Quite a bit of this is written as if the author's knowledge of police and detective work comes solely from watching Die Hard. Lots of aggressive male Quite a bit of this is written as if the author's knowledge of police and detective work comes solely from watching Die Hard. Lots of aggressive male posturing and bullying. Struggles between the hero and authority. Breaking the rules! Silently pining for the teeny, tiny, broken little woman character. A kid, wiser than his years, scrappy and brave. A kid who just wants to find his twin sister. It's no bit of great literature, but it was dynamic and engaging and kept me eager to turn to the next page. ...more
I didn't like this as much as In the Woods. It was definitely a very engaging read, and quite happily spent about 5 hours cozied up just with it yesteI didn't like this as much as In the Woods. It was definitely a very engaging read, and quite happily spent about 5 hours cozied up just with it yesterday. So it fulfilled that wish to be sucked in and eager for more.
Like In the Woods, The Likeness also revolves around a completely far-fetched coincidence, although I think this one is even more unbelievable. This time, the murder victim is a girl who looks *exactly* like our main cop character, Cassie, so much so that Cassie can go undercover and pretend to be the girl.
She falls in love with the girl's life, and keeps secrets from her handler about things that she learns about the victim.
In the end, the murder is exactly who you thought it was from the get go, and the solution unravels with very little fanfare or suspense. In fact, quite a bit is left a little fuzzy, you don't get that great "A-Ha!" moment that you generally might from a crime suspense novel.
So, it was fun. The Likeness sated my need to get back into something like In the Woods, but they weren't as alike as I had hoped....more
**spoiler alert** I swallowed this book in large wolfish chunks, staying up too late, reading on my lunch break, and squeezing in every word possible **spoiler alert** I swallowed this book in large wolfish chunks, staying up too late, reading on my lunch break, and squeezing in every word possible on my commute. So more than anything else, this book was engaging. Engrossing, even! Easy to read, without being fluff. Rather, it had an elegant, carefully crafted writing style.
But.
I am left a bit bitter and deflated by the outcome of the book, or the lack thereof.
The foundation of the book is this ginormous coincidence of 2 creepily similar murders that take place 20 years apart. The first is 2 12 year old kids in small town Knocknaree, Ireland. They disappear without a trace, leaving their friend, Adam, behind in the woods, shoes filled with blood (from inside the shoes, but not from bleeding feet!) and no memory of what happened to his friends. But lo! Adam grows up. Still no memory prior to the 12 year old trauma, but he's a detective now. A murder detective. He changed his name to Rob and got an English accent in boarding school, but he's still little-boy-lost. Coincidentally, of all the murder detectives there are, he and his partner get assigned the case of the new murder in Knocknaree. Also a 12 year old. Same town, in which these were the only murders. Also a kid who's about to leave town for boarding school. Creepy creepy.
Will Adam/Rob solve his own mystery in solving that of the murder of Katy Devlin? Will he?
Alas. And alack. No, he will not. Because all that coincidence was just there for the cute factor. We never know what happened to Adam/Rob and his friends.
The modern day murder is solved by revealing one of the characters as a psychopath. Which is great, because really ANY of them could have been the psychopath who just lied and manipulated all along, because that's what they do. And because they conveniently have no emotional response to anything, you'd never know that they were a psychopath! Clever!
Sigh.
So disappointment aside, I will try to focus on the fact that I have not been this caught up in a book in ages. It was exciting and intriguing and I couldn't put it down. But part of that was because I really, really wanted to know what happeend. 428 pages later and I still don't know. ...more
After spending about 2 months reading 2666, it was a relief and a joy to be able to finish a book in just 2 or 3 days. I AM still a reader! Hurrah!
So After spending about 2 months reading 2666, it was a relief and a joy to be able to finish a book in just 2 or 3 days. I AM still a reader! Hurrah!
So thanks to this book for that.
Otherwise, shrug. It was forgettable.
"The Girl On The Landing" was spooky and suspenseful, and I haven't read a book like that in a very long time. It's a bit of a psychological thriller, with the main character slowly turning into an evil elf from Lord of the Rings and sloughing off his dull, stodgy, upper class British skin, after giving up his psychotropic meds.
His wife is bored and disenchanted in her marriage, but falls in love with her husband for the first time as he becomes more spontaneous and intense. The story is told in alternating chapters, from his point of view and then hers.
The story remains fairly exciting as we wait to find out what Michael will become and exactly what his flavor of crazy is. But at the end, he just disappears and we never know if he really was psychotic, or if there were other mythical, supernatural forces at work.
Everyone in this novel is rather flat and uninspiring, including the wife, except for Michael as he turns into Mikey, his alter un-drugged ego. Consequently, it reads a bit like a high brow Dean Koontz thriller....more
Another murder mystery for me! Not my typical ilk, but maybe I've been ignoring an ilk that I shouldn't. Who doesn't love a book that you CAN'T PUT DOAnother murder mystery for me! Not my typical ilk, but maybe I've been ignoring an ilk that I shouldn't. Who doesn't love a book that you CAN'T PUT DOWN? Because who murdered that guy in the cucumber patch?!
Like the book I'd read just before, The Outcast, this was also England in the 50's. But this was an upper class family of three daughters and an aloof father.
The main character is eleven year old Flavia, who makes me want to go around hollering FLAVIA! just because the word's so fun. She loves chemistry. Poison in particular. She torments her older, more girlie sisters, and she has the vocabulary of a really nerdy college student.
After discovering a dead body in her back yard, she gets one step ahead of everyone, including her father, and the police in locating clues to solve the mystery.
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