How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell (***)

My kids love the movie, and it had been a while since I had read the book, so I thought I would have a listen. Besides that they have the same theme, the book and the movie are not really alike. In the book, he eats one worm a day instead of all in one day. And it's not a bully he's trying to beat, it's his own friend. The part I think is disgusting is that in the end, he develops a taste for worms, so he keeps on eating them! Yuck!

Enna Burning by Shannon Hale (****)

This is the second book in the series that started with The Goose Girl. I loved the Goose Girl. I don't think that this one was quite as good as that one, but it was still really good. I listened to another full-cast audio on this one and that makes it very enjoyable, especially with the same voices for the characters. I am told there will be a third in the series, but it isn't out on audiobook yet.

In the first book, Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree is the heroine (quite a mouthful, pretty as it may be). Her friends called her Isi (pronounced "Izzy"). In this book, the heroine is Isi's friend Enna. The country of Bayern is at war and Enna's brother has learned how to burn--to draw heat into himself and send it out to create fire. But, he burns himself to death in the process. Now, Enna wants to learn, but at the same time, she is afraid of it. She wants to serve Bayern and she is high-spirited and wants to be in the thick of things. At the same time, Isi is struggling with her gift of wind-speaking. She feels constantly bombarded with the wind and is exhausted by it and very distracted. She longs to find some balance. And she and her newly-kinged husband long for an heir.

There was something about this book that made it not a juvenile book. I can't place my finger on what it was. There was an allusion to rape, though nothing happened and the word was not used. I think there was one bad word in it. But, there was just an element about it that made me think it was for an even older audience than Goose Girl, which was, to me, not a book for young children, either.

The thing that struck me most about the book was that is really had me sucked in. I was sitting at work after the book ended and I started to feel heat around me, touching my skin and I shuddered, shook myself, and forced myself to redirect my thoughts, lest I learn to burn too! Ha, ha.

The Witch's Boy by Michael Gruber (***)

I know, it's been a while since I have posted a review and I am still reading, but I am in the middle of a series of 18 books! But, I did take a break from the series a couple of times and these are the reviews for those I broke the series for!

The Witch's Boy was interesting because it told the "other side of the story" for all of the fairy tales you've ever heard that include witches. That was kind of humorous. You've heard the stories all your life and how horribly evil the witches are and then in this story, you hear the "true" story and how it isn't as it's been told, that the witches aren't evil. All too often it's humans that are evil. Which is very true!

This story is about an ugly baby that was left for a witch to raise. I think the thing that really bugged me about the story is that the kids is a spoiled, bratty, selfish thing and he causes trouble and his witch "mom" pays terrible prices for it, but he never even acknowledges it, let alone thank her for it or even try to be good in the future. His selfish, spoiled attitude caused him to chase after an openly shallow and cruel girl as though she were the sun and moon and to neglect his nursemaid who actually dies! Then later in the story, he marries a nice girl and lives a happy life, so it just kind of ticked me off.

Black Cross by Greg Iles (***)

I didn't realize it, but this was another abridged version. It really wasn't bad though. And the narrator was the actor Jay O. Sanders and he did great accents (Scottish, Brittish, German), though he did mispronounce the German name Sabine (I knew a German girl named Sabine once, so that's how I know). It's the story of a secret mission during World War II. I was drawn in because I have always been interested in World War II. I have never been a big history person or been interested in any war stuff, but I have always felt a sadness at the brutality and violence of the concentration camps. One of my favorite movies is Schindler's List. I am always appalled and angry that no one stepped in sooner to save the people that were being tortured and killed. Which makes me stop and think when I show disgust for wars or "military action" in places like Bosnia or Iraq. They are trying to save people from the same inhumanity that Hitler displayed. But, I digress.

There was one of those things that when it gets dropped into a story, you just groan. You liked it all the way up to that, then they ruin it for you. The American has an affair with a German girl. It's not just that he cheated on his wife. It's also the stupidity of worrying about sex and at time like that. There are people being brutalized at a nearby camp, they are in hiding and fear for their lives, and are hours away from an attack on this camp, but, hey, why shouldn't they be feeling a little frisky, right? Dumb, dumb, dumb. So, what's the excuse--we might die tomorrow, so lets have one last pleasurable night? I'm sorry, I don't think I'd be in the mood when just down the road, children are being used as medical testing subjects! Please!

