Tag Archives: book review

The Suspense Boogie

03 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Diabetes, Family, Piquant

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The Bogeyman visited again today cleverly disguised as Stephanie Black’s imagination. The Bogeyman thrives on opportunity. Stephanie’s book, Fool Me Twice, grabbed my attention in the first paragraph and wouldn’t let go until I finished reading. Being that immersed in a book inevitably blurs the lines of reality and The Bogeyman camps out in my mind.

Incident #1

I was reading about how a family reacted every time the phone rang. They were waiting for a call from their daughter’s kidnappers. You can imagine how rattled that would make you. As I’m reading this, my phone rings and heck yeah, I jumped! Then the name on the caller ID blew me away. Trevor. One of the characters in the book was named Trevor. Coincidence? I would have let the strange call go to voicemail but seeing a Utah number piqued my curiosity.

It was a coincidence the caller was named Trevor but the call was not a mistake. He was calling for Heath and seemed very flustered trying to translate any time I said into MST. It’s only an hour’s difference hon, and if you would stop talking long enough I could better help you figure out when to call back. Oh, you want Heath’s cell number? Fine that works too. I got a crazy suspense novel to get back to.

Incident #2

I was getting to the climactic scenes in the book. Not many pages left but I knew they would be packed with gut wrenching terror as the lies unraveled and truth was discovered. Parker was playing in his room not doing his homework. I was being the model parent and not really caring. My eyes were reading as fast as they could. I could nag Parker later.

Suddenly I heard a thud followed immediately by crying. Not your run of the mill, kid tripped and stubbed their toe, kind of crying. As if on auto-pilot I set the book down (I know!) and raced upstairs. Parker was running to me. Blood mixed with his tears and my heart started racing. He tried to tell me what happened but he was crying so hard I couldn’t understand him. I tried to calm him without touching him much. What if the blood didn’t come out of my shirt later? I steered him to the bathroom and had to tell him not to look in the mirror on his way to the toilet. If Parker sees blood he freaks out even more.

After a lot of mopping up of snotty, tear stained blood, I figured out where it was all coming from. His nose was bleeding but not too much. It was coming from his mouth. Apparently he bit the inside of his bottom lip really hard and it was gushing blood up into his teeth like some Halloween mask. I guess he had tripped over the bunk bed ladder or ran into it or something like that. The top left of his upper lip is scraped and his lips in general are swollen. The inside of his lip on the right, where he bit, is big and blue. And he says his teeth hurt. He also has a big scratch across the bottom of his lower lip going onto his chin. Poor kid.

My nerves over the situation made my blood sugar drop down to 32. Whoosh! Subsiding adrenaline made me snappy with my kids. I lectured the boys about cleaning their room. “This is dangerous! Someone can get hurt! Right Parker? Clean this room up now!” So they did while I stuffed my face. When they were finished I got no more lip about homework. I hate that it took an actual injury for the boys to see what I’ve been saying all along about the landmine of toys in their room. It will be interesting to see if the lesson sticks.

Incident #3

The phone rang. I jumped again. It was Heath telling me he was barely crawling along in his car trying to get home. He was detoured from practically every route home. Police cars were everywhere. He never did figure out what happened but it was probably a nasty accident. Not what I want to hear ever but especially when I’m fearing for characters’ lives in the crazy suspense book I’m reading. My overactive imagination thought the cops had finally pieced two and two together out of thin air since they didn’t know much at that point!

Heath asked me if I had called to figure out if I have to show up to Jury Duty tomorrow. Oh yeah. I started reading to forget about that. And every other obligation I have in the next 10 or so days. I debated over whether or not I should call then for the peace of mind or finish the book first. There was no way I was going to bring the book along with me tomorrow if I did have to show up to Jury Duty! Are you kidding! I’d be hanging from the ceiling by my fingernails at the slightest sound. I decided to try for peace of mind. What luck! I won’t know if I’m needed or not until late tomorrow morning when I have to call back. Yeehaw.

I can’t believe I have Jury Duty again. Didn’t I just do this? December 2010 does not feel like it was that long ago. I’ve come a long way in the mentally unstable department since then but not that much.

