The blog of author Stacy Kingsley - Stacy Kingsley

Book Review - IN A DARK, DARK WOOD by Ruth Ware

9/23/2019

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware should have been an interesting book, it should have been a fabulous and suspenseful book, but it was in fact not. Not because of the book itself, no, it was because of other books like it.

Nora is a fictional crime author, one who doesn't often leave her flat. She is invited to her once best friend’s "hen" party, a party for brides-to-be before their weddings. She hasn't seen Clare in ten years, so it is all a surprise to her that she is invited, that is until she finds out who the groom is. Once at the party site Nora, her old friend Nina, Clare, and a few of Clare's friends, Flo, Melanie, and Tom, start the party. Flo wants the party to be perfect, for some reason she feels Clare has saved her life, although we only find out a little bit about that. Nora finds out a devastating fact, and things wander around from there. In the end the reader sees Nora in the hospital, being questioned by the police, about the last day of the hen party, and a shooting that happened.

The issue I have with this novel is not on that is based on the novel itself, but instead it is based on other novels like this. I can compare this novel to Girl on a Train, Final Girls, Our Little Secret, or Tell Me What Happened Again. All of these books have one thing in common, they all involve a woman who has lost part of her memory after some sort of trauma or tragedy, and the police are wondering what happened, and trying to figure it out. In a Dark, Dark Wood, would have been better if it had been the first of this trope that I had read, but unfortunately, it was not, and the story is one that has already been told and I have already read.

While Nora could have been an interesting character, I think both Nina and Flo were more interesting characters, and I honestly wouldn't have minded getting to know Tom a little more. Melanie seemed to be a superfluous character, and besides being there to set Flo off a little more and make her seem a little more unhinged, she didn't seem to be a necessary character.

Beyond the fact that this is like a lot of other books I have recently read, it is actually well written, and more interesting than some of the others mentioned above. I do not think that due to this book trope being overdone that I will never read anymore of Ruth Ware's novels. In fact, I look forward to reading more of her books, I'm just not sure which. I need to get through more of my TBR pile before I pick up a brand new book and bring it home.

June 27th, 2019

6/27/2019

Paradox by Catherine Coulter is my first experience with her and her novels. While Paradox is the #22 book in the series, I feel like only a little bit of the information within the novel about the character relationships was a little lost.

The novel follows three FBI agents, Dillon Savich, Sherlock, and Sala Porto, and the chief of police of Willicott, Maryland, Ty Christie. It begins with the attempted kidnapping of Savich and Sherlock's young son, Sean, and continues with Ty Christie witnessing a murder from her own lakeside dock.

This novel started out fast, and it kept going for the first few chapters, then it let me down. Like other books I've read, this one gave up who the bad guy was in the first few chapters, leaving nothing for the reader to question. Then another story, or crime, pops up when the body of the first victim is pulled from the lake, and things become a little too intermingled.

I don't think the author should have told us so early who the first killer was. My reason? It was obvious what was happening and what would happen towards the end of the book. There was almost no reason to continue reading. Then at the funeral for this same first victim, it was obvious who the other party to the killer was. The second crime, which was come upon by happenstance, was a lot more interesting than the first, and it took a little longer to figure out what was going on.

There were a few other issues with this novel. There were too many characters, and it got confusing when Savitch was referred to as Dillon, and all of the names began to run together. Then there was the issue of a couple of the characters changing or being obviously someone who the FBI agents and Ty were looking for.

The main killer, or the murderer of the first, and original, victim, gets to be a little repetitive and dull, and I did wish that someone would just end it for him. The killer was whiny and overly reactionary, the plans made didn't make sense, and I was never sure why they were even introduced as the killer. They really didn't seem to have a plan, or reason to do what they were doing. The second crime however, was much more interesting. Also, the second crime was more detailed and the reasoning was more intriguing.

So, while I did enjoy this novel, and there was enough to keep me reading until the end, I don't think I will read any more of this particular series, and I'm not sure I'll read any of Catherine Coulter's books. I just don't think her style of writing is for me, plus I like my thriller/mystery/suspense novels to be a little more suspenseful.