Anyways, the other thing that surprised me a little was that the person telling this story was a Rabbi and I was sure that he had been there when all of this happened, but nothing to that effect was ever said. I wonder if there is more in the unabridged version. Also, I thought maybe the German woman would have had the American's kid and the narrator would meet a half-brother or sister, but that didn't happen either. But, all in all, it was a good book and really held my attention.

A Cry in the Night by Mary Higgins Clark (***)

I didn't realize at first that this audiobook was the abridged version. I hate abridged versions. This book was okay, interesting. Likely the full version is even better. But the main character got on my nerves. She was so stupid! When you are the mother of two young children, and you actually CARE about your children, you don't run off and marry someone that you know absolutely nothing about after only knowing him a month (and only seeing him on weekends of that month at that!) and you don't allow him to adopt your children either (giving him just as much custody right over them as you have)! Not only that, but when she moves in with her new husband, it's right away apparent that he is nuts and possessive. We would have been talking annulment right away--I mean, after all, she's only known him a month, it's not like she's too attached to him! When he insists that she wear his dead mother's nightgown (and that's the only time he has "marital relations" with her), that should be a BIG red flag. That's just sick and why she goes along with it, is beyond me! Then she even goes further on my bad side, when she has a new baby, by saying that she will devote all her time and attention to this baby. What about her other kids? Though she seems like a nice person and a caring mother, she is really a picture of what NOT to do! If you can get past her ignorance and near neglect at putting her children in harm's way, it's a pretty good book. Ha, ha.

Death Qualified by Kate Wilhelm (0)

Okay, another stinker. The thing that really got me here was that I got confused in this book by too much talk of mathematics and science. I have never liked either subject, so that turned me off immediately. Too much was over my head: chaos theory, butterfly effect, and this new research involving Mandelbrot images (which I had never heard of and had to look up--although because of the book, I was almost afraid to look at them!). Somehow looking at these computer images did something to people's minds. It was like they had discovered a whole other realm, but it drove some mad and caused several various deaths. They said it was like trying to describe beautiful music to someone who had never heard or a beautiful painting to someone who has never seen. It was incredibly strange and beyond my grasp. It was also a murder mystery, where a lawyer is trying to defend a woman accused of killing her husband who had been MIA for 7 years and then showed up only to be killed. Another thing that bothered me was that the main character, the lawyer Barbara, had a horrid "woe is me" attitude. The world is a mess, the legal system is a mess, nothing makes sense, I wish for utopia and since I can't have it, I'll run away and bury my head in the sand, yet whine about how everything is so unfair. Give me a break. We all live in the same unfair world, but we don't all run from everything and bury our heads in the sand. And she was convinced that God just sets everyone up. The narrator in the audiobook was the one I dislike the most, Anna Fields, so that made it even worse. Also, I don't know what was wrong with the audiobook, but it kept repeating multiple lines. It was very annoying. This book is the first in a series, but from what I gather from the descriptions, the main character is the only repeating character, so I assume the mysteries left unknown will not be revealed in future novels. WARNING: the next lines contain spoilers! The end was very frustrating. The killer and the main character's boyfriend apparently go off a cliff in a struggle, but we don't know if they are ever found. We are left to assume that they both die. The boyfriend has apparently received some weird "power" from viewing these disks, but it is still so unclear and confusing as to what is happening to him. The other thing left hanging, which is something I saw coming a mile away, is that two children of main characters in the story view the disks and are now behaving in a similarly strange manner. So what happens to them? Who knows.

Absolute Fear by Lisa Jackson (0) (WARNING: contains spoilers!)

Okay, this book was so cluttered and overcomplicated that it was VERY hard to follow.

First off, I will say that the narrator of the audiobook annoyed me by mispronouncing simple words and phrases such as "winding" or "short-lived."