At least I’ve finished the book. Wow it was good. Stephanie has one twisted mind, that’s for sure. I have to say Fool Me Twice is my favorite book of hers. I don’t know if I will do a full on book review post or not. It was really good. Enough to bring The Bogeyman back into my life today. When I finished Heath cheered and told the kids, “We have Mom back!” I guess I better get back to my day job – Professional Homemaking Queen.

Methods of Madness

05 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in Piquant

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Finally getting a free moment to myself I pulled out Stephanie Black’s Methods of Madness. Heath looked at me and said, “It was nice knowing you!” I devoured the first half of the book Saturday night, reading until my eyes could no longer focus or stay open. Stephanie has a way of really pulling me into her stories to the point of imagination paranoia. Who would willingly put down a book and hope to sleep after that?

This story was crazy. The suspense got to me right away and I immediately started suspecting everyone. On the one hand it was interesting to me that an engaged couple couldn’t trust each other enough to talk about things troubling them. On the other hand I kept thinking, “Good for you! Don’t say anything. In fact, call the whole thing off! Your fiancé is creepy!”

The who dunnit part was killing me yesterday when I couldn’t read fast enough to find out. Dawn was no help. Heath asked her to tell him who did it and she wouldn’t say. He even tried to tell her that he would never have time to read it and he promised he wouldn’t tell me. Nope. I figured it out soon enough and was certainly surprised.

The twists and turns in this plot were expertly woven. I love Stephanie’s books because even if I think a character is weird for doing something she helps the reader see how the character came to that conclusion. She backs her characters into corners until they do the most insane things because they feel like they have no other choice.

My favorite thing about this book is how well the ending was done. Suspense novels follow a formula – build up in intensity, climactic scene, bad guy gets caught, sappy conclusion. The conclusions always leave me feeling a little deflated. My heart has been racing throughout the entire book and I nearly have a heart attack reading the climax, but the ending never satisfies. Can I just say that Stephanie did an incredible job with the ending in this book!

The other thing I loved was that everything felt real from beginning to end. Every detail seemed plausible. I also liked how if a character was killed off they didn’t just disappear. Their death affected people. One of my problems with detective shows on TV is how many people die. Sometimes I get fixated on that thinking that it was a real person. They had a family, friends, neighbors. I guess I don’t take death lightly. Even with the villains.

Of the three books I have read of Stephanie’s, I can’t say which is my favorite. I like them all for different reasons. They all played on my anxieties in different ways. I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting much from Methods of Madness simply because she wrote it a couple years ago. I assumed her writing style had improved over the years. Well, all I can say is no wonder this woman keeps receiving the Whitney Award! She’s amazing. Her stories make you wonder whatever happened in her life for her to write such macabre insanity. But she’s not creepy or anything in real life! She just has a great imagination and a real talent for storytelling.

Official Review

19 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by in I'm a Mormon, Piquant

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Rearview Mirror was an exceptional suspense novel by Stephanie Black. Fiona Claridge lost control of her car on a rainy night injuring herself and killing her roommate. After eight years the accident was resurfacing with malicious packages left as anonymous gifts. Whoever was leaving the packages wanted Fiona to suffer emotionally for her past mistakes.

Suspense novels typically involve a lot of mind games and emotional stress among the characters. This story was intense with the psychological warfare aimed at Fiona.

There were a lot of key characters which was confusing to me at first. And every character had their own rationalizations for “questionable” behavior. Stephanie did a great job of creating sympathy from the reader. She showed exactly how people fell from grace without realizing until it was too late.

One thing I love about Stephanie’s writing style is her realistic characterization. If her characters use profanity she shows that without the reader having to read any of it. That impresses me so much. In real life there are people who use choice words. Those characters are important in many stories but I don’t want to read what they say verbatim. Stephanie manages to get through this aspect of a character without making a big thing of it. The reader doesn’t feel the scene fell flat for them. Issues with infidelity and adultery are also handled tactfully. She is a really great writer.

