book reviews

I am a little behind on my books. I finally finished the Grimms Fairy Tales. No need to review that, except to say that I'm actually glad I'm done with it. It went so slow cause it was what I read while I fed the baby at night. Now that I'm done with that Victor's making me read a physics for beginners type of book at night. (well, he's not really making me, but he pushed me to)

So I read The Girl She Used to Be, by David Cristofano. There's mild spoilers in here. It's about a woman who saw someone get murdered when she was a kid and her parents saw it too, and they went into witness protection and gave testimony, which did nothing cause the guy is still free. The book starts with her bemoaning her horrible life and how she's had so many names, all of them her own fault. Cause, you see, she can't keep her stupid mouth shut. The beginning also shows us that her current job is that of a teacher, and she's grading papers. Instead of grading them on the actual work done she is grading them on their personalities! The beginning also shows us her calling her witness protection person with a lie that she was threatened and needed to be moved... because she was bored! She whines about how her life is horrible and how the government made her life miserable and what an awful program she's in. But you know, if she just followed the rules she'd have been fine. She could have stayed with one name and lived the rest of her life happy and in one place at one job and etc. Well during the move this time she thinks about how awful things are (again), that she's always put in rundown motels with paper-thin walls and she thinks about how "generous" they are in irritatedly buying her a snack cake at a gas station. How they gave her cheap hair dye and generic soap and "clearly didn't know a woman's needs" (I believe she was talking about wanting mascara or complaining about not being given a floral scent or something). Then the son of the guy she saw murdering someone comes along and sneaks right past security and tells her he's coming back the next day for her. She doesn't tell on him and in fact goes with him the next day. He whisks her away in an expensive car, gives her an expensive name brand sweater, takes her to eat a gourmet meal at a fancy restaurant. Already seeing how crime is glorified here? Well, she's found by her protectors and given another chance and instead goes to great effort to track down the guy, and get him to pick her up. He then takes her to a fancy hotel and gives her a whole day at a spa and they go out to eat at a restaurant but cause they can't decide what to order they order "a sample of everything". This whole time she asks him over and over if he's killed people, how badly has he hurt people, and being fidgety about his links to crime. She finds out he'd done a horrible mutilation to someone and was freaked out by it. But you know what happens? A guy attempts to mug them in an alley and while he's making fun of the guy and breaking his ankle and stuff she gets all into it and is excited and cheering him on and then she tells him to do the same mutilation to this guy. Now, while mugging is bad I don't think she should have jumped to that right away after having spent the last day being edgy about his links to crime and being fidgety about whether or not he's hurt people. It just seems extreme. (he doesn't listen to her) All this while she thinks she's falling in love with him, but in reality I think she's falling in lust and is simply after him cause of the excitement. She's even asking him to marry her the next day. The plan is to take her to his family's house and hope they take her in. btw, this whole time he has openly admitted to stalking her. He's followed her name to name, place to place, watching her, and finally the rest of his family was getting restless for him to kill her and that's why he finally "rescued" her. And she likes this, makes her "love" him more cause he knows her. I won't give away the ending but it's the reason I got rid of this book. Yes I just listed a lot of bad, but that's on close inspection. I read the book in about 3 days and enjoyed it very much. I think if the ending had been different I could have overlooked the silly, weird, and eye-brow raising. But I think the ending made me look into it deeper for things to not like. And, if given the chance, I can find bad in just about anything and go on and on about it. Apparently there's a sequel written from the guy's point of view. I would be interested in reading that to see if it makes the first book any better. Maybe I'll see if the library has it. I haven't gotten rid of it entirely just yet, it's still on the shelf waiting to be taken away, so if the sequel goes past the end of the first book and makes everything better I'd keep the first book too and probably re-review it with happier things to say about it.



On a lighter note I also decided to read Sanctuary, by Faye Kellerman. I thought I wouldn't like it, it being another mystery novel I picked up at random. But I enjoyed it. It's apparently part of a series of this detective and his wife. I don't know how the rest of the series is, but this one prominently featured Jews. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just that I don't know the terminology, or the deeper aspects of the religion. I know the basics, but that's it. So I believe a fraction of the book probably passed right over my head. Anyway, this book was about a diamond dealer and his family disappearing and then another disappears and are they related? It's better than I make it sound, I think I've been too negative with everything I review. It's just so much easier to talk about what's bad than what's good. The detective winds up in Israel looking for the families (wow, to just be able to hop on a plane and go to another country... this book is set in the early 90s I think), and he takes his wife with him cause she speaks Hebrew or whatever it was. I won't give away how things go, but I really liked this book. And though the Jew stuff was a bit much for me at times I think I would still give other books in this series a try, especially if it's toned down in the other books. The only bad thing I will say is that it took me a few chapters to really get into it. But after that I couldn't put it down.

Currently I'm struggling through Robots of Dawn, by Isaac Asimov. Dunno how known this book is but so far I am, as I said, struggling. I'm not giving up on it but I do hope it gets better.