The next thing that got on my nerves: the main character (Eve) believes that she was shot by her boyfriend. She found her friend dead in his cabin and in a flash saw her boyfriend firing a gun. The bullet ricocheted, striking her in the temple and nearly killing her. She tells the police, they arrest Cole, she is prepared to testify against him, but her testimony was unreliable, so after 3 months, he is set free. The first thing he does is try to get to her and she wants to confront him as well. Though she has a restraining order against him, he shows up on her doorstep in the middle of the night. She does confront him with a gun (unloaded) and after some heated discussion, allows him in the house! He has just come from the scene of her father's murder and has blood on him, but the next thing you know, they are falling back into a relationship. Suddenly she isn't sure what she saw that night. I'm sorry, if there was an inkling that the man had shot me, I would have nothing to do with him and would call the cops if he came anywhere near me! What kind of idiot falls back in love with someone that she thinks COULD be a murderer? Eventually you find out that her memory was correct. He was there, he was just shooting at the actual killer and hit her by mistake, but he never tells anyone this until she remembers. He called 911 and stayed with her until he hears the sirens coming, then runs away to save his own rear end because he thinks the cops have it in for him. What kind of a relationship can they ever have after he accidentally shot her, then left her to save his own rear end and after she accuses him of being a murderer, for which he is locked up for 3 months, loses his career, his credibility, his home, his car, his money to pay for his defense?

Another thing that annoyed me was that the day after Eve's father's murder, there are moments when she and Cole are flirting and when she is joking with her cat, etc. She said that she had been distant with her father lately, but I don't care how distant you are, you will probably be a lot more upset than that if you found out your dad was brutally murdered. And Cole, who found him, ought to be more shaken up, instead of flirting. Eve grieves at the beginning, but seems to bounce back very quickly.

Okay, the thing that really made me hate this book was that it was confusing and overcomplicated. There were too many twists and too much information. I see now that this is in the middle of a series of books, revolving around the homicide detectives Bentz and Montoya, so I decided that all of this violence that nearly every character has suffered in their past (that originally seemed like too much coincidence) goes back to the fact that this is about HOMICIDE detectives. There WILL be violence. It seems a strange link for the characters though.

Originally, I thought Cole WAS the killer and was having trouble separating scenes and points of view. It just seemed like the readers are constantly being bombarded with new information and new scenarios and it was hard to digest. I ended up making a chart to try to understand how in the world it could be possible that all these people are related. I tried to describe it to a friend and she said I lost her and that was exactly how I felt as I was trying to figure it all out and keep it straight in my mind. It was again too much coincidence and really far-fetched. I put the chart above so you can see how confusing it all got. I tried to show parentages and relationships and how it all seemed to intersect.

The thing that finally got me was that all along the killer that we have been following, not knowing who he is, is not the actual mastermind. The mastermind is the twin brother of the main character. Coincidental that he found a lunatic that had been at the mental hospital at the same time as everyone else in his sick game, who was obsessed with his twin sister Eve, and was able to control him. He somehow made it onto the police force where he was able to tamper with evidence, keep track of where this guy was and when he was released so he could set his plan in motion, and put speakers in the guys bed and spoke to him as if he were the voice of God, instructing him who to kill and how. It was just all too much.

Here's another thing that sickened me. There was way too much sexual stuff, incest, etc., going on in this book. While the twin brother is blaming his adopted mother for molesting him and ruining him and how wrong that was, he turns around and talks about wanting to rape his sisters. How do you arrive at the conclusion that it was wrong for someone to do that to you, but it's okay if you do it to someone else? Same way with the crazy guy he was controlling. He says Eve is a whore and yet he wants to rape her. He condemns her for her sexual sin (mostly imagined), but he wants her for himself and that's okay, I guess....? Sick, sick double standards.

The final thing that made me hate this book was that the author was vulgar. I mean, it's obvious from what I have said heretofore that the book was pretty sick anyways. But, the thing that I found was that the the author used vulgarities, not in dialogue of the chracters (you might expect vulgar slang from the characters), but in her descriptions as a narrator. That, to me, shows a lack of vocabulary. If the only thing you can use to describe body parts is a crass vulgarity, that tells me you aren't a very good writer. Maybe some people like that, but my taste is a little higher.