Rate and review the last book you read

[Goddess_Clio]

I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells 8.5/10

It's about a kid (!!!!) who thinks he's pathologically destined to be a serial killer. When I heard about it it sounded amazing, when I started reading it I had no idea it was about a 15/16 year old kid! WHOA!

I really enjoyed it even though it felt a little YA, then again the main character is a teenager. I thought the main character, John Wayne Cleaver, was a very interesting narrator and he looked at the world in a pretty unique way; he's clinicall diagnosed as a sociopath in the first couple chapters so it's a book basically written through the perspective of a sociopath who thinks he's becoming or is destined to be a serial killer and is doing everything he can to prevent himself from becoming one.

My only crtitique about the book is that while I didn't figure out the ending, per se, I did figure out aspects of it before they happened - but that didn't hamper my enjoyment of the book all that much. John was a very sympathetic main character with a very sympathetic problem he's dealing with. You end up rooting for him. I wouldn't recommend it for the squeamish as there are somewhat graphic descriptions of dead bodies.

For what it was I really enjoyed it and plan on moving on to the next two books in the series, the next being Mr. Monster.

BTW, I got this book from Audible.com and the narrator for this book blew. John Cleaver describes a newscaster in the book as famous for his "sensationalist melodrama" and I thought that was a pretty apt description of the narrator for the book.

[xhanax315]

10/10 The Lord of the Flies - William Golding
I finally got around to reading Golding's chilling masterpiece, how did I miss this in school? A group of boys are stranded on an uncharted island after their plane crashes, what's never said is where they came from and their original destination was. The boys set order as they make shelter and select a leader, but order soon collapses when all the fun and games are over. Terror sweeps through the island as murder takes place and eventually one finds himself the huntee in the cry of the hunters.

What makes it all the more better is the introduction by one of my favorite authors, Stephen King.

[BublGumPnkHar]

Originally Posted by xhanax315

10/10 The Lord of the Flies - William Golding
I finally got around to reading Golding's chilling masterpiece, how did I miss this in school? A group of boys are stranded on an uncharted island after their plane crashes, what's never said is where they came from and their original destination was. The boys set order as they make shelter and select a leader, but order soon collapses when all the fun and games are over. Terror sweeps through the island as murder takes place and eventually one finds himself the huntee in the cry of the hunters.

What makes it all the more better is the introduction by one of my favorite authors, Stephen King.

I never got to read the introduction by Stephen, when I read the book in high school, he would have been about 13 years old.

[xhanax315]

10/10 Flowers in the Attic - V.C. Andrews
I'm very surprised at how good this book turned out. It was a bit predictable, but only certain parts and there was a real shocker at the end. After the death of their wealthy and beloved father, four children are taken to live with their maternal grandparents they're locked up in the attic of the mansion of their formiddable grandfather. They're abused by their grandmother and suffer the loss of a sibling. Turns out things aren't what they seem and the death wasn't no mere accident or natural cause of death, but murder. The older children are forced to plan an escape as they learn who was really beind all their horrors. I can't wait to see what's next for the Dollananger children.

[Goddess_Clio]

The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel 7.5/10

The bear bones (no pun intented ) of the story are interesting; a cro magnon girl found and raised by a clan of neaderthals. The character development of Ayla was interesting and I liked how the omiscient narrator was used to explain how Ayla saw everyone and how her clan saw her.

What I didn't like was a lot of the super fine detail which I suppose is what a lot of other people do like about the books. Auel talks a lot about the botany of the 35,000 years ago and the clan's "memories" as a way of seeing where Homo Sapien/Cro Magnon split from Neanderthal but I found that a lot of that extraneous and bogged down the story.

I thought the basic plot (Ayla's stuggle for identity and her stuggle with Broud) could have been a lot stronger but having just seen the movie based off the book I'm not going to say another bad thing about the book. It's a masterpiece compared to the movie.