Apologies and Movie Review for STRANGERLAND

1/7/2019

Before I review this movie, I'd like to apologize to all of my readers for the lack of posts these last few weeks. I was on break from work and unfortunately I spent most of that time sick. I am back to work, but I am also feeling much healthier, which means back to real life and all work. I am working on two books, one I am sending queries out for, and the other I am writing. Sometimes my writing has to take a backseat as I have papers to grade, but I am down to three classes this semester and I feel that I've managed my grading time well. So, without waiting any longer, here is my review of Strangerland. You may not have heard of this movie, and now you can read my review before deciding on if you want to or not.
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Strangerland starring Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes, and Hugo Weaving, is a movie about a family who has moved to a rural area in the outback (is there any other area?) and try to escape the doldrums of this new life.

The family, of which Kidman and Fiennes are the parents, have been forced to move to this new town because of the actions of their teenage daughter. They have two children, their daughter, Lily, and their son, Tom. These two children are precarious and I found them incredibly annoying. The couple have some serious issues in their marriage and they seem to be on their way to divorce, as the audience sees they don’t sleep in the same bed, and they don’t seem to be on the same page when their children have issues.

In the movie Kidman seems to be a desperate mother, while Fiennes is a distant father. Kidman walks through the movie trying to figure out her daughter and save both of her children, while Fiennes not only continues on with his regular day, but he doesn’t see the trauma he is causing his wife to endure. In the end, this family seems broken, and there is no way to fix them or put them back together.

I have to say the most interesting characters were Kidman and Weaving, as they both go through a lot in the movie. The movie itself however, wasn’t a very engaging one. As the family goes through a huge trauma nothing about them, or what they are going through, falls strongly with the viewer. There are issues that don’t make them interesting, and I couldn’t feel anything but blah for them. I wanted to be more interested in what they were dealing with, and I wanted to feel something about what was happening to them, especially since they were dealing with the possibility of losing their children. I just didn’t feel sympathy or happiness or anything for them.

The ending of this movie didn’t settle well with me either. It left the movie unfinished, which isn’t horrible, but it is a little overdone, as a lot of movies seem to end with a mystery still left to be solved. I wanted it to have an actual ending. I wanted this movie to give me answers, but instead it created more questions.

While I enjoyed the acting of the top actors, they weren’t enough to keep me interested, nor were they a reason to watch this movie.

My recommendation is to skip it. Don’t even waste time watching it on streaming, it isn’t worth the time.

Movie Review - DEVIL'S KNOT

11/26/2018

Devil’s Knot is a movie based on a true crime. The story revolves around the murder of three young boys who were out riding their bikes. Another boy states that he saw what happened, and that it was a satanic ritual. This was also during part of the crisis when lots of people were being accused of being satanic worshipers. The three teenagers accused of the crime were convicted and later released, which is not a spoiler because you can look the story up and get all of this information.

The movie stars Reese Witherspoon as one of the mothers and Colin Firth as an investigator of sorts. The town screams that the teenagers were all involved, yet one mother isn’t sure (Reese Witherspoon’s character) because one of the boys, Jesse, has the IQ of a ten year old, and he gets a lot of the details wrong when he is telling the police of being at the murder.

There is also the interview of a child, and children are often unreliable witnesses. All of the evidence used against the three teenagers was circumstantial, and there wasn’t any concrete evidence. It turns out that the mother of this child was trying to get out of some legal trouble of her own.

The movie was an interesting look into the legal system, and how broken it really is. People judge things that they don’t understand, and they always think that Satanism is evil, which it is not (just look it up if you don’t believe me).

The beginning of the movie is very suspenseful, and even heartbreaking. When the bodies of the boys are found and one boy is brought out of the water he was placed in, it is a horrifying moment that would touch even the hardest soul. Throughout the movie the audience is left to wonder who is guilty of the murders, as even some of the parents (besides Witherspoon’s character) doubt the guilt of the three convicted of killing their boys. Then again, maybe they doubted the guilt of the teenagers because they themselves were the murderers.

Since this movie is based on a true story, there isn’t really an ending to it. It is still ongoing, and there are suspects, but the truth may never be found. The movie was interesting, and well done. It showed the limits of the justice system, and really why innocent people are convicted. In a murder this heinous, everyone wants to find the guilty party as soon as they can, so that everyone else with a child can feel as if their child is safe. But if we rush to accuse and convict, sometimes we miss important things, like who might have actually committed the crime. This is one of the reason crimes from fifty plus years ago are still unsolved, or are just not being solved.

