207 Book Talk

I am not much of a TV watcher, but occasionally I will decide to try out a show on Netflix, which is how I came across Virgin River. I certainly didn't love it, but it was something mindless to do for a few days while I wasn't feeling so great. Because I am much more interested in books than TV, I was interested when I learned it was based on a book series and bought the ebook of the first in the series, Virgin River . Yikes. First, I am glad I had credits and didn't actually pay for this book. Second, the writing was, to me, a perfect example of why some people refuse to read anything tagged as a "romance" novel. The writing was atrocious. The characters had no depth. The conversations were ridiculous. Who talks like this in the modern world that the novel is supposedly set in? I could not believe how gross some of the lines where, like Rick saying it "wasn't statutory until he was 18," with a shrug. The way Jack spoke to Mel when he wanted more tha...

I came across this short story collection while looking at books by Blake Crouch. These 6 short stories were written by some of the best SciFi authors, and perhaps authors in general, currently writing. Each is a standalone story, but they share a common future theme. I am reviewing the first three books in the collection in this review, and will review 4 through 6 separately.  Book 1: Ark  by Veronica Roth The first story in the collection is (so far) the one that felt like a beginning chapter to a much longer tale. It opens two weeks before the Earth is impacted by a huge asteroid. The asteroid impact is something the world has been aware of for a very long time before its impact, and people have been preparing in various ways. Most of the population has already left to head to another planet, but some scientists have stayed behind until the last possible moment to continue collecting and cataloging specimens before Earth is destroyed. Samantha is cataloging plant specimens ...

  The Last Town  is the final book in the Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines trilogy. It has been three weeks after Secret Service Agent Ethan Burke wakes up in Wayward Pines, Idaho, and here we are at the story's conclusion. A nomad sent beyond the fence over three years before is on his way back to town, and his return is sure to shake things up, but as he makes his way back, the town is on the verge of a breakdown (or a breakthrough, depending who you ask).  The residents that remove their chips to wander at night are free from surveillance, but that doesn't mean no one knows they are up to something. A murder pulls Ethan in two different directions. Who does he believe when push comes to show? David Pilcher, creator of the town and Ethan's new boss, or his former partner Kate Ballinger (née Hewson), who almost ripped his marriage in Seattle apart? Ethan has to decide, and quickly, as things rapidly deteriorate in Wayward Pines. Is it better to live a half life, or potenti...

Wayward   is the second book in Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines trilogy. After surviving a fête, Ethan Burke is now sheriff of the town of Wayward Pines, Idaho. He had woken up there just two weeks before, on a case for the Secret Service trying to find two missing agents from the Boise office, and now he is "in charge" of this charming, Stepford-esque town.  David Pilcher's experiment to save the world is perhaps not going as well as he had planned. Many residents of Wayward Pines, population 461, struggle to go along with the status quo, pretending that their former lives no longer exist. Talking about the past is forbidden. There are cameras and microphones watching and listening to everything in town, so how can anyone find an escape, physically or mentally? Ethan struggles with the right choice. Is it more important to protect the town from what is outside the fence, or to protect them from the man who put them all there in the first place? Will his son ever have a ...

 First, in my defense, I had already started this book BEFORE I created the challenge for myself yesterday to only read books from certain TBR piles in my house and the CloudLibrary holds on my iPad. I didn't cheat! Now on to my review... A Good Girl's Guide to Murder   by Holly Jackson was a book that I heard about because I almost concurrently saw it on a friend's Goodreads profile and on the nominee's list for 2020 Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult Fiction. The friend reading it happens to be a co-worker, and she lent me the book. It sat here on a stack of TBR's for a week or two, and then yesterday as I was finalizing my Popsugar and ATY52 challenge lists, I realized I could use it to fulfill a prompt for both, and here we are. This is the story of a high school student, Pippa Fitz-Amobi, who decides to do her senior capstone project on the infamous murder-suicide of two students that had occurred in her hometown 5 years before. She never really believed S...

  I'll admit I got a late start in knowing that Blake Crouch is an amazing author. I had picked up a copy of Dark Matter  at a local bookstore because I liked the cover. I brought it home, put in on a shelf, and it languished in my TBR pile with several hundred other books. Last year I needed something to fit a reading challenge prompt and noticed Dark Matter  would be a fit, so I decided to read it. I was wary, as SciFi is not a genre I have ever been interested in, but holy crap, was it a good story.  Currently, I am waiting for  Recursion  to be returned to my local library so I can read it for a prompt this year (also, just because I want to read it. Have you checked out the Google Preview ? I was hooked on the first page!). Anyway, I was spending my yearly Christmas book gift certificate the other day and saw the name Blake Crouch as I was scanning the shelves, which is how I stumbled upon, and came to own, Pines .  I picked it up yesterday to do ...

  I have been a fan of Karin Slaughter 's since the beginning of her Grant County series back in 2001. Just like any author with a long time writing career, some books end up better than others, and The Silent Wife  is definitely one of those better books.  This is the tenth entry in Slaughter's Will Trent series, and lots of familiar characters are back in action. Will and his feisty partner Faith are called out to help investigate a murder that took place during a prison riot. During the course of their work, they meet with a prisoner that has information to offer. Will, Faith, and the other members of their GBI team are in for a shock when the prisoner assures them he has proof that Jeffrey Tolliver was a crooked cop. Readers unfamiliar with the storyline, take note that Jeffrey is the murdered husband of Will's girlfriend, and GBI medical examiner, Sara. This accusation is a doozy, and it sends them scrambling to find the truth. This storyline goes deep and just gets ...