R.

I didn't get it

Revisado: 01-14-18

This wasn't necessarily a bad book, but it wasn't for me. In my opinion, it's an excellent example of a "literary fiction" book being lauded for attempting to do something that genre fiction accomplishes more effectively---this book danced around the edges of an interesting idea but then didn't go anywhere with it. I was genuinely disappointed by how it fell flat emotionally for me. There were lots of minor characters popping up in nonlinear ways that never felt completely justified, and I wasn't engaged enough with the overall concept to care much about what happened to them. After reading reviews, I was hoping for a book in the category of "The Book of Speculation" by Erika Swyler and "Every Anxious Wave" by Mo Daviau. If you're feeling unsatisfied by this book, I'd recommend checking those two out.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

WHY DO I CARE SO MUCH ABOUT THESE IMAGINARY PEOPLE

Revisado: 04-13-16

Sorry, I'll stop yelling now. If you already like J.R. Ward and have been following the Black Dagger Brotherhood series this far, this book is pretty much flawless. (If you are new to the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, you're going to have to start at the beginning; this book only works if you already care about the imaginary people in it.) A lot of plot threads that have been dangling through the last few books are advanced in really satisfying ways, and I love that she is revisiting the original relationships from this series to explore what makes them tick after a few years. There have been a few clunkers in this series in recent memory, and if you're on the fence about whether to put yourself through another book, I really think Ward hit it out of the park with this one---and we've earned it!

The plot lines mostly revolve around the theme that there are different ways to be nurturing; this may seem like a weird theme for a book about vampire manly-men who take themselves very seriously, but it works. A lot of interesting things happen that have been building for a long time, and the characters actually grow as they navigate through real-life situations rather than just beating themselves up all the time. If you, like me, care an unreasonable amount about the members and entourage of the Black Dagger Brotherhood even after 15 or so books, don't hesitate.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Emotional torture porn

Revisado: 09-17-15

I literally threw my headphones across the car at about hour 15 of this book, when everyone is in exactly the same situation they started off in: the heroine is Too Stupid To Live (i.e., "I should probably take charge of my own significant power and abilities if I want to NOT DIE... ooh, look, a kitty," over and over ad nauseum), the hero wavers between ineptitude and outright cruelty (supposedly because Reasons, but I didn't find that aspect at all convincing), and every secondary character is being a Big, Big Meanie to the heroine. I spent 15 hours of my life (actually, less, since I'd upped it to 3x speed by the end of that in a desperate attempt to get through it) waiting for the main characters to figure out how to trust each other and for their relationship to mature or resolve itself in some way. And maybe in the last 5 hours, all of the tension is resolved in a totally satisfying way, but I feel like I would have seen some sign that by now. Conveniently, I had been on the fence about whether to listen to another of Wilson's books but had held off because I dislike the narrator - that indecision has been resolved with a big NO.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Narrated by Maude Lebowski impersonating JFK?

Revisado: 06-10-13

The story was great - another good Molly Harper book. But as other reviewers have noted, Amanda Ronconi's accent really missed the mark. I get what she was trying to do, and maybe it was an impossible task - the main character is supposed to have some combination of a Boston accent and an Irish one. But I'm not sure where she got her idea of what a modern-day Boston accent sounds like - the net effect was how I imagine Maude Lebowski doing a JFK impersonation would sound like. Really grating, and I never could get past it.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Very entertaining and not as silly as it sounds

Revisado: 01-05-13

After reading the description, I held off on buying this book for a while because it just sounded too silly to be good. I'm glad I snagged it during the post-holiday sale, because I actually really enjoyed it. In a way, it reminds me of Christopher Moore, especially "Sacre Bleu" - the characters and situations are a little bit ridiculous, yet somehow also real enough to be convincing and draw you into the story. The description also makes it sound like "chick-lit", which it is definitely NOT - the clothes and shoes described here are strictly historical. There is a romance plot line but it's not what drives the story. Anyway, this will probably be my go-to gift book for a while - it's a fun, fast-paced, slightly madcap, entertaining listen.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Not like anything else out there

Revisado: 09-27-12

When I try to rave about this book to people, they never believe me. Which is sort of understandable, since any accurate description has to be something like, "It has the most amazing dry humor and matter-of-fact tone, funny without ever descending into outright silliness, it's deeply moving while also being totally unsentimental, the characters read like real people with real relationships... it's about a family who finds a zombie baby by the side of the road and takes care of him." This book completely transcends the genre, and I recommend it to everyone. I can't wait for more from this fabulously talented author!