A good, if not heart strangling movie.

Book Review - FINAL GIRLS by Riley Sager

10/10/2018

For the book Final Girls bu Riley Sager, I was torn about reading it. On the cover I have it has a quote by Stephen King, "If you liked Gone Girl, you'll like this." I almost didn't buy this book, only because of that quote. See, I hated Gone Girl, hated it with a passion. I hated it because there was only one character to like and he wasn't int he book enough. Otherwise, it was overrated and not at all interesting. Plus, I don't mind a twist, but I don't want to read an entire book of lies (which almost half of Gone Girl was). However, this isn't about Gone Girl, this is about Final Girls.

This book revolves around Quincy, a young woman who ten years earlier survived one of the most horrific experiences of her life. A night that was supposed to be fun turned into a night of betrayal and tragedy. In that night, Quincy and five of her friends, including her best friend, Janelle, were staying at a cabin. At the end of the night, only Quincy survived. Now, years later Quincy is pert of a group of three girls called the "Final Girls" all surviving a night of horrific tragedy, where several others were killed and they were the ones to survive. Suddenly, the original "Final Girl" is found dead of a supposed suicide, and Quincy's life is dramatically changed when the other "Final Girl" Sam shows up wanting to talk. What does Sam want to talk about? Not the death of Lisa, no, she wants to help Quincy remember what happened that night at Pine Cottage.

This book started out strong, and for a while kept me going, wanting to find out what happened to all of the girls and why Lisa, the strongest of the three, would kill herself after all of this time had passed since her tragedy. All three girls, Lisa, Sam, and Quincy, had been in a situation where they had become a "Final Girl," and in fact Lisa is the one who came up with the name. I didn't start getting frustrated with this book until Sam starts pushing Quincy, and her maybe Fiance, Jeff, keeps telling her that she is fine. How could anyone thing she was fine, and how could he have been so blind to what was happening to her? Sam, on the other hand, was too pushy and her personality was so abrasive that it started to wear on me.

I, throughout the book, also found Quincy to be too much of a pushover. I don't know how I would react if I had survived what she had gone through, but for me, I didn't think she was realistically written at certain points in the book. I found the younger Quincy, the one in the flashbacks, to be almost the same as the older Quincy, as if the tragic events of ten years earlier didn't affect her, but there was no telling how she was dealing, or how she did deal, other than she was put on Xanax. This to me, seemed unrealistic. I doubt that she would just find Xanax to be the cure, and that she would show other destructive behaviors. However, I did the book and the final twist at the end.

One other thing that bothered me about this book, was the time it took to develop anything. There was so much in between the first and last scene that I felt a lot of it was filler. It was almost as if Quincy was standing in a room, just spinning around, and that was what the reader was seeing. I would have liked a little more involvement from the outside characters, a little more to make me feel something deeper, some sense of urgency or, well, anything. As with other books I have read recently, the only character that stood out was Sam, she was well described, and I could see her each time she appeared, often disheveled and awkward. None of the other characters stood out to me, and I didn't even get one bit at the end because I couldn't remember it being described much in the beginning.

Of course, this doesn't mean I disliked the book. I was thrown off by the ending, and not expecting it at all, and it really made the book much more interesting. It was something that I didn't see coming at all, and was happy to have the surprise, especially when most of the book I've read recently were obvious where they were headed.

I do recommend this. I would love to be able to give it a strong recommendation, but can't because of the the slow parts and the fact that none of the characters were really developed (Jeff was super flat).

Book Review - OUR LITTLE SECRET by Roz Nay

8/26/2018

SPOILERS!!!

In Our Little Secrets by Roz Nay, the scene starts in a police interrogation room. A young twenty-six year old woman, Angela, is being questioned in a police station by a Detective Novak about her relationship with a young man named HP and his wife. During her time in the police station, Angela continually goes back, beginning her story in the formative high school years of her life, when she first met HP. Throughout their years HP and Angela were friends, but eventually they become more involved after being very close friends for years. When Angela finds that she is being forced to go to England to go to university they make an agreement that they will see how things happen, but they both apparently want their relationship to continue.

