Books, Books, More Books ...& a Contest UPDATE

A couple months ago I took a picture of my TBR pile and counted 17 books!! So then I challenged you readers to post when you'd think I'd finish 17 books. Well I'm not done yet but I am halfway through the pile! YAY!!! Below is what I've finished:

1) The Tea Rose
2) Sing Them Home
3) Skylight Confessions
4) Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
5) Faith and Honor
6) Darling Jim
7) Knit Two
8) Meeting Mr. Wrong
9) Triple Cross

That's a lot of books read and reviewed since March. Hopefully I can chug along here in May and announce a winner soon!!

Jenn's Review: Deadly Charm

Summary: Deadly Charm is the third romance/mystery novel in the Amanda Bell Brown series. Favorite characters are back in this zany follow-up to Death, Deceit & Some Smooth Jazz and Murder, Mayhem & a Fine Man.

Amanda Bell Brown is a woman with many losses and gains: she's gained twelve pounds on her hips and lost her husband and best friend. Hope is on the horizon when her BFF Rocky returns with an offer she can't refuse: go with him to a revival meeting featuring former televangelist Ezekiel Thunder. Bell goes with Rocky, simply to help mend their friendship, and she finds herself surprised by love-baby love! Little Exeziel -Zeekie- Thunder steals her heart, even though Bell suspects his parents are fleecing the faithful.

When the seductively beautiful Mrs. Thunder makes a play for Amanda's man, Amanda is less than charmed. And when Baby Zeekie is found dead from an accidental drowning, Bell is sickened at the thought of someone murdering an innocent child - or that morning sickness that's plaguing her? Between babies and bodies, things are getting hectic for the forensic psychologist, as she pushes past the limits to discover the deadly truth.

Review: I intensely dislike starting in the middle of a series –especially when the author doesn't plant a lot of plot exposition to help out the new reader– but such is the case with this Library Thing Early Review book. Perhaps because of this, I had a hard time getting into this book, particularly the characters.

I didn't really like any of the characters in the beginning, and by the end, I'd at least warmed up to Bell. It's mentioned several times that this character is supposed to be a forensic psychologist, but she doesn't seem to work, ever. Her husband is a drunk and can't seem to respect the fact that she's her own person. Bell's antics are far from 'doing a little sleuthing' – she actually taunts sociopaths. All of this is against her doctors wishes, and I can't imagine any woman who has tried so hard to be pregnant recklessly jeopardizing her unborn children. It's actually a little mortifying. (I'd base my rating on that alone!)

There also isn't a lot of mystery to the plot. It's pretty cut and dried. Although I will say this for the book, having not so long ago finished a book that crammed religion down my throat, I really didn't mind that Bell was exceptionally religious. The opinions were hers and I could appreciate them for what they were, and they weren't used as a crutch at any time.

Perhaps it was just this book in the series, but I wasn't all that impressed. I'd try Claudia Mair Burney again, if it were a rainy day and I was pretty much through my TBR pile.

Final take 3.0/5

And Then Winners Are....

Congratulations to Llehn and Ann Diana Dinh for each winning a copy of Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos!!

Thank you all for participating in our giveaway! Surely there'll be more books to giveaway, so please keep your eyes peeled to this blog.

Please email me (Julie) your mailing address so I can forward it to the publisher.

Book to Movie: Twilight

Okay, it took way too long for me to get around to seeing this movie. I really wanted to see it on the big screen, but it just didn't happen. Luckily, I received the DVD as part of my Mother's Day gift!

I think this is one of the few instances where the movie really sticks close to the book. That's not to say that things aren't left out; obviously it needs to be trimmed down to make the big screen. Unfortunately a lot of what has gotten cut are all the enchanting, lovely scenes between Bella and Edward that help build their relationship. As a result Bella comes off as a love crazed teenager and Edward a slightly scary stalker. I know that's how critics of the Twilight series see them anyway, but truly, that's not how Ms. Meyer wrote them.

As far as casting is concerned, Cedric, I mean Robert Pattinson, is the perfect Edward. He's dark, handsome, and mysterious. On the other hand, Kristen Stewart is just not how I envision Bella; I thought that when the trailers first started to circulate, and I still think that after seeing the movie. It's not that her acting is bad... I don't know, maybe it's just the way the screen play was written, she's just a little off to me. Charlie isn't quite what I imagined either, but there really isn't enough of the other characters in the movie to really put forth much of an opinion. I kind of missed the stories that belong with the supporting characters, but I understand why they were cut in the grand scheme of things. Really, scenes of Edward and Bella getting to know each other were the far more valuable loss, with perhaps the exception being that of Rosalie's back story. Rosalie comes off rather incomprehensible without a little plot exposition.

That brings me to the story itself. As I mentioned, I think this is a fairly accurate translation from book, but I find it a dark, brooding interpretation of Meyer's story. This is helped along by cinematography that makes the entire movie seem gloomy. I know that Fork's is supposed to be a gray, rainy, dreary place, but the pervasive blue lighting was overkill in my opinion. Even my husband, who knew nothing of the story and only caught a few minutes here and there of the movie, mentioned it. I realize it was done for effect, but it was too much.

