Sunday, April 19, 2009
As promised...
I was excited for a new Vicky Bliss mystery with Elizabeth Peters' The Laughter of Dead Kings but it wasn't until the second half of the book that the action really got going. So while it was nice to revisit the characters (and Schmidt will always be awesome), it wasn't the best entry in the series.
I won't get into why I picked up Linda Howard's Mr. Perfect, but it was okay for what it ended up being - a pleasant enough Saturday afternoon book. The mystery wasn't hard to figure out and the romance aspect seemed rather abrupt and a little unconvincing, but it wasn't bad. I don't know that I'll go out of my way to read anything else of hers, but I wouldn't say no either.
Now Tana French, she's a whole other story. Daisy loved In The Woods and I'm always interested in new mystery authors so I picked it up. I'm happy to say it was indeed very good. I'd even put it up there with Denise Mina's work, although I do have to subtract some points because I suspected the ending from the very beginning.
So of course I had to check out French's next book, The Likeness, which was even better than In The Woods. It was like The Secret History crossed with The Scapegoat. I loved it and it's already on my list of the best books of the year.
I can't remember why I picked up Doug Dorst's Alive In Necropolis but it wasn't nearly as good as I hoped it would be. I thought the parts of the book that concerned the living characters worked much better than the ghost plot lines, most of which I ended up skimming.
I felt like The Book Of Fate by Brad Meltzer was a bit of a bait and switch. I think I was expecting a National Treasure type thriller, which is what the flap seemed to indicate, but got a fairly basic political one instead. It was okay, but nothing special.
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I was excited for a new Vicky Bliss mystery with Elizabeth Peters' The Laughter of Dead Kings but it wasn't until the second half of the book that the action really got going. So while it was nice to revisit the characters (and Schmidt will always be awesome), it wasn't the best entry in the series.
I won't get into why I picked up Linda Howard's Mr. Perfect, but it was okay for what it ended up being - a pleasant enough Saturday afternoon book. The mystery wasn't hard to figure out and the romance aspect seemed rather abrupt and a little unconvincing, but it wasn't bad. I don't know that I'll go out of my way to read anything else of hers, but I wouldn't say no either.
Now Tana French, she's a whole other story. Daisy loved In The Woods and I'm always interested in new mystery authors so I picked it up. I'm happy to say it was indeed very good. I'd even put it up there with Denise Mina's work, although I do have to subtract some points because I suspected the ending from the very beginning.
So of course I had to check out French's next book, The Likeness, which was even better than In The Woods. It was like The Secret History crossed with The Scapegoat. I loved it and it's already on my list of the best books of the year.
I can't remember why I picked up Doug Dorst's Alive In Necropolis but it wasn't nearly as good as I hoped it would be. I thought the parts of the book that concerned the living characters worked much better than the ghost plot lines, most of which I ended up skimming.
I felt like The Book Of Fate by Brad Meltzer was a bit of a bait and switch. I think I was expecting a National Treasure type thriller, which is what the flap seemed to indicate, but got a fairly basic political one instead. It was okay, but nothing special.
