Book Review: Splintered, by A.G. Howard

Title: Splintered
Author: A.G. Howard
Publisher: Amulet Paperbacks
Date of Publication: February 18th, 2014
Format: Paperback
Page Count: 371
Goodreads: Click
Amazon: Associates Link
Recommended? Yes
Similar Books: Wicked, by Gregory MaGuire
My Rating: ★★★☆☆

I started reading this book last year and put it on hold because I wanted to have access to the other two books in the trilogy before I finished it, as I expected to rebound straight into Unhinged upon finishing Splintered. Generally speaking, I like to read a series back to back, though sometimes it doesn't work out that way and I get bored (or I'm waiting on the next book in the series).

Perhaps in part because of this break between starting the book and finishing it, I have mixed feelings about the novel in general and I feel a bit unsteady upon having finished it.

This book sucked me in, and I am not what I would consider a "Wonderland fan." It was a new adventure for me, a trip into something that I've never explored but which I quickly found that I enjoyed. The novel if fascinatingly atmospheric and I could feel the setting as I read. I fell into Wonderland the way that one would hope to fall down the rabbit hole, and it was quite easy to fall into Alyssa's (and Alison's) madness. Atmosphere can be difficult to write well, and Ms. Howard did a wonderful job of pulling me into the setting of her book. That's definitely something that I can appreciate!

I enjoyed the story well enough. It was twisted and wicked and surprising in many unexpected ways. The author does a great job of making the Wonderland story unique, and she ties up loose ends (which is often unusual in young adult fiction). These are things that I can appreciate from any author, and things that I definitely enjoyed about the story. Unlike Wicked (by Gregory Maguire), Ms. Howard didn't leave me feeling confused: She was able to give me enough information as the story went along to come to my own conclusions and to enjoy the story.

Where the book falls apart for me is in characterization. The characters come across as invariably flat, like they are missing something critical that would make them whole people in the mind of the reader. Unlike many reviewers, I don't hate Jeb (one of the two love interests -- what is it with love triangles these days?) for being sexisty -- I dislike his lack of development, the lack of strong negative traits, the fact that he could have been more in this book. The same goes for Alyssa and Morpheus as well, so it's difficult to dislike Jeb when he is no different from the other characters in the book. They blend together, and this book is therefore more focused on the story than on the characters in it.

I want more from the authors who I read, certainly in terms of the characters that they write, and this is something that Ms. Howard could focus on a bit more in her writing. She needs to know more about her characters than she puts into her story, but I want more from them in general. So Alyssa and Jeb are both artistic people with an interest in skating. Not only are they too alike to make them a logical romantic interest, but that's too flat. What else interests them? What television shows do they watch in their down time? What sorts of habits do they have (good and bad)? These are the sorts of things that define the character, even if it never comes up in the story and the sheer alikeness of Alyssa and Jeb makes them boring for me as a reading. 

This is what makes Morpheus stand out to the reader: There's more to him, he's not like Alyssa. He's not a short cut. He's the real central character to this story, and Ms. Howard would do well to fully develop the other characters in order to match him -- even if she views them as being tertiary or incidental to the story. Every character ought to be important if they are to be included.

It's the lack of whole people -- whole characters -- that brought this book down for me. The book itself is beautiful with a gorgeous cover and beautiful purple font and illustration. Visually, this book is very appealing, and I enjoyed the atmosphere of the book enough to carry me into the second book in the series.

Splintered could, however, carry its own weight without plowing into the second book in the series, however, based on the fact that the book does have a complete ending. This is rare and appreciated, as it doesn't drive me straight into Unhinged when my to-be-read shelf is stacked higher than I can manage right now.

I hope to see better things in Unhinged!

Book Review: Divergent, by Veronica Roth

Title: Divergent
Author: Veronica Roth
Publisher: HarperCollins
Date of Publication: November 21st, 2013
Format: Paperback
Page Count: 487
Goodreads: Click
Amazon: Associates Link
Recommended? Yes
Similar Books: Bait, by Courtney Farrell, The Gender Game by Bella Forrest, The Giver by Lois Lowry
My Rating: ★★★★☆

This review is giving me a difficult time, and I'll tell you why: I'm reviewing a book that I've already read, already reviewed, and which I loved the first time around, but which I found less enjoyable the second time around. This never happens to me. In general I love books more the more often that I read them, so this has left me confused, and reeling a little bit.

