Blog Archives
The Preacher
Author: Camilla Lackberg
Following The Ice Princess, the story in this book happens around 8 months later. Erika Falck is pregnant and there’s another murder in Fjallbacka.
A body of a young woman is found in a touristic destination in the small town, but the big surprise is that, under the body, there’s a skeleton and it seems to be quite old. When another girl disappears, Patrick Hedstrom works against the clock to try finding her alive.
The plot is interesting, but very predictable, and there are some points which I don’t understand and dislike:
The Black Box
Author: Michael Connelly
In 1992, during the Los Angeles Riots, a young foreign journalist is found dead in an alley. With chaos spreading all around, Detective Bosch attends the crime scene but soon after the case is handed to the Riot Crimes Task Force, and no suspect is ever linked or arrested for the murder.
20 years later a bullet from a recent crime is linked to that old case and Bosch meticulously works to uncover the truth, at the same time dodging the pressure from his superiors to drop the case.
Harry Bosch is relentless in putting the pieces together in an intricate case that mix US soldiers, war crimes, abuse of power and money. He’s a great detective and Michael Connelly does a really good job developing the story and the character – not boring at all, and a page-turner.
Buy The Black Box from: The Book Depository or Amazon.
Dance of Shadows
Author: Yelena Black
I was looking forward to read this book, as I thought the plot seemed very interesting, but I was wrong. OK, I have to admit that I was not expecting magic or supernatural in this book, so I was surprised on the prologue, and although I’m not a big fan of angels and demons – I prefer vampires, elves, orcs, etc etc – I kept going because regardless of my preferences, it doesn’t hurt to read about something outside my usual scope, right? And as I just said before, the storyline was very appealing…
The book started well, but then suddenly things went downhill.
Gone Again
Author: Doug Johnstone
Wow! That was amazing!
I’ve been reading a lot lately – and when I say a lot I mean at least 3 books per week – and I can tell you that Gone Again is one of the best books I’ve read in the last few months. I couldn’t put it down. Luckily I had enough free time in my hands, so I started and finished it in just a few hours 
When Mark Douglas’ wife, Lauren, doesn’t show up to collect their son Nathan from school, doesn’t come home that night and doesn’t pick her phone up, he knows something is wrong. She has disappeared once before, just after Nathan was born, and being pregnant now, could she be freaking out again?
Bloodline Series – The Indigo Spell (book 3)
Author: Richelle Mead
It’s all about Sydney and Adrian. Will they finally be together or Sydney will keep holding on to her beliefs and push aside the attraction they have for each other?
Gone Girl
Author: Gillian Flynn
Nick and Amy met in New York, got married and, after losing their jobs, moved to Nick’s hometown in Missouri to be closer to his mother, who’s sick. On the morning of their 5th anniversary Amy disappears and, as usual, Nick is the main suspect, although he denies all the accusations.
We have two narratives: one of Nick, starting on the day Amy is gone; and one of Amy, starting just before they first met, and this makes a very interesting reading, as you can see their relationship from two completely points of view.
Reading Amy’s diary is amusing – the author does a pretty good job in describing what seem a nice couple from the beginning of the relationship till when problems start to arise, and all that comes with routine and lack of communication. I particularly liked the “dancing monkeys” – what Amy describes as how girlfriends/wives treat their boyfriends/husbands – and clearly this is not fiction!
In regards to her disappearance, it’s not hard to believe Nick is somehow involved, but at the same time it seems too obvious…you’d better read it to find out the truth
Buy Gone Girl from: The Book Depository or Amazon.
City of Thieves
Author: David Benioff
Germany invaded Russia in 1941 on which was called Operation Barbarossa, and Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) was on siege for 872 days, one of the longest sieges in history. There was no food, water, electricity – people were freezing, starving, and it’s reported that even cannibalism took place for a while, after all animals had been eaten.
The Siege of Leningrad is the background for City of Thieves. Lev Beniov, a 17 year old Jew who is arrested for looting a dead German pilot, and Kolya Vlasov, a 20 year old soldier arrested for allegedly deserting his unit, are offered the chance to get their freedom if they bring a NKVD colonel a dozen eggs for his daughter’s wedding.
But how on Earth are they going to find eggs if there’s hardly any food left anywhere?
Last to Die
Author: Tess Gerritsen
3 children from different families, living in different cities, and who are strange to each other, survive the massacre of their families and are put under the care of foster parents. Two years later their foster families are killed, but again the (now) teenagers are the only survivors. With no one else to look after them, they are sent to Evensong, a special school for traumatized children – if you read The Killing Place, this is the school Dr. Maura Isles puts Julian “Rat” Perkins (and his dog Bear) after their ordeal on that book – and which is remote and supposed to be absolutely safe.
Detectives Jane Rizzoli and Barry Frost are investigating one of the massacres and start to uncover and pursue the connection between the 3 cases, while Dr. Isles is at Evensong spending a couple of weeks with Julian. With the 3 teens at the same place, weird things start to happen and soon it becomes clear that their lives are at risk and the school is not safe anymore, and the closer Jane gets to the truth, the faster the killer has to act.
Rena’s Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz
Author: Rena Kornreich Gelissen & Heather Dune Macadam
4am
Raus! Raus!
No matter how much we’ve heard or read or seen, it’s always shocking and extremely sad to know what was done to the people in the concentration camps during WWII. But as horrific as it was, it’s amazing – and I would call it a miracle due to the circumstances – that some survived and were able to tell their stories (I, for sure, don’t believe I would have survived 1 day).
Rena’s Promise is the story of Rena Kornreich Gelissen, a Polish woman who, at 21 years old, arrived in Auschwitz on the 1st train and stayed in Nazi concentration camps for more than 3 years before being released. She tells us about her life pre-war in a small town called Tylicz, in Poland; then in Slovakia, where she had to get refuge; and finally all the horrors she experienced in Auschwitz, where she was able to find her younger sister, Danka (who arrived on the 2nd train) and keep both alive – thankfully escaping Dr. Mengele’s experiments.
Bloodlines Series – The Golden Lily (book 2)
Author: Richelle Mead
Released almost 1 year after the 1st book, The Golden Lily is as good as Bloodlines, and I reckon Richelle Mead did a good job refreshing our memory about the past events in the previous book – simple, direct and not too repetitive (which was a big problem for me on the Vampire Academy Series).
The story on this one is mainly about Sydney’s conflicts in being loyal to the Alchemists’ principles while getting closer and fonder to the Moroi (vampires) and, well, being also loyal to these friends, which is a big thing and strongly punishable by The Alchemists.
The group is still in Palm Springs: Jill, Adrian, Eddie and now Angeline, the dhampir who used to live with The Keepers. Sonya Karp and Dimitri also establish themselves there to conduct experiments on the Strigoi issue.
