Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris felt kind of Dead

Let me start off by saying I love Sookie.  I have read every installment and you, my reader, have seen several posts praising Ms. Harris’s humour, characters, and plots.  She really is awesome.  I have enjoyed her Aurora Teagarten series, and the Lily Bard series. So I say with sadness goodbye to my favorite waitress, Sookie Stackhouse and Bon Temp LA.

I have read on several book blogs and news feeds that Ms. Harris is bringing the Southern Vampire Series to a close.  That is fine but please end on a high note.  Do not let such a fun and really iconic series end with a rehash of all that has gone before.  I would rather you just leave the residents of Bon Temp in permanent frozen mid-shift or bite than to have a wimpy ending. 

 Dead Reckoning was forgettable and that is regrettable.  Nothing happens.  Not even really good sex with Eric Northman.  There were confrontations with enemies and Sookie running to hide out at Bill’s and of course he is naked when she gets there.  Been there done that. Of course, there is a bad vampire trying to take over and needs killing but the best you could come up is slaughter at an Elvis concert.  It really left me flat.

Sookie doesn’t have to end up with anyone.  She breaks the blood bond so she can know with certainty that Eric loves her for her then Eric suddenly confesses to having a fiance all this time, huh?  When the blood bond comes to an end then Bill, Alcide, and Sam all show up wanting her. Alcide is literally waiting for her naked in bed! Bill confesses he is still in love with her.  Sam just makes implied comments that he would still have her.   Sookie doesn’t just have telepathy she has paranormal attractiveness.  I get she has fairy blood but come on!

Speaking of fairies, you shock us halfway in the series with the introduction of Fairies and Sookie and Jason’s familial connection with them then you want us to believe her grandfather has been watching over them through Eric and Mr. Cataliades?  Nope, doesn’t work.  It is so glaring that, I, who suffer from Can’t Remember S#$@T knew that wasn’t right.  It is so cleat that Eric and the paranormals were shocked way back in book 3 or 4 that Sookie was part fairy.  I think that might have even been the book where Eric lost his memory so he couldn’t have known.

So I say goodbye Sookie, Eric, Bill, Sam, Tara, Amelia, Pam and the rest of the gang.  I want to remember the way you were not how you ended.

Live Wire by Harlan Coben was almost too much

 

As you have read on previous posts I love Harlan Coben.  His writing is funny, exciting, a little bit dangerous and a little bit more compassionate.  Harlan wants the world to be a better place or, if not, at least there should be the good guys always standing against the bad guys.

Live Wire is no exception to his style.  In fact, I think he is almost too much in this story.  After the last book when Myron had been so horribly used and tortured one would think he would be much more hesitant to jump into a rescue scenario again even if it is for one of his clients.  Instead he is only too ready to play family therapist for his tennis babe and rock star couple and dig far deeper into the situation than he should.  Not only that but it seems his team, Esperanza, Win, Big Cindy and Dad are totally accepting of “Here we go again.”  I get it that he saw his strung out sister-in-law who is the reason for Myron and his brother Brad to be estranged and he wanted to find out if Brad was also in town.  The search is on now and in a very weird and heretofore unknown string of relationship ups and down Myron’s search for Brad intersects the help he is giving the tennis/rock star duo.  I don’t know if I really enjoyed the trip down the rabbit hole.  The whole thing becomes just this side of unbelievable.

Even for the strangeness of the plot I enjoyed this book.  Myron and Win cannot be beat in the sarcastic/sardonic humor game.  I am chuckling and groaning the entire story.  I love Win.  I want a friend who loves me like he loves Myron.  Okay, I don’t want a friend who can kill without impunity on my behalf but Win’s love for Myron is truly unconditional and I have to say I don’t know if Myron is capable of returning the same conscience free support.

For me the highlight of this, and this is going to sound weird, were the Blackberries.  Yes, the smart phone not the fruit.  Myron and Win have Blackberries on steroids.  They don’t have a Batman utility belt they have Batberries!  Get it, Batberries?  These phones, talk, track and practically think.  By the next installment they will be able to crack stupid man jokes!  I so want one!

Bottom line?  Myron has done it again and I will read the next installment.  I just wonder how he is going to find someone else to rescue without his talent agency… Maybe he will finally become a fulltime superhero.

p.s. at the end of this book there is a teaser for a YA book featuring Myron’s newly found nephew Mickey.  I am so getting it!

What was suspenseful in “Wicked Lies” by Lisa Jackson and Nancy Bush

 

I don’t read Lisa Jackson very often.  She is kind of hit or miss for me and Wicked Lies was a miss.  It is a revisit to the Oregon coast and the women’s colony called Siren Song.  A psycho has escaped from the hospital for the criminally insane and Justice Turnbull is back to finish the job of killing members of the Colony, especially any of the women who managed to leave and live on the outside.  Not only this but the women of the Colony have been graced/cursed with different psychic gifts.  The main character Laura/Lorilei is a nurse at the local hospital and she is able to tell the health status of people when she touches them.  She has just divorced an arrogant, cheating and self absorbed doctor and has just discovered she is pregnant due to a weekend when she tried one more time to make it work with Byron.  She hasn’t shared this information with anyone while she is deciding what to do with her life next.  She is also able to telepathically connect with the maniac Justin.  She can tell when he is nearby and when he has killed someone.  Then there is the intrepid and jaded newspaper reporter, Harrison Frost, who had been drummed out of Portland because he was stirring up too much heat for a local bigwig while investigating the fatal shooting of his brother-in-law. Lorelei and Harrison collide at the hospital where Justice’s first new victims have been brought for life saving treatment.  This looks like the formula for a suspenseful and tight thriller.  Not so much.

Wicked Lies was very predictable.  I knew from almost page 5 what was going to happen at the end of the book.  It wasn’t horrible, at all.  It was just predictable and boring.  I kept reading and pulling for ALL the characters not because in the hopes that a spark would burst into a suspenseful flame. I have read romantic thrillers in the past where the thrill was the romance and not the crime and visa versa. Laura and Harrison went from zero to one-twenty in less than twenty pages or two days in the story.  There was almost no flirting, sexual tension.  Given Laura’s situation I actually found it hard to believe she could think of another man in a romantic or sexual way. 

The other problem was characters that truly had nothing to add to the story were included.  The brothers who wanted to track Justice themselves.  They were 14 and 16.  I think they were in the first book, Wicked Games and Ms. Jackson didn’t want to leave them out here but they served no purpose.  They were introduced about a third way in and then not talked about until nearly the very end. 

I will pickup another Lisa Jackson because she has written some real gems like Absolute Fear and Shiver.