I think that it was the movie that ruined it for me, on a number of levels, but I also think that, having loved this book the first time around (and preferred it over The Hunger Games, in fact!), I'm left feeling let down by its pacing, by the development of the characters, by the development of the romantic plot line, and by the way that the story progresses to its end. 

It's strange going from the movie back to the book, and I feel now like the movie might have ruined this story for me. I'll be reading Insurgent (for the second time) and finally finishing Allegiant, so we'll see if that changes anything for me.

This is the story of Beatrice Prior, a sixteen year-old girl born into the faction of Abnegation. In futuristic Chicago, the city is divided into five factions: The Abnegation (the selfless), the Candor (the truth-tellers), the Erudite (the intellectuals), the Amity (the kind-hearted), and the Dauntless (the courageous). She must make a choice to either stay with her family in Abnegation, or to leave her family behind and join a new faction. 

When the results of her Faction Aptitude test are "inconclusive," Tris must make the decision of a lifetime -- with potentially devastating consequences.

Tris is a strong heroine with an incredible strength of character. All of the characters in this book are well-developed and three-dimensional, with both strengths and weaknesses. Ms. Roth has done an amazing job of giving us strong secondary and tertiary characters about whom we want to know more. 

This is an action-packed dystopian story set in the future, where society has been divided into factions based on the personality types of the individual. Sixteen year-olds are tested to determine which faction they belong in, and then must make a choice for where they want to live out the rest of their lives. Based on the principle "Faction before Blood," these teenagers must decide to leave their family behind and follow the system that was set in place longer ago than anyone can remember.

There are a lot of great things about this series. The first, and the thing that I enjoy the most about this type of dystopian novel, is the action of the story. There is never a dull moment in Divergent, and the author pushes the characters to their limits. Given that my favorite part of Harry Potter (the books, I don't care for the movies, again) is the Quiddich, you can guess that I do like a lot of motion and movement in the stories that I read. This series definitely delivers that.

I also adore Tris. As protagonists go, she defies the odds, she's strong in terms of character, and she is a complete character in that the author makes sure to give her both positive and negative traits. She might have been boring had she not been divergent. It might have been preferable had she not been so reliant on Four to get her through initiation, but if she wasn't, we wouldn't have the budding romance. 

I love that Ms. Wroth doesn't waste words. The story starts immediately and it ends abruptly to lead into the next book in the series. She kept me wanting to read because reading was easy. There were no lulls in the story, nothing to keep me from continuing with reading the book. Nothing made me want to put the book down and pick another up (other than being sent ARCs to read).

So if you like fast-paced books with a futuristic setting, this book -- this series is definitely for you! If you're looking for a strong female protagonist, you'll love this book. If you're looking for the type of book that you can easily read in one or two sittings, then yes, you'll love Divergent. 

However, I advise people going into this story to not compare it to The Hunger Games. It's an entirely different series with an entirely different feel to the novel, and you must be prepared for something that is vastly different. Surely fans of The Hunger Games (as I am) will enjoy this novel, but I feel that it is imperative to allow this series to stand on its own, for its own merits.

The drawback, for me, was with the pacing. While the book didn't feel rushed, it was difficult to read -- and different to read -- after watching the Divergent movie. I've not seen the Insurgent movie, so we'll see whether or not I have the same experience with reading the second book in the series as I did with reading the first. It's altogether possible that it will be different for me.

Even so, looking back I still believe that I enjoy this series better than The Hunger Games (which for a fan of the series, is saying a lot).

Book Review: Waking in Time, by Angie Stanton

Title: Waking in Time
Author: Angie Stanton
Publisher: Switch Press
Date of Publication: March 1st, 2017
Format: .pdf file
Page Count: 362
Goodreads: Click
Amazon: Associates Link
Recommended? For young adult audiences, yes.
Similar Books: Hannah's Rainbow
My Rating: ★★★★☆

I need to start this review by stating, honestly, that this book was a roller coaster ride. It started strong, with good dialog and interesting characters (who remained interesting throughout the book) but while reading this one, I felt like the author didn't have a strong enough grasp on dialog overall, or that some sections of the book were more closely copy edited than others.

Poorly developed characters are the biggest frustration for me in fiction, but weak dialog definitely comes in a close second. It's one of those things that can make a truly great book quite dull, and this was not a truly great book. 

