... or, I like a lot of Stephen King books. Not all of them, but some. I love "It", it's my favorite. In a way, The Outsider is a ripoff of It. Maybe the idea came to him because the movie It had just come out? I don't know. The book is written in the quality Stephen King style, all with the good and the bad. I often don't like Stephen King's writing because I think he gives a lot of background. A LOT of background. In the end I understand why he does it, but I'm not happy to be ready all this background while in my head I need solutions to the problems the main story is about. But, oh, well, that's what he does. This book started out great! A few of the last books by him I wasn't too happy with, but this one? I thought this one was back to the basics for him. It was a mystery, there was a murder, there was the unexplained... But then... it became predictable. And I think mostly it became predictable because it was so ...

I read Serafina and the Black Cloak because a friend recommended it. Both she and her daughter read it and I got it from Barnes and Noble with a gift card I got for Mother's Day from my sister-in-law. One thing I like about this book is how it describes the Biltmore Estate, and since I've visited this place, I felt like I was there. It was nice to picture how life could've been before the Biltmore Estate became just an attraction. The story follows Serafina, a strange girl no one is supposed to know exists who has a few birth abnormalities. There is a reason for all of this, but we don't learn it until the end of this book and, frankly, it felt a bit forced. The book has magic in it, so it's definitely fantasy, but it's not about witches and sorcerers. A lot of things that happened were a little convenient, but since this book is aimed at Middle Schoolers, I thought it was fine. My daughter hasn't read it. I don't think it interested her. I have ...

This book by Paula Hawkins, who also wrote Girl on the Train, was even sadder than Girl on the Train. It was well written and plotted, and the characters were interesting, but all the time I felt like there was something depressing about it all. At first, I thought it was a book about suicides, because the way they talk about the women who died in the water, makes it sound like they killed themselves. Then the author changes the story - because of all the unreliable characters that she has - and you realize not everything is what it seemed. I liked the book, but if you don't like moody and depressing books, I wouldn't pick up this book. It left me feeling incomplete and that's not how I like to feel when I read a book. Still, it made me feel , and I guess that counts for something. I still give it four stars. cheers!

I usually like Ally Carter books. I read "I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have To Kill You" about ten years ago and had a lot of fun. I read the next three, too. Then I read "Heist Society" and I liked it even more. I saw this book in the book fair at school. As a teacher, I always get a few bucks to spend and I always try to get a book for the class, one for my daughter and one for my son. This time, I chose "Not If I Save You First" as the gift for my daughter, she's eleven and she LOVED it. Then I borrowed it to read it. It started GREAT! The banter between the two kids was amazing and it got even better when they meet again as teenagers. It had a lot of promise. But, then, something happened. There were a lot of things that didn't make sense, and although the book was still entertaining, the things that couldn't  be kept bothering me. Like the fact they are in the middle of a snowstorm in Alaska and the character fal...