[Reid]

Robopocaplyse. Thought it was good but not great. got better at the end the battle scenes were really good. The thing i didn't like was that it was one of those stories that is told after it happens. 8/10

The Name of the Wind. Really good first book in a series. thought that it dragged at times and it took me a while to read, but the stuff it introduces is interesting and left me wanting to find out how the main character ended up where he was at in the beginning of the book when he begins to tell his life's story. Even though I don't like how the story was laid out(same as robopocaplyse) it was done good enough and seems to have it's own story going on.

8.5/10

[RikuStark]

A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin.

So let me just begin with saying WOW! Wow, wow, wow, wow. All I have to say about this book is this:

Spoiler: show

So many weddings and so many tears. I cried at one and laughed at the other. Let me just say to George he was lucky they were so close together because I would of raged quite a book!

All and all, this book was amazing. 9.5/10

[freelantzer]

Stayed up until 3AM to finish 11/22/63 by Stephen King. The first third and last third were hard to put down, and I got through those sections quickly. It was the middle third that dragged a bit for me. It took about a week of reading it in short bursts for me to get through it. But overall it was great.

[Lord Godric]

The Name of the Wind. 3/10. I just don't get it. I spent the first 500 pages of the book wondering if it got better and the last 150ish waiting for something big to happen. I understand this was really only 1/3 of the whole story but I think the pacing is terrible and something actually needs to happen to make this story a stand alone book, because it just didn't work.

[gelowo93]

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan - 6/10

I preferred this book to John Green's others that I've read (I can't help thinking that's because it isn't solely written by him) because there seems to be more of a plot to it, whereas his other books have things happen and then they end, with no real point to the book. Admittedly, the point to this one only becomes clear about five chapters to the end, but that's still an improvement. It took me a while to get used to the two PoVs and even at the end I'd get a bit confused when I got to the next chapter and I'd have to try to remember what happened when it switched last time.

[winky123]

The Imperfectionist 8/10. I'm rereading the HP series this summer and decided to slip this one in between CoS and PoA. Coming from reading HP I didn't have very high expectations of it, however the book definitely proved its worthiness. First off, the organization and method of introducing all the different characters is brilliant and you have to read it to really understand what I'm talking about. Overall great book and that's coming from someone who didn't think it was going to be all that good.

[Goddess_Clio]

The Valley of Horses by Jean Auel - 6.5/10
Book Two of the Earth's Children series, sequal to Clan of the Cave Bear

I felt like there were three distinct sections to this book, the first half, the second half and the last two or three chapters. The first half was dreadfully boring and I kept wanting to just skip ahead though parts of Ayla's story were interesting to read about, particularly her innovations in hunting (I'd rate it a 5.5/10). The second half was really interesting and compelling (9/10). The third half was... well, without giving it away I'll just say it wasn't my cup of tea in terms of what I like to read and entirely changed the book's genre (5.5/10). There wasn't a whole lot of surprise in the book; a lot of the main events of the second half of the story were telegraphed way ahead of time (due to the author's style of repeating information over and over) in the first half so it was more an exercise in sticking with the story long enough to see them play out than wondering if they would ever happen or not.

There was a definite Disney princess quality to Ayla in this book that wasn't there in The Clan of the Cave Bear that I wasn't a huge fan of. Also, the other primary character felt a little too perfect to be real (and is a major contributing factor to the genre-switch of this book from the first - the other factor being those last few chapters). I would also have cut a big portion of the first half of the story out and made this book's plot primarily take place in the second-half's story but with the way the book ended I suspect the first half served more of a functioned for the remainder of the series than to serve the story at hand in this book much like the first half of Philosopher's Stone served to build the HP world it wouldn't have to be explained in detail later.

Having read this book I'd probably up The Clan of the Cave Bear to an 8/10 rating as it had a stronger story for me.

[Goddess_Clio]

Mr. Monster, Dan Wells - 10/10

I felt very anticlimactic about I Am Not A Serial Killer in the end, the first book in the John Cleaver series. I felt like John wasn't in much danger, I figured out bits of the plot a head of time and was kind of disappointed by it's predictability. But not with this book! The psycopathy of John is ramped up to pretty disturbing levels (I actually had to take a break from the book for a couple days because of one part), the danger and suspense is massively increased, I couldn't figure out who the bad guy would turn out to be and thus had no idea how the book would end... just... WOW!! Amazing, sickening, anxiety-riddled ending! Reminded me a bit of Silence of the Lambs a couple times, only more overtly horrific.