This novel is the story of Abbi, whose grandmother recently passed, but not before pleading with Abbi to "find the baby." Shortly after arriving at college, Abbi's mother sends her a hat box that her grandmother left for her, and the morning after opening it and going through the things contained within, she wakes up -- in 1983. Now she must find her way back to the 21st century with the help of a pair of friends she meets in time, all the while trying to uncover the secret of the baby her grandmother wished her to find.

Ms. Stanton has potential -- a lot of potential. The book was a quick and easy read that I plowed through in less than 36 hours of reading time. I enjoyed the story so much that in fact I would have liked for there to have been more of it, and I would have preferred to see more development of the relationships between the characters. While I fully realize that Abbi had little time to spend with Smitty and Will to facilitate this development, I find myself wanting more out of this story.

The book does take some logistical leaps, but most of that is overshadowed for me, as an adoptee, by the way that Ms. Stanton addressed Smitty's life in an orphanage and other issues which affect people who were adopted both during that time and throughout American history. This made me happy, and was a relief to read addressed in mainstream fiction.

I love books involving time-travel, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to read this book. Ms. Stanton could do with tightening up her dialog a bit (or some stronger copy editing), but I would certainly enjoy seeing more from this author.

In particular I appreciated the afterward to this novel, and the things that inspired it. I hope that Ms. Stanton won't give up the search for Ruby's baby and that she finds some relief in discovering who the child might have become. Adoptee rights groups are making great strides in reuniting families with one another and she may still be able to find the child for whom she seeks. 

I'd like to recommend my best friend's novel Hannah's Rainbow if you enjoyed Waking in Time, as I believe Ms. Stanton and Cyndi have similar writing styles and were both inspired to write stories about people from their family trees. Thank you!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Gender Game, by Bella Forrest

Title: The Gender Game
Author: Bella Forrest
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Date of Publication: September 24th, 2016
Format: .doc file
Page Count: 640
Goodreads: Click
Amazon: Associates Link
Recommended? HECK YES!
Similar Books: Bait, by Courtney Farrell, Divergent by Veronica Roth, Matched by Aly Condie, The Giver by Lois Lowry
My Rating: ★★★★★

Holy crow. 

I can't even right now. I can't. even.

I'm flailing like a schoolgirl. Like a fangirl. 

I lost sleep over this book. When I wasn't reading it, I thought about it. I was rooting for Violet. I wanted to read when I couldn't get to my Kindle. This book kept me going, thirsting for more. Thank you Bella Forrest!

If you're following me, you know that I'm a slow reader. A very slow reader. Books take me a week, sometimes more, to finish. Even books that are 200-some pages long. This book is 640 pages long and I finished it in four days. I opened up my Kindle and it told me that it would take me seven hours to complete this novel. After what seemed like minutes, I glanced down and found I had an hour and twenty minutes left of reading time. 

And boy, I wanted more than that!

So let me get on with the review here. I want to start giving my readers a summary of the novel, but that's going to come at the end of the review, since what you're really here to read are my opinions of this book.

I loved it!

But I want to be fair and honest, because that's the best purpose of a review, and it's what helps everybody the most -- including the author, the publisher, and most of all, the reader. My job here is primarily to make sure that you know what you're about to read, as a reader, right?

So here goes. You know I loved the book, so let me talk to you about the things that I didn't like, the things that this book had to make up for to reach the five-star rating that I've given it.

I hate the concept. I'd wanted to love it, because in the past I've been a fairly genderist person myself (something I'm ashamed of, to be honest with you) but the truth is that I wasn't thrilled with the fact that this novel uses gender in such a binary way. I want to say that this would have been more appealing if the title had been different, but I'm not sure that's the case, either. 

But it made up for that, in spades! Much like Divergent separates people into different factions, the world of Matrus and Patrus delineate people based on their gender, and all people are meant to fall into line in a binary way. Some readers are upset by the binary nature of the novel and the assumptions that are made by the people of this world (and therefore presumably by the author) but it appears to me having concluded this book, that the author is attempting to do something revolutionary in terms of expressing that not everyone fits into a binary mold. 

We can hope, right?

I feel strongly that Ms. Forrest took some of the best of the well-known and much-beloved dystopian novels most of us have read and wound them into an exciting novel. There are certainly shades of The Giver, along with elements from Divergent, and even Matched. If you enjoyed these books, I believe that you will enjoy The Gender Game as well. Surely if you enjoyed The Gender Game, you need to read these better-known and mass-published books, because you will get a great deal out of them.

