January 2007 50 Books

Category: 50 Books

 

7. Grave Surprise by Charlaine Harris
Dude, I lied. The liberry totally had it.

This series is getting even more creepy in the step-brother/sister love. The mystery part of the book is way over the top way too dumb for words. And really, the only reason why it’s like that is the ending is like, way abrupt and so you know that the mystery part is just the vehicle for the love story plot.

The love story plot of blech, that is.

This time the sister realizes that she’s in love with her step-bro. And true, they’re not actually related by blood…still, no. Stop it.
Stop. It.
To be honest the sis does seem to be horrified by the knowledge that she’s fallen for her step-bro. And to her credit she’s not acted on any feelings, and she plans to somehow get him to move on and not be her helper any more. But we all know that in the third book they will get together and have godless sex.

I liked the cover though.

 

6. Needled to Death by Maggie Sefton
This is the second book in the series and it’s boring. This time one of the weavers/alpaca farmers is murdered it’s like, really, what are the damn odds? That and when Kelly finds the murdered body she’s all calm about it like she finds dead people all the time. Oh sure, in the first book two people are killed but i don’t think she’s the one who finds the bodies…or maybe she did find the second body. It doesn’t matter.

And what is with the CONSTANT COFFEE THING? She is constantly drinking coffee and acting like IT’S THE BIGGEST DEAL EVER. It drives me nuts. And she never describes it as just great coffee, she has to call it “potent brew” or “delectable nectar” or some other bullshit. Which, wouldn’t be so bad once or twice a novel but it’s like EVERY DAMN CHAPTER. FUCKING JUST STOP IT, OKAY?! WE GET IT. SHE LIKES COFFEE. HELL, I LIKE COFFEE. I GET THE COFFEE LOVE. NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT.

Again the love interest is put off. I mean, everyone knows that Kelly and Steve are TOTALLY going to get together…probably in the third book. They finally go on a date in this one.

Anyway there’s two murders and they catch the killer.

 

 

5. Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris
This is a new series by the same lady who writes the Sookie Stackhouse series. I read the first Sookie Stackhouse book either last year or the year before and I can’t remember why I never read the rest. Maybe the library doesn’t have them? I’ll have to look sometime. Anyway, this is a new series with new characters.

It’s kinda meh. The main characters are Harper Connelly and her step-brother Tolliver Lang. When she was 15 she was struck by lightning and now she can find dead bodies and when she’s standing over a grave or at a dead body she can tell how they died. She can never see who the killer is though. Bummer.

This would have been an all right book if the bro and sis hadn’t been kind of…close, you know? I mean, sure, seeing as how they’re step-bro and sis i get that they’re not actually related. But still the parts where he would have to comfort her or whatnot was kinda just…blech. Not cool.
They don’t kiss or sleep together or anything, but still it was just enough to be oogy. And it didn’t have to be that way. Remember in the first Jeepers Creepers movie? They were bro and sis and it worked.

The story is they go to some podunk town in Arkansas and they end up finding the body they were hired to find but it stirs up a heap of trouble and then people try to kill them and blah blah blah whodunit cakes.

They solve the mystery and move on to the next gig which is the 2nd book in the series called Grave Surprise which the library doesn’t have yet.  

4. B is For Burglar by Sue Grafton
The title should have been B is For Boring because the book was VERY boring until the last 30 or so pages. Once again there was too many characters to keep up with. I did like that the story took place a week after the first one.

The mystery was something like this lady hires Kinsey to find her sister but then she doesn’t want her to find her sister and anyway turns out the neighbor did it. At one point, the neighbor is hiding in an apartment in Florida and when she leaves she trashes the place and also smears her shit all over.

How gross is that, yo?

Like I said though, boring.

 

3. A is For Alibi by Sue Grafton
Perhaps I’ve mentioned how I hate it when the author does a pisspoor job of describing what the main character looks like? All I know about Kinsey Millhone is that she has short hair and runs a lot. But what color hair? And just how short? Is it a bob? curly? or is it actually short…like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby short? We…aren’t told. All the author gives us is short hair, a runner, and also she’s a PI who can’t be bothered to actually live in a real house/apartment because she just doesn’t care enough about where she lives, what she wears, or apparently how she looks.

Another point against this book is that there are approximately 48 characters in it (who, i might add, have been described in detail. fuck. you.) and it’s impossible to keep up with them and why they may or may not be important.

As I was reading this book I noticed that a hotel room was 12 bucks and there was no mention of cell phones or the Internet and I thought to myself, “Hm. This must be older than the ’90s.” Which does not bother me. I just thought that this series was more recent than that. But then when one of the characters was eating caramel flavored Ayds…I had to check the publish date. It was 1981.

So now I’m a bit concerned, right? Because the author is up to ‘S’ now (S is for Silence), and my concern is the age of the character and if the author manages to stay true to the timeline. The only reason I say I’m “concerned” is that I’ve read P. Cornwell’s Scarpetta series and SOMEHOW Scarpetta stays in her 40s while her niece ages from 11 to 19 in two years.
I’m just saying.
People do pay attention, authors.

So I asked one of the librarians about it cos she had mentioned that she’s read the series and she says that the lady is still the same age and that it’s still 1982 or roughly the same time period. So I started B is for Burglar and noticed that it takes place a week after the first one. There ya go.

Anyway, it’s not riveting, and I think that’s because Kinsey herself is kinda not riveting. She doesn’t care so why should we?


 

2. Sleeping with Fear by Kay Hooper
This was the last book in the Fear trilogy. Also, it was the most blah. This is part of the Bishop/SCU series. Usually at least one character in the book will be kinda funny or sarcastic, but not really in this one. In this one she sticks to her redundant formula of
1. there’s a psychic of some kind: empath, clairvoyant, medium, etc.
2. that psychic loses his/her psychicness somehow
3. there’s a love interest
4. the love interest is THE ONLY person who can help the psychic get his/her powers back by being his/her “lifeline”
5. there’s screwing
6. the mystery gets solved

Ms. Hooper does a shitty job of describing what the main character, Riley, looks like. That always bothers me when I can’t picture what the character looks like. Anyway, I’d recommend reading the Evil series (although the Shadows series came first, but don’t worry about those.) and then forget that she ever wrote the others.

1. Knit One, Kill Two by Maggie Sefton
A ha! The perfect way to trick myself back into reading! A murder mystery book WITH KNITTING! Honestly, I checked out this book because of the title.

This is the first book in the series (oh yes, it’s a series.), and it wasn’t bad. It’s about a girl, Kelly, who’s aunt Helen is murdered and so Kelly has to go and deal with that and then she figures out that something more sinister than just a robbery gone bad is going on. And since there’s a coffee shop/yarn store next to her house she learns to knit. The parts with the knitting and the way she describes Kelly’s reaction to all the pretty yarns is kinda accurate, but the way she went on and on about this particular pink yarn was really redundant and blah.

The one word I’d use to describe this book would be cute. I hate that because I’m sure if i wrote a murder mystery I wouldn’t want people to be all, “Aw, what a cute book!” So I feel bad saying that the book was cute, but really, it was. Also, it was short and sweet and TOTALLY did not tie up any loose ends AT ALL which of course left it open for sequels.

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