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...

  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 ...

  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 am still working on Layla  by Colleen Hoover, but I was eyeing one of my bookshelves and something about The Burning Room by Michael Connelly caught my eye.  It's been awhile since I had read one of the Harry Bosch novels. I got this one years ago on the sale tables at Books-a-Million, and then it went on to the shelf to languish.  I really enjoyed the story, and had forgotten that I liked the Bosch character quite a bit. At this point in his career, Bosch is closing in on his last year with the LAPD and is working in the Open-Unsolved Unit. A case from many years before turns from a shooting to a murder when the man who had been hit by a bullet so long ago eventually dies. Bosch has a new, younger partner, who he is skeptical of at first, but comes to enjoy working with. The book ends up focusing on two different cases, which evolves in to three of four different cases that may have some commonalities, but still flows well. I thought the cases wrapped up rather ...