Katherine

This story moves with all the force of the furious river at its center! We know from the first paragraph that nothing good will happen to these weekend warriors - but the ultimate sequence of events is beyond imagining. Having seen the movie long ago I knew it would be intense, but as usual, the book that spawns a great movie is a real masterpiece. Will Patton is my favorite narrator and this book is perfectly suited to his voice.

I started out really enjoying this book. The first chapters introduce us to some wonderful characters - Odd Thomas's inner circle. koontz does a great job drawing us in to this very quirky group of outsiders. Funny and very sympathetic people who give depth to the strangeness of the premise. The book bogs down in the plot however, and I became less interested as the book progressed, which is always disappointing. I will try another Odd book though. Koontz got me to care alot about the oddballs and misfits in Odd's life and I want to know more about what happens to them!

This book was painful. I made myself listen because I had spent the money, but it was a terrible book. Seriously! It didn't help that the narrator made me want to scratch my earbuds out. Over dramatic whether he was talking about eating breakfast or running for his life - there was no difference. In this sense it was nearly comical, except that the book is so long that I nearly stopped listening countless times. REally, apart from the money spent, the only reason I kept with it was to find out what would happen with the witch.
The writing is just painfully bad. The guy is maddeningly verbose. This book is stuffed full of words that get the story no where, and make me care not ONE BIT about the characters which is one of the main criteria for judging a story - do I CARE about anybody I am hearing about. In this case, although there were plenty of people I could have cared for, by the time McCammon was done with them they were as lifeless and flavorless as yesterday's chewing gum. Dont bother.

Just finished a four day marathon with the first two books of this new series. Loved the first one, and only liked this one. Narrator is excellent, and I like the co-starring characters that will no doubt populate the rest of these books (5 more? if we're to follow the days of the week concept) My favorite peripheral character is Joseph, the Ukrainian handyman. This book was always going to be tough because the first one was so excellent. it got a little bogged down in trying to perpetuate the main plot from book one, while simultaneously introducing new bad guys who were not nearly so thrillingly bad as the bad guys from Blue Monday. I will buy the subsequent books though, it does pass the "can't wait for the next one" test! Do get Blue Monday first, before you buy this one though. Definitely need the background to enjoy it.

The Angle of Repose is a book I saw my mother read years ago. I was too young then to share it with her but knew it was on my must read list just by quietly watching her experience this remarkable book during one hot summer vacation. This book is a masterpiece - I think it is the best american novel I have yet read. Stegner opens a door to us into a world so different from our own,and yet so familiar and heartrending and human. I can not remember ever being so moved by the characters in a novel. Stegner's prose is gorgeous - there is a rapture that takes over while listening to it. His description of the western landscape inspires true reverence. The empathy and care he takes in creating characters and relationships is awe inspiring. I read the book about a year ago, and decided to buy the audio version because I wanted to experience it again and because I knew Mark Bramhall would do a fine thing with the reading of such a book. I envy those about the listen for the first time!

This book was vicious and smooth - and left me unclear as to who was the bad guy until Flynn decided it was time to change gears. A very well put together psych thriller with plenty to keep me listening long past pulling into the driveway. My only criticism is that it felt a little like Flynn got tired of writing the book a little abruptly and tried to wrap it all up more swiftly that I wanted her to. I would say more about that but I don't want to spoil the plot twists for anyone

This book drew me in from the first sentence, and I could not stop listening until the last. The yearning of the characters, the bittersweetness of their fates, the interweaving of such disparate lives - all this could have devolved into something cringeworthy and manipulative. But Jess Walter is brilliant and his marvelous use of language, both english and italian - his obvious empathy for his characters - his wonderful humor and tenderness are what make this tale a gift to listen to. Ballerini's reading is pure pleasure - and I especially enjoyed the pure musicality of his italian.

I am a devoted fan of JLB - and was really disappointed with this one. The usual care he takes to weave together the at first disjointed threads of his characters stories were left disjointed, the only common denominator was a kind of capricious violence that seemed canned rather than really driven by any human pathos. I am amazed by the praise I see in other reviews. Give this one a pass.

So fine - this book makes your heart fill and break - and fill again! Also makes you want to ride horses and whisper in spanish.... Cormac McCarthy is a genius story teller and also a prose poet. I have to ask though - why would Audible make only books one and three of a trilogy????? Can someone please tell me that?????

I knew that I was not buying anything better than formula pulp, but was in the mood for some junk food so I went ahead and bought this one. I like the psych / crime genre. Unfortunately, this book was so poorly written, and even more poorly read that I could not get through more than about two hours. I probably could have gotten through it if the reader had not grated on my nerves so intensely. Every character sounded like my great aunt Phylis - too many cigarettes, and a weirdly misplaced Staten Island accent. Male, female, macho or retiring - they all sounded the same! Anyway, save your credit for something bearable....

My father was a British Navy man in WWII, and I remember him reading this book and its successor - War and Remembrance back in the 80s. I wish so much that I had picked them up then while I still had him to talk to. Even having been semi cognizant during Vietnam, and of course much more so with our current wars - I feel very abstracted from the "national experience" of wartime america. Of course I am thankful for that, and yet I do think there are things I cant begin to grasp that were profoundly formative for my parent's generation. These books immerse us in the enormity of World War in a direct way - by living through it with one military family and their near and dear ones. The fictional family saga is masterfully interwoven with the political and military history that gave rise to Hitler and this global catastrophe. Fascinating heartbreaking and completely transporting. Go for it!