Book Reviews:
3rd Degree
by James Patterson
 
From the
Publisher
The Women's Murder Club returns in a shockingly suspenseful
thriller. Plunging into a burning town house, Detective Lindsay
Boxer discovers three dead bodies...and a mysterious message at
the scene. When more corpses turn up, Lindsay asks her friends
Claire Washburn of the medical examiner's office, Assistant D.A.
Jill Bernhardt, and San Francisco Chronicle reporter Cindy
Thomas to help her find a murderer who vows to kill every three
days. Even more terrifying, he has targeted one of the four
friends. Which one will it be?
My Opinion
I love everything James Patterson writes and as a mom, his books
are the perfect read for me b/c his chapters are only about 3 to
4 pages long. You can sneak a few extra chapters in while the
kids are busy playing or you are waiting in the carpool to pick
them up from school. If you are lilke me, you are so tired at
the end of the day that you don't get much reading done before
bed. With this you may actually make it through a couple of
chapters before falling asleep.
Patterson has always been great at creating believable
characters and he does a great job in this book as well. The
story line is very captive and keeps you guessing. Of course he
throws in a little drama and romance as well for good measure.
All in all a great book to curl up with this weekend, or read
little by little during the week.
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Blackwood Farm (The Vampire Chronicles)
by Anne Rice
From the Publisher
"Welcome to Blackwood Farm: soaring white columns, spacious drawing
rooms, sun-drenched gardens, and a dark strip of the dense Sugar Devil
Swamp. This is the world of Quinn Blackwood, a brilliant young man
haunted since birth by a mysterious doppelganger, a spirit known as
Goblin, a spirit from a dreamworld that Quinn can't escape and that
prevents him from belonging anywhere. When Quinn is made a vampire,
losing all that is rightfully his and gaining an unwanted immortality,
his doppelganger becomes even more vampiric and terrifying than Quinn
himself." As the novel moves backward and forward in time, from
Quinn's boyhood on Blackwood Farm to present-day New Orleans, from
ancient Pompeii to nineteenth-century Naples, Quinn seeks out the
legendary Vampire Lestat in the hope of freeing himself from the specter
that draws him inexorably back to Sugar Devil Swamp and the explosive
secrets it holds.
My Opinion
This is the first Anne Rice book I read and it is still my favorite. Her
descriptive style of writing makes you taste the humid night air in the
south, smell the fragrance of magnolia and other blooms in the air and
you swear you can hear some crickets in the distance. The book
completely sucks you into the Blackwood Farm Plantation and you can't
help but become part of Quinn's extravagant family.
Anne Rice has created a wonderful plot with plenty of twists and turns
that manage to unite the world of the vampires of the likes of the
famous Lestat with the that of the Mayfair witches.
Plan in a couple of sleepless nights because you won't be able to put
this one down.
Movie Reviews:
The Village (2004)
Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard,
Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver,
Brendan Gleeson, Judy Greer
Writer/Director: M. Night
Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan's "The
Village" is a suspenseful story of a small community whose
inhabitants are plagued by fear of the unknown forest that
surrounds them. For years, they have kept a truce with
mysterious creatures in the woods by vowing never to breach a
clearly defined border. However, when a young man (Joaquin
Phoenix) becomes determined to explore the nearby towns, his
actions are met with menacing consequences. He falls in love
with the town founders blind daughter (Bryce Dallas Howard). A
tender love story develops that is eventually put to the test
when Phoenix's character is badly injured and can only be saved
if Howard's character ventures through the forest into the towns
to "fetch medicines".
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