She’s an LDS author so the Mormon culture is obviously in her books. Mormonism was prevalent in this story but in a subtle way. Readers don’t need to be well versed in Mormonism to understand. It’s simply a story that happens to Mormon characters. Not that she is trying for a wider audience, but that could be a point in her favor.

I loved all the intrigue, danger, and romance. Oh sorry. I’ve had The Pitch (Spectacular Spectacular) from Moulin Rouge stuck in my head all day. The twists and turns in this story kept it even more exciting. By the end of the book I had figured out how all the characters fit together in a web of lies. The last twist surprised me but in a should-have-known sort of way. It was cool. I really had deep sympathy for all the characters and their conflicts.

As the center of my own universe, I am now even more paranoid than ever before and suspicious of other’s intentions! Especially things that go bump in the night. That’s the joy of this genre. I know I had some other point I wanted to make but my kids keep interrupting me and my train of thought is lost down some black hole. I would highly recommend this book. It is really well written. I thoroughly enjoyed hating every second of it.

Psycho Thriller Qu’est que c’est

17 Monday Oct 2011

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I finished Rearview Mirror today. Yesterday I was immediately sucked into the story and it took a lot of effort to hang with my family. The book was starting to get crazy creepy for me today so I was a little relieved when Gwen told me she wanted to go to the park. I needed a dose of reality.

The real world didn’t last long before I was torturing myself with more of the story. I had to finish as quickly as possible. To stop the insanity. To see how it all ended knowing that all stories have a happy ending. It just depends on when you end the story. And I had to finish out of sheer morbid curiosity.

It’s going to take me a few days to be able to review this book. I hated it! Hated it so much I would give it five out of five stars for pure awesomeness! Another one of those stories where I identified a little too much with what was happening so now I have to sort fact from fiction and unwedge my fingers from the ceiling. Not sure if I can sleep tonight. Thanks for the thrills Stephanie!

Friends in High Places

15 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by in Piquant

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I am so excited because I have a brand new autographed copy of Rearview Mirror by Stephanie Black. This book may not even be in bookstores yet. Soon though.

I have mentioned before that I know Stephanie. I have started following her blog through Goodreads. Last month she posted about writing contests on several different author’s blogs. Her contest was easy. All you had to do was follow her blog and post a comment saying why you should receive a free copy of her new book. The winner would be randomly selected. I never ended up doing it though and was bummed I missed my chance. Then she had another post where she said that she would give free copies of her new book to anyone willing to review it on their blog. Oh I was all over that one!

Her shipment of new books came this week and she had a really fun post about it. I love her writing style. Her books are awesome. Ok, I’ve only read Cold As Ice but it was incredible. Her blog is fun to read too. I love reading author blogs. Since the person is a published author their blog posts are well written and witty. Anyway, she gave me an autographed copy of her book today at the Super Saturday craft thingamabob. I am so excited.

My apothecary jars are sitting in a box unfinished. I didn’t even go to the class since I was setting up the salad bar. I did get my monogrammed hand sanitizer project done. The rest of the time I was helping my friend with her scrabble tile necklace project and watching her fondant class. I did a lot of socializing too. It was a fun activity and I’m sure everyone who signed up for crafts enjoyed it and got stuff done. I hate crafting in front of people. I know, I’m weird. So really, I’m kind of glad I got the jars I wanted and that they’re not done. I want to do it myself before the follow up craft night at another friend’s house. You know, because I don’t want to have to craft in front of anyone. That and I don’t want to wait two weeks to have a decoration that will most likely be displayed in my bedroom because I don’t want my kids playing with it!

Painting wood, gluing jars to the wood, and a new book to read and review. Could life get any better than this? Oh wait, yes it can! BYU beat Oregon State by 10 points. I got to see the last quarter and a half of the game. I went out for burgers and fries and Diet Coke (because I have to reward myself with it every once in a while) with my friend.

She’s so great. She offered to drive me to the activity today which is good because if I went myself I may not have gone. Well, I would have gone because I had responsibilities there but I would have been late and left early. She also smiled every time I tensed up in her van and told me it was ok to get nervous. She knows my anxieties and I know hers. We helped each other a lot today. Friends are good. Friends know our greatest weaknesses and love us anyway. 

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