The heroine of this novel, Violet, is a strong and spirited young Matrian girl who committed crimes for which she had been thrust into detention in Matrus, commissioned by the Court to embark on a mission in Patrus to retrieve a silver egg which had been stolen from Matrus. She must complete her task without detection and without Patrus suspecting Matrus of the crime, which would result in a war between the two nations. She's a strong lead with a lot of spirit, but without the boring "girl power" that one might expect from a book in which people are divided by their gender. Her romantic interest grows throughout the novel, and their relationship is not a sudden surprise to the reader.

It is abundantly clear that Ms. Forrest loves the characters about whom she's writing -- I found it difficult not to love them too, and none of them bored me (which worried me in the beginning). 

She launches straight into the story, which is narrated in first person (and this is a reason that the novel reminds me of the lesser-known Bait [do yourself and Ms. Farrell a favor and read this one if you enjoyed The Gender Game]) without giving excessive background details to bore the reader. The only thing that I was really left wondering is what had led the society to be the way that it is. Of course this is the first book in a series and no doubt Ms. Forrest will reveal this information in her own time and in her own way -- I look forward to finding out!

As with most Dystopian novels, however, I am left with the question of "Where is the rest of the world?" Assuming that this is set on Earth (and we're not told otherwise), these are small countries and the book is written in a very North American tone, so I'd love to know where the rest of the world has gone that these two nations appear to be all that is known to our heroine (Violet).

I am very excited to see what comes next in this series, and I've signed up for updates to review an ARC of the next book in the series (put a hardcopy in my hands if possible please, Ms. Forrest!).

Loved, loved, loved this book!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Many, by Nathan Field

Becki's Rating: ★★☆☆☆
View on Goodreads

Title: The Many
Author: Nathan Field
Publisher: KDP
Date of Publication: June 9th, 2016
Format: .doc file
Page Count: 271
Goodreads: Click
Amazon: Associates Link
Recommended? Yes (for the price point)
Similar Books: The Beast of Barcroft, by Bill Schweigert, Flesh and Blood, by Simon Cheshire, Others by James Herbert
My Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Let me begin by saying that the story kept me turning the pages one after another. It took until about a quarter of the way through the book before I felt truly compelled, but the story itself is what made me want to finish in spite of other issues that I had with this book. If it were only a matter of the story, this book is fast-paced and definitely a worthy read. I'm a big fan of medical horror and have been since I was a young teenager, so this book pushed those buttons for me and it kept me reading.

While I did find the story to be interesting, I did not find it to be especially unique and it was easy to guess some of the turns that the story took as I went along. If you've read a lot of medical horror, and horror of the science fiction variety, you've probably run into similar story lines and you'll find certain elements of the plot to be predictable. 

The twists and turns in the plot were predictable, and the portion of the story which included a police investigation made the novel feel more like a suspense novel than a horror novel. I found Detective McElroy to be boring, and that his characterization jumped about, leaving me feeling as though I was never on solid footing with the characters in this book (but McElroy in particular). During his chapters of the book, I found myself reading glassy-eyed and unimpressed with the way that the author wrote this character.

In fact, I was unimpressed by the way that he wrote most of the characters. The majority (with perhaps the exception of Isobel, early on when she was first introduced) was flat. At various points in the book Mr. Field names the wrong character (which is confusing to the reader, and an issue which may be corrected in the final copy of the novel).

My advice to Mr. Field is that as a writer, you have to make the reader care about your characters, or they won't care about your story. If you don't care about your characters, then your readers aren't going to care about your characters either, and they will find it more difficult to connect to a story if they cannot connect to the characters who are telling that story.

The writing in this novel was amateurish -- the reading level reading as though written for a younger audience, while the book was especially gory in some parts. It reminded me of other books I've downloaded from Netgalley (such as The Beast of Barcroft) or books I've gotten for free on Amazon (such as Evan After). In fact, the story and its climax bears a striking resemblance to Evan After.

I would tentatively recommend this book to people who have never read medical horror before, as they may find something unique in it that interests you in this novel. If you enjoyed Evan After, you might also enjoy this book.

As for my personal recommendations, I enjoyed Others, by James Herbert, a great deal more. If you enjoyed The Many, you might enjoy Others!

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Max's Adventure

We told him no.

This is Max, our brand-new Mastweiler puppy. He's eight weeks old and just came home today! He loves to have his ears/cheeks scratched, but this is what he does when he's told "no" to chewing on Dinky's shoes! He is absolutely the sweetest puppy and we are in love with him!