All in all, I am glad I own the movie; I'll certainly watch it again. It's an important part of the Twilight saga. I look forward to the next movie but I hope they do a little re-tooling of their approach (the next leg of the story is difficult enough). Do I recommend you see it before you read it? No, you might find it off-putting. If you haven't read it but saw it and liked it, by all means go back and read it; it's far more fascinating on the page.

3.75/5

What did you think???

My Review of the novel: Twilight

Jenn's Review: Rain Fall

Summary: John Rain, a Japanese American konketsu, or half-breed, learned his lethal trade as a member of the U.S. Special Forces. Although tortured by memories of atrocities he committed in Vietnam, he has become a paid assassin, a solitary man who lives in the shadows and trusts no one, even those who pay extraordinary sums for his ability to make murder look like natural death. But the aftermath of an otherwise routine hit on a government bureaucrat brings Rain to the attention of two men he knows from the old days in Vietnam: a friend who's now a Tokyo cop and an enemy who betrayed Rain long ago and is now the CIA's station chief in Japan. Like the gangster who hired Rain to kill Yasuhiro Kawamura, they want something the dead man had--a computer disk containing proof of high-level corruption, information that could destroy Japan's ruling political coalition. The search for the disk leads them to a woman Rain has come to love, a talented young jazz musician who also happens to be Kawamura's daughter.

Review: I'm huge spy/assassin story fan so I have been looking forward to picking this up off my TBR pile. This is Eisler's first novel (from '02) and having read his most recent, Fault Line, I must say it's wonderful to see how far he's come as a writer. Not that Rain Fall is a poor first novel, far from it. I found this first book of the Rain series to be a solid, entertaining read.

Although the character's aren't overly developed (I would like to know a little more about Kawamura's daughter, Midori), Rain is a likable sum of his experiences. Eisler does a nice job of infusing back story throughout the novel, keeping the reader's interest by weaving a little more plot exposition with each back flash. I did find the plot a little far fetched at times (for an assassin, Rain has an astonishing ignorance of the workings of the intelligence communities ~ and what paranoid assassin hands over valuable intel to a soft target civilian???) and at times a little repetitious (his recon around several blocks every time he goes to a meet or a stake out), but at least Rain is consistent. It was almost written like a movie script, so it was no surprise to find out it had been turned into a film (Gary Oldman!); unfortunately, it seems to only have been released in Japan, Rein fôru: Ame no kiba.

Personally, I wasn't crazy about the ending, but not from a writing standpoint. I was routing for Rain on a personal level, but the ending that Eisler wrote is far more realistic. I look forward to reading the rest of the series ...and just maybe I'll try and rent the Japanese movie when it comes out on DVD (praying for English subtitles).

Final Take 3.8/5

Julie's Review: Triple Cross

Summary: The Jefferson Club is a remote, private resort for the super-rich – the buildings, the amenities, and the security are state of the art and beyond compare. Many of the world’s wealthiest people – business leaders, entrepreneurs, politicians, celebrities – gather for the most exclusive New Year’s Eve party in the world. As expensive champagne flows and multibillion dollar deals are arranged, the unimaginable happens – a highly trained, heavily armed paramilitary force calling itself the Third Position Army breaches the world’s best security system and takes everybody hostage.
“Mickey” Hennessey, former U.S. Special Agent, is the head of security for the Jefferson Club. A divorced father of three teenagers, he’s spending the holiday with his kids. When the club is attacked, his entire team is wiped out and only he makes it out of the club alive. Now he’s outside while his kids are trapped inside, hostages of the Third Position Army who are putting seven of the ten richest men on “trial” for their crimes against humanity, live on the internet for the world to see. While a top FBI rescue team works feverishly to rescue all the hostages, Hennessey is determined to do all he can, to overcome every obstacle, to ensure his children’s safety – or die trying. ~St. Martin's Press.com

Review: I was lucky enough to get Triple Cross from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers club in February but given my huge pile, I was just now able to get to it. Triple Cross is an exciting adventure/action/thriller book. I was definitely not disappointed by this book. The book starts off with a bang and never lets up. I really enjoyed the main characters even if you pretty much knew off the bat that Mickey and Cheyenne were going to hook up. Now I don't mind a romantic hook up in a book, but in this situation I really don't think it was completely necessary. That being said, I LOVED the triplets. I thought they had a lot of heart, moxy and guts for being 14 years old. I don't know if I could have done what they did when I was 14. I don't know if I was that brave. I didn't have a hard time picturing the Jefferson Club in my mind. I just pictured the most decadent hotel/spa I could imagine tucked away in the mountains of Montana.

I've stated before that I don't like politics shoved down my throat from either side of the views, but this book didn't do that even though it did have a political slant to it. Now I didn't agree with the way the Third Position Army went about making their point, but wouldn't it be interesting and scary to know what companies and politician were truly made of? That's what this book does. It exposes corporate greed and political corruption, or does it? There is quite an interesting twist at the end of the book about the true motive behind the mastermind of the takeover.

There really isn't a boring page in the book, even if I kind of figured out early on that one of the main characters was involved. Although I don't think the author really meant to keep it a secret either.

If you are looking for a fast-paced thriller with well developed characters, check out Triple Cross. It's an interesting look at today's society and capitalism.

Final Take: 3.75/5