I'm not a fan of cliff-hanger endings but if you're going to give them to me, give them to me like this book does. It has a good, solid ending with clear resolution of the story that you've just spent time reading but then continues on just that next step towards setting up what the next book will be about and making me want to rush out and get it. Very well done!

The 10/10 rating isn't because it's the most well written book ever with the best story ever or the best character ever, it's because I was completely engrossed in it, it never bored me, the story was fascinating (and at times distrubing and disgusting) and it started to take over my life which is kind of the best feeling you can have about a book; I had the same feeling when reading the HP series the first time - I wanted nothing but to sit and read the book!

Overall, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone I know who could stomach it - and even tell those who couldn't stomach it about the book because it was that good. A very enjoyable read for those who like this kind of book/genre.

Now, excuse me, I need to download I Don't Want to Kill You.

[RikuStark]

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.

7.5/10

I originally picked this book up because a very close friend of mine, who hates reading, told me she loved this book. So about a year of owning it, and I finally got around to reading it. My thoughts: it was good. The first 150 pages or so were slightly boring, but the cool illustrations and the quickness of reading those first 150 got me through. They weren't completely boring, but I didn't care for either of our two main characters that much at all in those earlier pages of the novel. After that, it was very enjoyable, and a very intriguing AU type story on WWI. I enjoyed it enough to want to read the 2nd book.

[xhanax315]

10/10 Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
Simply loved this book. Gruen really did her research well with all the history of the circus, including the cruelty to the animals and the performers and crew.

[vitacus]

Out of Oz - Gregory Maguire
5 / 10

Maguire manages to take all the marvelousness out of the land of Oz. The magic performed felt like a foreign element among all the harsh reality and everyday mundane feeling I would expect to escape when picking up a story taking place in another world based on fantasy. I understand the frank humaness is part of the flavor of these 4 books and MAguire's style in general, however it was layed on pretty thick and unbalanced. I could have forgiven this.

All the people of Oz can be described with one inappropriate word. I could have forgiven this.

The main characters spent more time walking around or staying in one place without event than was worthy of writing about, likely to burn years up just to age the main character Rain. I could have forgiven this.

Lots of important events that took place were merely told about second hand after the fact instead of writing the scenes themselves. Pretty bad story telling right there. I could have forgiven this.

However... it took 4 books to deliver a cheap ending. Lots of cop outs. Lots of going nowhere. Lots of pointlessness. One very brief part near the end, perhaps only two or three sentences long, was supposed to be some kind of reward to the fans of the Wicked years books. After reading that part all I could say about it was "Oh big woop" because it was so cheap and unsatisfying.

[Goddess_Clio]

Originally Posted by vitacus

However... it took 4 books to deliver a cheap ending. Lots of cop outs. Lots of going nowhere. Lots of pointlessness.

So it's a lot like Twilight, then?

[vitacus]

Originally Posted by Goddess_Clio

So it's a lot like Twilight, then?

~snortchuckles~

[xhanax315]

7/10 Petals on the Wind - V.C. Andrews
This book was nowhere near as good as the first. The ending especially wasn't as exciting as it could of been when the main character confronts her selfish mother, but it did have it's few good moments. I'm still planning on finishing the series.

[SusanBones]

Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

the love story parts - 6/10
the war parts - 10/10

This is one of those rare books that gets better and better the closer you get to the end. The time period is primarily 1910-1918 with the bulk of the story taking place in France during World War I. There are small parts that jump to 1978 and 1979, but the main action is wartime. I've never read any fictional accounts of this war. The author did an absolutely fantastic job with describing what this war was like. It didn't concern itself with the battles and strategies. In fact, most of the time it never mentioned dates or the names of the places or battles. It was about the men. And it was brilliant. That was a horrible war.

The love story at the beginning wasn't nearly as good as his tale of war. And when it jumped forward to 1978, I thought I was reading "Bridget Jones Diary". But the ending chapters were really good.

I may even read this book again some day.

It was also made into a two part adaptation for BBC Masterpiece Theater.