For those who don't know, we lost our German Shepherd/St. Bernard mix three weeks ago to Lymphoma. She was only four years old and it was a devastating loss for us. She held on for six weeks from the time of diagnosis. We wanted to get another dog to keep me company while I'm home alone starting here in a couple of weeks, and this is going to be a great adventure for everyone involved! 

We're looking forward to spending time with Max and getting to know him better!

Please forgive me as I spam my blog with updates on Max and tell you more about who he is and how he's doing! He's such a sweet little guy!

After he woke up.

Book Review: We Never Asked for Wings by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Becki's Rating: ★★★★☆

Title: We Never Asked for Wings
Author: Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date of Publication: August 18, 215
Format: Hardcover (Library Binding)
Page Count: 320
Goodreads: Click
Amazon: Associates Link
Recommended? Yes
Similar Books: None (Yet)
My Rating: ★★★★☆

I loved this book. I've just finished it and I'm still reeling in the after-glow of having read an excellent book, trying to put together the last of my thoughts, which are oddly mixed. There are many things that I love about this book, but there are just as many things that make me shake my head with disappointment. This one gets four stars from me purely based on the enjoyment factor, but I encourage my readers to appreciate that this book took me an entire eight days to finish, with steady reading.

I'm not going to give you a summary of this book, as the story defies anything that I could put into a brief summary of the novel, but I will tell you that the summary attached to Goodreads and Amazon (and of course the dust jacket) is insufficient to describe this novel.

Against my own custom, I want to begin with the things that I didn't like about this book, so that I can finish this review strong, as I do recommend this book to my readers.

The thing that I found the most frustrating about this book -- and the thing that made it take so long for me to finish the book to be honest with you -- is that it is very character driven. While there is a plot to this novel, it is loosely held together by the characters, and it seems to exist primarily in order to support the characters, rather than the characters supporting the plot. I'm not fond of this type of book because I want more from a story. 

Because of this, the story is rushed, coming together only in the last third of the novel, which isn't enough time to bring together all of the pieces. The romantic story between Letty and the two suitors is as rushed as it is forced. 

If it wasn't for this one thing, this would have been a five-star book in spite of the fact that it is character-driven.

Maybe it's because I'm not colored by The Language of Flowers, as I haven't read it yet. I felt that this book was substantive in terms of its characters, but it could have done more for its story, especially had it been considerably less rushed. 

The prose of this novel is beautiful, and the characters are so well-formed that they feel like people I might have met during my lifetime. Diffenbaugh successfully illustrates what it is to be a teenager struggling with coming-of-age issues and young love, and she made me connect with the characters she created for this novel. This is the type of book that inspires me. 

But on the other hand, it is not the type of book that keeps me reading and turning page after page because its story was lacking.

Definitely a book that I would recommend, but not one that I will likely read again. That being said, I will be reading The Language of Flowers.

Book Review: Wedding Bell Blues, by Ruth Moose

Becki's Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Title: Wedding Bell Blues
Author:  Ruth Moose
Series: Dixie Dew Mysteries
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Date of Publication: August 23rd 2016
Format: Hardcover (ARC)
Page Count: 336
Goodreads: Click
Amazon: Associates Link
Recommended? No
Similar Books: None (yet)
My Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Upon finishing this book, I'm left staring blankly at my posting screen asking myself "...what did I just read?" 

I'm a fan of cozy mysteries, but the most recent cozies I've read just don't deliver, and Wedding Bell Blues is no exception. The main character, Beth McKenzie, is lacking in depth and in many ways downright confusing. For example, at one point in the novel the author talks about how Beth met her best friend Malinda in middle school at the time of desegregation of schools. No previous descriptions had led me to see Malinda as a woman of color. This also left me confused, and a little bit thrown, because I had previously envisioned both Beth and Malinda as women in their thirties. After all, Malinda recently returned from college to work in a pharmacy, and she has a four-year-old little boy.

I like to be able to "see" the characters in my mind's eye and have an inner visual of the people who they are. While I could do this easily enough with Ida Plum or Verna (the next door neighbor), I struggled to get a good inner image of the other characters in the novel -- even when Ms. Moose described them.

