Book Review: The Many, by Nathan Field

Becki's Rating: ★★☆☆☆
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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!