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Solid, but rubbed me the wrong way

Revisado: 06-20-12

What kind of a loser keeps the forces of evil at bay by dragging his lawyer with him everywhere he goes? The main character is an arrogant, cheeky guy in a dumbed-down world, and I was never convinced that he's as clever as the novel seems to think he is. I might listen to the others in the series if they're on sale, because from a technical standpoint the book is fine, but I don't really get where all of the love in the other reviews is coming from. I guess there's a lot of pent-up demand for urban fantasy that's more dude-centric and doesn't involve romance. Which is fine, but this book still didn't do a lot for me.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Yikes, this reads like bad fan-fiction

Revisado: 06-20-12

I guess one positive thing about this book is that it made me realize how good all the other books in this series actually are. In the other books, the characters are real people with clear and believable motivations, relationships develop gradually over time for understandable reasons, and the author creates something that's a cut above the standard romance novel formula. But everything in this book was just a little bit... off. The setup really just boiled down to, "he's a hot guy who's pushy and inexplicably possessive; she's a hot chick with amnesia." And then they have some kind of out-of-nowhere adventures, he pushes her away several times due to being kind of an indecisive jerk, and then they fall into bed together. It's like Nalini Singh outsourced the writing to a fan-fiction author: it's set in the psy-changeling world, and the characters get from point A (stone-cold alpha male, damsel in distress) to point B (happily ever after), but the story was driven by poor logic and the unjustified emotions of the characters. So, I've realized how well the author handles narrative logic and character development in the other books which are, at least by the standards of this genre, rock-solid. I hope this was just a misstep and the next book is better.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 7 personas

mistakes were made.

Revisado: 11-12-11

Let me start off by saying that I absolutely loved Mary Roach's 3 other books available on Audible. She has a real talent for using narratives of her personal experiences to bring scientific and historical topics to life. I guess that's what I'd consider the first mistake that lead to the existence of this audiobook: the majority of "Spook" is simply not science (no matter what the psychics and ghost-hunters believe) and Roach's skepticism is never challenged in any interesting ways. In this case, the lens of her personal experience serves to deaden (sorry) the topics explored, because the fact that it's all garbage is a foregone conclusion, so why bother suffering through it with her? Certain sections (I'm looking at you, ectoplasm) are far too long already, and the author's attitude makes them even more tedious.

The second travesty here is the narration. When portraying everyone other than the author's voice, the narrator sounds like... like my drunken uncle doing impressions of family members after Christmas dinner, but with even more petty meanness. In a book where the author is already too dismissive of the subject matter to make it particularly interesting, the narrator does no favors by making every single person interviewed sound completely ridiculous. Ordinarily, the narrator's over-dramatic reading of Roach's delightfully deadpan writing style would be unfortunate on its own, but combined with all the other problems it makes this audiobook nearly valueless.

All in all, I wish I'd never downloaded this - although there is a moderate amount of interesting content - because the whole endeavor makes me think less of the author. I enjoyed her other books so much, it was almost like she was a friend - and now I've seen a side of her that I find a bit distasteful. She is very talented, but the message of the audiobook seems to boil down to "silly people believe silly things," and it doesn't strike me as a good use of anyone's time - either the listener's or the author's.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 33 personas

Listen to Mercy Thompson first!!!

Revisado: 07-28-11

This book really did nothing for me the first time I listened to it, and I still don't really think it stands alone very well. Since it's set in the same world as the Mercy Thompson series AND there is a preceding novella which I hadn't read, I didn't have any context for the characters. Anna seemed like a very stereotypical "survivor of abuse" character, which I didn't find very interesting, and if you don't know anything about Charles other than what's in this book, his strong-silent-stoicism isn't very interesting either. It seems like so many popular werewolf books are just an excuse to construct a world in which women are powerless victims who need to be rescued/redeemed by strong, virtuous men.

However, I gave this book another listen after I read the novella and listened to the first couple of Mercy Thompson books. After having more context for the characters and their actions, I did enjoy this book and the sequel a lot more. So I'd recommend these books for people in Mercy-withdrawal, but in my opinion they're not a good entry into Briggs's larger body of work.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 52 personas