S. Smail

Starts off slow, but stick with it

Revisado: 02-11-21

It's a very good thing that when I listen to books I'm generally doing other things because the first hour or so of this book was just so incredibly slow. If I'd solely been focused on it I might have given up. I also might have just been confused but it seemed like the author was skipping around in time a bit at the beginning so I wasn't always sure where I was. Luckily the time table was pretty steady once we got to the disaster.

I've been interested in Chernobyl for most of my life, but this book taught me some things that I didn't know. And since of course I've watched the HBO miniseries, it was very interesting to see the differences between the two. Though like a lot of people I couldn't keep names straight to save my life. I just tried to remember a few that seemed the most important and went with it.

This is definitely a book I'll listen to again, I'll just skip the beginning.

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No more murder ballads!

Revisado: 02-11-21

I thought this book was great. I was a little hesitant because of some of the reviews, but I decided to give it a chance and I'm glad I did. The cases are relatively short, but still long enough to be interesting and packed with details. There was one in particular that had me so invested that when it got to the reveal of what happened to the victim I had to stop what I was doing and take a break for a few minutes because... wow. Some of the cases are a little similar but none are repetitive. All in all I would recommend this book.

The reason I took a star off is because if there was a murder ballad written for a case the author insisted in including it, and bonus! One case had two! I never knew what a murder ballad was, but now I know they're bad poetry that makes up stories about murder cases and if I ever hear one again I'm going to scream.

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Interesting but really repetetive

Revisado: 08-17-16

The information itself is interesting and I did learn things about certain serial killers that I didn't already know. The author also covers serial killers from all over the world, which is nice. But the book seems like a series of articles that were put together without worrying about the fact that details are repeated. I understand that in a book this long it might be a good idea to refresh the reader's mind, but some of the repetition is ridiculous and irritating.

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Good but the ending was unnecessary (Spoiler Free)

Revisado: 10-09-15

I liked this book. The narration was great, and even though she sounded quite pleasant, the occasional growling managed to be appropriately creepy. Most importantly, I found the book believable. It's not uncommon for true ghost stories to be very over the top to the point where you wonder just how much exaggeration is going on. but I never got that feeling with this book.

My only complaint was that the testimonials at the end were completely unnecessary and a bit repetitive. If you find them as dull as I did you're really not missing anything if you decide to skip them.

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Not what I expected, but still a great book.

Revisado: 10-09-15

I went into this book expecting something creepy and disturbing, but that's not exactly what I got. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved this book but at no point was I creeped out. Perhaps it's because I sympathized with the main character and I figured the "twist" (if you'd call it that) early on.

All in all I highly recommend this book, but don't necessarily go into it expecting scares.

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Odd pronunciation but still a good book

Revisado: 04-23-15

This is a case that interested me, so I was pretty excited to see a book on it. I decided to give it a go even though another reviewer made it sound like the narrator probably couldn't pronounce her own name and I'm glad I did. Yes, the narrator makes some really odd pronunciation mistakes. How on Earth does one pronounce Orion instead of Aryan for instance? But honestly I knew what she was trying to say, and at least she was consistent. It's not as if she's going back and forth between pronouncing it one way then the other. So yes, I did end up taking a star off but just one. Besides the pronunciation I thought she had a lovely voice, and I hope she narrates something else I'm interested in at some point. Also, the story itself is fairly well told, even though I got a little confused over which jailhouse ex girlfriend they were discussing at times. But full disclosure: I'd just had surgery and was on painkillers so that could have just been me.

As an aside, since this book is a little on the older side, you might want to look it up online once you're done with the book so you can get an update. I'm just going to put that out there.

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Jumping on the accent bandwagon

Revisado: 11-17-14

A lot of people have posted reviews complaining about the narrator's accents, and yeah they're bad. The narrator seems to think that anyone who might be somewhat haughty is British. I don't recall the Shadowhunters all being British. Is the accent something they learn while training for combat?

Thankfully the narrator isn't so bad that I can't listen to the book, but I don't know if the fact that I've read it before has anything to do with that. Overall I give it a three on performance because other than the accents the narrator isn't too bad.

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Stalking is not sweet

Revisado: 11-14-14

I'll just get this one out there now, and this review may include mild spoilers. This book is about a guy who is so overcome with guilt that he decides to stalk the only other survivor of a car accident he was involved in. He involves himself in her life repeatedly, even going as far as to break into her email account. This is not sweet. Stalking is not sweet. Stalking is not sexy. Stalking is not romantic. Stalking is scary, and awful and it would be nice if authors would stop portraying it as some kind of sign of true love. I really wanted to like this, but I found myself constantly appalled by the lengths this guy goes to so he can stalk his victim. This would be a fantastic prequel to a crime novel but not to a romance.

The narrator is great though. So there's that.

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Fantastic Narrator!

Revisado: 07-27-14

I read multiple reviews that said how awful the narrator was for this book, and I nearly turned away but had been convinced by the high overall rating the book had. I'm glad I ended up doing that. I'm not sure why those people thought the narrator did a bad job. Okay, her male voices sound a little silly sometimes, but the variation in her female voices is great. Her overall narration is very good too.

I'm not big on writing reviews because let's be honest, I'm not very good at putting my thoughts into words. But at the very least I wanted to make sure to do my part to assure people that this lady knows what she's doing. I'll let people smarter than I am review the book itself. (Which is good by the way. One of Ann Rule's best.)

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Interesting in parts, but otherwise "meh".

Revisado: 06-09-14

I'm of two minds about this book. Parts of it, particularly when giving details of the patients' lives, how they reacted to L-DOPA, etc. were interesting. Though after a while it got a little repetitive, and eventually I started wondering why on Earth anyone thought this was a good idea. Seriously, it seems like at least 80% of reactions to L-DOPA were awful, so overall it just seemed like kind of a cruel experiment. But that isn't a valid book critique, just my own observation.

Unfortunately, the book got very dry and very boring after a while. I haven't even brought myself to finish it yet because it is just dragging on and I'm having a hard time staying awake.

I would probably read another book by the author (even if I do question his judgement and moral composition) just to give him the benefit of the doubt since so many people rave about his books. And I would definitely listen to another book read by the narrator, who did a fantastic job.

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