In all honesty this book wasn't bad, but I didn't believe what was going on. I didn't believe that Detective Novak would continually let Angela run her mouth off about what life was like as she grew up and grew closer to HP. Every officer I know would have more aggressively brought her back to the subject at hand, what has happened and where is the missing wife? Being able to ramble through her life, meeting HP, inserting herself into his life later, and basically lying about everything, seemed to be a little to much. She was given more time than anyone would have been given to talk about her past relationship.

The one thing that I did take away was the narcissistic nature of the main character, Angela. She was obviously either mentally ill or had antisocial personality disorder. This book did remind me a little of the book The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve. The stories had similar main characters, woman who were in love with a man who they weren't sure loved them, or a love triangle.

The ending of the book did surprise me. Although there were characters I wanted a little more information about, like Angela's self-involved mother, her new best friend Freddy, and her absent but intelligent father. I even wanted more information about Saskia, the wife of HP. I don't feel she had enough of her own personality and character, which I do understand since she is being represented through Angela's eyes, and Angela is obviously biased.

I do think this book was interesting, and I do recommend that if you liked books like Girl On a Train and Gone Girl this might hit some of the right spots for you. While I enjoyed it, it did seem to stretch a little long, and I wished that it had gotten deeper into the story earlier. After a certain point I didn't care what was going on between Angela and HP. I just wanted to get to what happened after HP and Saskia were married.

Book Review - THE KILL JAR by J. Reuben Appelman

8/14/2018

I won The Kill Jar by J. Reuben Appelman on goodreads, and I really, really wanted to like this book, but I just could not. The topic was interesting, but I am not sure if, besides police corruption, it gave any new information about the case at hand. I looked up the case on google as I read, and the information in the book about the case was all the same information I could find on google. The hard part of this book was that the chapters didn't transition well. One chapter could be about the case and the next about a pedophile ring that may have had something about the case then the next would be about the authors relationship with his father and then there was a lot about girlfriends, his family, and self-harm. This book was very disjointed, although I understand how the families of the victims might have found some relief in this book as someone was once again talking about their deceased loved ones.

I didn't think the author wrote as well as he could have either. From one chapter to another there were so many open ended ideas and questions, and in the end nothing was resolved. For example, the author met up with an old girlfriend, Ellie, and at the end of the book, in his last meeting with her he sees that she looks tired and different, but he doesn't question her about her appearance, so why did he bring it up? He talks a lot about his infidelities and self harm, but it all seems to be about him, not the story he is telling about the victims of the killer. He leads the reader into a circular thought pattern, and nothing is resolved, or changed by his telling of this story.

I wish this had been more cohesive, and contained more information about the victims, as it seemed to focus on the pedophilia of the suspects and others who might have been involved in the coverup of the pedophile ring.

This was not a great, or even a good book, it was too hard to read and left the author with nothing to look into or wonder about as it is a case which will most likely never be solved. So what was the purpose of writing this book?

Book Review - VENDETTA by Iris Johansen

8/5/2018

Have you ever read a book where every character is the same? If not, read Vendetta by Iris Johansen, because every character is the exact same character, male and female. The synopsis from amazon makes it sound a lot more interesting than it was:

With his dying breath, Carl Venable, head of the CIA task force on terrorism and Jude Brandon’s final link to terrorist ringleader Max Huber, gives Brandon a mandate: keep his daughter, Rachel, safe at any cost. But Rachel Venable has a shocking, twisted past of her own, one that comes rushing back after her medical clinic in Guyana is attacked by Huber―the same man who murdered her father and kept her imprisoned for months.
Brandon and Catherine Ling, Rachel’s longtime ally and fierce protector, are determined to keep Rachel out of danger, but she knows that it’s impossible to stay hidden when Max Huber wants you dead.
As Rachel and Brandon race against the clock to bring Huber down before he can orchestrate a disaster that will lay waste to half the country, they also fight a growing attraction to each other – an attraction that could prove just as dangerous as Huber himself.