But I liked them. I particularly liked Verna and Ida Plum, though I feel that Ms. Moose missed some remarkable opportunities with both of these characters. It's altogether possible that she put more flesh on their bones in Doing it at the Dixie Do. I wouldn't know, as I haven't read it. Truth be told, I don't think that I will be going back to read the book after having finished Wedding Bell Blues.

Cozy Mysteries often have several story lines going on at the same time. In this case, the stories that follow throughout the book are the wedding of Crazy Reba (a simple, homeless woman) to God, and the wedding of Ossie the police officer to Juanita, the hairdresser. It's the theme of the book, after all. Unfortunately, these stories aren't entertaining, and we never quite get to know enough about the characters involved.

After I had described this book to my husband, he said that it sounded like a Lifetime movie, and I think that's the best possible description of this book for me. It doesn't end, leaving many loose ends that are never tied up, and several of the sub-plots appear to be nothing but filler. Several opportunities to use sub-plots as "red herrings" are lost because the mystery aspect of the book is so simple that I found the solution obvious and boring. And I'm not good at solving mysteries!

I didn't find the novel funny, and I didn't find it entertaining, but I did finish it. I might not have been able to do that if it wasn't for one redeeming quality about the author's style: The chapters are short. I love short chapters, and they made the book easier to digest, since it was so difficult at times to follow the flow of this story.

If you love Lifetime movies, then you will probably enjoy this book. I, however, did not.

I welcome your comments on this book, and I would love a discussion of whether you enjoyed this novel or not, and the reasons why you felt the way that you did!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Becki's Rating: ★★★★☆

Title:  11/22/63
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Gallery Books
Date of Publication: July 24th, 2012
Format: Paperback
Page Count:  1080
Goodreads: Click
Amazon: Associates Link
Recommended? Yes
Similar Books: Revival, by Stephen King, The Stand, by Stephen King
My Rating: ★★★★☆

I'd like to begin by saying that this is one of the most entertaining books that I've read in a long time and that I enjoyed it enough to finish this behemoth in less than two weeks. Given that I'm a slow reader, this means that I could not put this book down. 

That's a good thing, but my feelings on this book are two-sided, and I do not recommend it lightly. In fact, I'm not sure that I recommend it at all.

I've given this book three and a half stars (rounded up to four for rating purposes). As a representation of my enjoyment of this book, this means that I enjoyed the book enough to finish it (quickly), but that I have some reservations about some things in relation to the novel.

11/22/63 is a complex book in a number of different ways, which makes it somewhat difficult to review. To begin with, it tells three interwoven stories through a single, first person narrative. 

This might have been intriguing if King had managed to segue each story into the next in a way that was continuous and cohesive. While I grasp the way that the three stories intertwined, I didn't find the lack of cohesion entertaining or beneficial to the overall story of Jake Epping's experience in the Land of Ago.

The first of the three stories is the story of Harry Dunning, a janitor at the school where Jake works. One night while grading adult themes for a GED class, Jake reads the story of "The Day that Changed My Life" as written by Harry Dunning, and the theme would go on to change Jake Epping's life. The essay tells the story of the brutal murder of Harry's entire family, leaving him the sole survivor. 

This story is entertaining and interesting in its own right, and Jake's interaction with the theme and with Harry says a lot about Jake's character. Of the three story components, this is the one which I found to be the most compelling.

The second of the three stories, and the one which carries from roughly halfway through the novel all the way to the end, is a love story between the protagonist and his lady love. I found this story to be highly compelling and well-done: Romantic without the classic romance-novel sexuality that we're all so familiar with. It was well done, and I believed in the characters. I was pulling for them. 

This is what Stephen King is good at: Making you root for the characters in his novels.

The third of the three stories is the one the book is named for: The attempt by Jake Epping (aka George Amberson) to prevent the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Although this was the story that I bought the book to read, I did not find it either compelling or entertaining, particularly not compared to the other story components.

What I did enjoy about the 11/22/63 story was the portrayal of the historical characters. It takes some courage to write about characters who lived in such recent history. People who knew Oswald, who knew Kennedy are still alive today. The portrayal of these characters for all of their humanity was fascinating, and I felt that it brought me a bit closer to the history that King had written about.

Ultimately what frustrated me about this novel was the ending. I won't spoil it for you, but I can say that I found it weak and somewhat predictable, especially if you're familiar with Stephen King. This was a disappointment for me, and I believe that it will be disappointing for other readers who otherwise enjoy the novel. 

I welcome comments about the book, and your thoughts on my review. Thank you for reading!