book review
Your Only Alternative, is to Find an Alternate…
…or you cannot compete in the contest.
Seems easy enough, right? We have a verb, and an adjective. But enough of that boring English lesson stuff. When I have seen these two words interchanged, it is because the writer used the verb as an adjective, and the adjective as the verb.
Some ideas to help all of us out. You can be an alternate in the spelling bee. You can alternate turns of who washes the dishes.
If you do not want to wash the dishes at all, you need to find an alternate, or better yet, come up with an alternative plan. Such as eating out. Then no one is washing the dishes. Well; no one except the employees at the restaurant.
Alternative is a substitution; a different choice besides the one proposed.
Alternate means take turns, and alternative means a different choice.
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Catacomb: An Asylum Novel – Madeleine Roux
Book 3 in the Asylum series, this installment was as enjoyable as the first two. You can find my review of Asylum here: https://booksandopinions.com/2015/03/01/asylum-madeleine-roux/
My review of Sanctum can be seen here: https://booksandopinions.com/2015/03/10/sanctum-madeleine-roux/
I apologize for the links not working as they normally do; I need to investigate why my website is having a bad day.
This story picked up with Dan, Abby, and Jordan making one last summer trip before they all head their separate ways for college. It seems as if once again, the troubles they found at Brookline are still following them and not ready to let them live in peace.
If you haven’t read these stories yet, I think they are a great story that is easy to read with lots of action, suspense, and some pretty creepy photographs scattered throughout.
I would love to hear what you thought of any (or all) of them if you have had the chance to read them!
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Unlucky 13: The Women’s Murder Club – James Patterson & Maxine Paetro
Another great installment in The Women’s Murder Club Series, I had this read in a day. And was at Barnes and Noble today to get #14, which was nowhere to be found… 😦
Lindsey Boxer is enjoying life as a new wife and mother, but a person from her recent past is determined to put an end to that. Yuki and Brady find themselves experiencing their own nightmare on their honeymoon cruise, and Cindy is set on getting the breaking story of her career. Claire has a smaller role in this story, but the suspense is there, and you will not want to put it down!
Up next, I am reading Catacomb, by Madeleine Roux, book 3 in the Asylum series.
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ZOO – James Patterson
For having 3 bookshelves full of Mr. Patterson’s books, I can say I liked this, but I did not love it.
I loved the premise of it, and I loved the fact that at some point, all of these animals we have been “taming and training”, could someday turn on us.
I had a quick flash of my favorite man eating me to the bone…. Thanks James Patterson 🙂
So is this possible? Likely. This is also a new television series that Debuted on CBS in June. I have not seen it. Yet. I may watch it. But I probably won’t have the time to.
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The White Princess – Philippa Gregory
Although this is normally not the type of story I would pick up and read, once again the sale shelves at Barnes and Noble had me stacking random books into my arms. Now that I have read this one, I need to go find the rest of the stories in “The Cousins’ War” novels.
This story is fiction, but it does revolve around facts, and several rumors, about the British Monarchy and how it operated in the very early years. 1400’s early.
Henry Tudor comes to the crown by killing the King, and therefore gets to marry the Princess of York. Because he won the Monarchy through violence, and not being a rightful heir, he begins a life of fear, doubt, and mistrust of everyone around him.
The Queen stands by him through all of this, vowing to always be on his side defending him, whether or not she believes he deserves the crown he stole.
This is a great period drama, and although it took me a bit to get it finished (a week to read a book for me is a long time!), it was well worth the read.
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Good Sunday Morning!
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From a Buick 8 – Stephen King
Yes, this is what I was finishing up yesterday. I am not positive on the number, but this has to be at least the 8th time I have read this story. I still pulls me in now the same way it did when I first read it.
I consider this “classic” Stephen King. We tend to hear that a lot, and say it often. We compare stories we read now to the first stories Mr. King wrote. We even try to find the timeline of his “drunk” writing, and his “sober” writing. We want him to explain to us how he dare to write something we did not like.
Have I read stories he wrote that I did not like? Absolutely. But it does not mean it is time to put the pen down and do something else. I read a story that he wrote that literally made me cry, it was romantic and horror all at once. I cannot remember the name of the book, and I do not own it. I just remember a man being in love with a younger woman and she was killed in the end…
From a Buick 8 is intense, supernatural, and all about family and friends. A young man is struggling with the death of his father, and it seems like no one can give him the answers he needs. The answers that will allow him to accept what happened, and move on with his life.
No spoilers here, as usual, but we are talking about a car that showed up out of nowhere, with a driver that disappeared, and became the unfortunate property of Pennsylvania State Police Troop D.
It spit out horrors, and tried to pull them each in. And friendships lasted, friends died, and life moved on, with or without answers that one young man so desperately needed.
If you have read this story, I would love to hear what you thought of it!
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Lot 28 (A Lucky Marks Mystery) – G.W. Pomichter
Although this is not the first book in the Lucky Marks Mystery series, it is the first one I have read. (I now have the “first” book in my possession, and will be starting it soon!)
Lucky Marks is your classic detective: smart, funny, and a devil-may-care attitude. Lucky finds himself working for a film studio where he is responsible for looking for the skeletons in the actors and actresses closets before the journalists find them. While working there, he gets put on the trail of a director who seems to be a little too interested in his younger actresses. Under-age and no-way-legal actresses, that is.
It does not take long for a dead body to appear on set, and then it gets even more interesting. With a studio full of actors and actresses who could all be suspects, it is time for Lucky to put his skills to the test and find the guilty person, before anyone else gets killed.
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Go Set A Watchman – Harper Lee
I want to tell you I loved it; but I can’t. I am not ready to tell you I hated it, either. I tried my best to ignore all of the spoilers and media-hype as I was reading this story, and I think I was fairly successful.
But; life goes on as it always goes on, and I was well beyond distracted with work, daughters, school-things, editing, and oh, yeah: I have not been feeling well for 6+ days now.
So, I will absolutely cut Ms. Harper Lee some slack here. But I do feel that even in my most focused state of mind, I would have found this a bit difficult to read.
When I first started it, it was like a breath of fresh air: someone who wrote because they had to, and it all came natural and nothing sounded forced. But then the point-of-view was changing faster than my teenage daughters change their clothes, or minds, or attitudes; truth-be-told.
At this point I am looking forward to hearing what you thought of it. One passage that I absolutely have to share:
‘Why doesn’t their flesh creep? How can they devoutly believe everything they hear in church and then say the things they do and listen to the things they hear without throwing up? I thought I was a Christian but I’m not. I’m something else and I don’t know what. Everything I have ever taken for right or wrong these people have taught me – these same, these very people. So it’s me, it’s not them. Something has happened to me.’ (Ms. Jean Louise Finch, pg 167, Go Set a Watchman).
Did you love it, or did you hate it?
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