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway, and while it says it is an "Eve Duncan Novel" it is not as there is no character named Eve Duncan, so I am hoping that there is a fix in the cover before this novel is released in October.

While the book synopsis makes this sound like an interesting book, this is a flat book. All of the characters are exactly the same, with the same types of speech patterns, and the same physical attributes or movements. I couldn't get involved in any of the characters because they were all blunt and forward, and they ended up blending into each other. I would have liked at least one character who wasn't trying or pretending to be strong. In fact the most interesting character was Huber, because he had childish outbursts, which made him stand out from other characters.

Also, this book is a little long, and it took a while to get through. I wasn't interested enough and some of the scenes could have been deleted. I just wasn't a fan.

I think that, to be honest, I am not a fan of Iris Johansen's writing, so I will most likely not read another one of her books.

Movie Review - THE LOFT

7/23/2018

The Loft is a 2014 movie that I had wanted to see in the theater. The movie revolves around five married men who join together to secretly share a loft. This loft provides a place of their own where they can take their extramarital affairs if they so choose. One day the unthinkable happens, and they find a body in their loft. They must decide what to do, and which of them might be the murderer.

This movie, when I first saw the trailer, looked like it might be an interesting horror film. It is actually more of a suspense movie, with a little extra infidelity in it. None of the men are really good guys as they all either want to or do cheat on their wives. The movie does however start with a shock as we open on a car being struck by something heavy, which one can only presume to be a body due to the tone of the movie. This beginning also sets up the overall dark tone of the film itself.

Of the five men the leader, or the one who provides the loft, is Vincent. Vincent is a man who doesn’t seem to care for anyone, his wife, his friends, or the women he sleeps with. Marty is a drunk who tends to do whatever he wants, and say whatever he wants, when he is drinking. Chris tries to believe he is a good guy, but he is like every other guy, although his wife doesn’t make things any easier as she doesn’t seem to like him, or any of his friends. Phil is a man who plays until the day he marries, and he really does play until the DAY he is married. Lastly, there is Luke, a man who seems to have his life together but who also seems to have a secret, which everyone thinks is his attraction to other men.

Throughout most of this movie it goes round and round, showing all of the bad deeds done by the men. Each one of them confesses to a problem they have had, and each one shows how little they care for others. This movie didn’t have many likeable people in it. The only one any of the audience could feel in the least bit sorry for is the character of Sara. But, to talk about her too much is to give away a lot of the story.

There was suspense, as we could wonder throughout who the killer was, and who the victim was. Also the depth into which the men go to live their lives as degenerates, it makes none of them likeable characters. In the end we do want to know what is going on, but it is almost a little anti-climactic. The story behind it was a little tedious, and finding out that some of the men get what they deserve while some of the others don’t was a little frustrating.

This was not a movie with a happy ending, and when it did end I felt bad for Luke. If you do end up watching it then you’ll understand why. His character was very sad, and he even though in the end he was not a great guy, just like his buddies, he did leave us with something to feel.

Book Review - GHOSTED

7/18/2018

I won a copy of Ghosted by Rosie Walsh and I thought this might be an interesting read. In all honesty parts of it were, but it was also very hard to read and get into. Most of the book follows Sarah, a woman who sees a man for seven days and then she loses her mind searching for him, becoming an annoying character that I did no like. The book follows several different people it seems, although it really only follows two, Sarah and Eddie.

The breaks between characters, or the breaks between chapters - this is difficult because there are chapters that go from present to the past. It really interrupts the story, and makes it difficult to read, or to stay interested in the characters. I especially disliked the ending, when it went from Eddie to Sarah.

I also have to say I didn't care how the story ended. It wasn't as if I didn't expect it, but there were things in the book that were misleading, and after the third or fourth time that it happened I realized I was getting bored and I didn't care anymore if Sarah and Eddie found each other or not. Or really what happened to Sarah in the end. After learning about the secret that tore them apart, I was even less interested, partly because it was obvious to me that it was a horrible accident and that some of it didn't seem at all believable. In reality, while this wasn't a bad book, it just wasn't a book for me, which is why I would give it three of five stars.

I also had an ARC, so I did notice there were a lot of grammatical errors which did annoy the English teacher in me. I hope that in the final draft these errors were corrected.