b e a c h g o t h's bookshelf: could-not-finish en-US Sun, 20 Apr 2025 17:42:13 -0700 60 b e a c h g o t h's bookshelf: could-not-finish 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Return to Wyldcliffe Heights 199531687 320 Carol Goodman 0063265281 b e a c h g o t h 2
This is giving wuthering heights…and I couldn’t stop thinking ‘Is this blatantly “the last one left� by Riley Sager with different characters?� So I got half way and shook hands with the fact that I did not care about the plot or the characters at all anymore. ]]> 3.52 2024 Return to Wyldcliffe Heights
author: Carol Goodman
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, dark-academia, ended-up-skim-reading, predicable-asf, read-during-renos
review:
I hate that every book of carol goodman’s I’ve read since “the lake of dead languages� has fallen so flat, because I LOVEDDDDDD the lake of dead languages.

This is giving wuthering heights…and I couldn’t stop thinking ‘Is this blatantly “the last one left� by Riley Sager with different characters?� So I got half way and shook hands with the fact that I did not care about the plot or the characters at all anymore.
]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore b e a c h g o t h 3
The characters were too similar - which if you’re gonna change the POV every chapter becomes a problem to follow - and I even though I loved the summer camp atmosphere and the mystery� I was bored. ]]> 4.15 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, read-during-renos
review:
Ughhhhh. No surprise that u didn’t love this, because I didn’t love “long bright river� either.

The characters were too similar - which if you’re gonna change the POV every chapter becomes a problem to follow - and I even though I loved the summer camp atmosphere and the mystery� I was bored.
]]> Deadly Animals 203579073 Finding a dead body is not normal. But Ava is not a normal teenager. In this chillingly beautiful mystery, only the obsessive spirit of youth can save a desperate town from the savagery within.

Ava Bonney is a compassionate and studious fourteen-year-old girl with a dark secret: she has an obsessive interest in the macabre. She is fascinated by the rate at which dead animals decompose. The highway she lives by regularly offers up gifts of roadkill, and in the dead of night Ava loves nothing more than to pull her latest discovery into her roadside den and record her findings.

One night, she stumbles across the body of her classmate and, fearing that her secret ritual could be revealed, she makes an anonymous call to the police. But when Detective Seth Delahaye is given the case, Ava won’t step back—not while teenagers continue to go missing.

Racing alongside the police or against them, Ava is determined to figure out who is hunting her classmates before she becomes the next prey. How hard can it be to track a killer?]]> 354 Marie Tierney 1250357594 b e a c h g o t h 3 3.79 2024 Deadly Animals
author: Marie Tierney
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: creme-de-la-crime, ended-up-skim-reading, could-not-finish
review:
DNF page 110. I give books a solid 100 and then decide if I wanna keep going and while the characters were sound and the storyline ok� it was just lacking anything to keep me interested
]]> <![CDATA[Dexter Procter the 10-Year-Old Doctor]]> 205068050
He started speaking at four seconds old. By the age of three, he had 87 A-levels, from Afrikaans to Zoology.

And by ten, he was working as a paediatrician at Lilydale General Hospital.

Despite a loving but annoying family and a couple of good friends (Rupi and Otto), Dexter’s always struggled to fit in. Add to this a mortal enemy (Dr Drake) and a major problem at his old school (all the teachers struck down with awful diarrhoea) � will Dexter be able to save his job, save the school and find his place in the world? (Spoiler yes!)

A laugh-out-loud new series about the world's youngest doctor from the record-breaking Adam Kay and Henry Paker.

'Original, very funny, ultra-informative - and children will love all the disgusting parts.� Jacqueline Wilson

'From the brilliant mind of Adam Kay comes a story that redefines the 'junior' in 'junior doctor.� David Solomons ]]> 394 Adam Kay 0241668638 b e a c h g o t h 1 4.38 Dexter Procter the 10-Year-Old Doctor
author: Adam Kay
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: could-not-finish, eye-roll-into-next-week, not-even-at-gunpoint
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Butcher & Blackbird (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #1)]]> 196864520

The viral TikTok friends-to-lovers dark romantic comedy full of murder, chaos, and spice—unlike anything you’ve read before—now available in all bookstores.


When a chance encounter sparks an unlikely bond between rival murderers Sloane and Rowan, the two find something elusive—the friendship of like-minded, pitch-black souls. From small town West Virginia to upscale California, from downtown Boston to rural Texas, the two hunters collide in an annual game of blood and suffering, one that pits them against the most dangerous monsters in the country.


But as their friendship develops into something more, the restless ghosts left in their wake are only a few steps behind, ready to claim more than just their newfound love. Can Rowan and Sloane dig themselves out of a game of graves? Or have they finally met their match?

]]> 360 Brynne Weaver b e a c h g o t h 2

Imagine if they were average looking people with ACTUAL psychopathic tendencies like masking emotions, devoid of attachment, a hate for humanity, etc etc


But instead these are two extremely good looking people that kill for sport and� what in the far fetched is going on.
And the sex scenes weren’t even like� surprising. “I didn’t orgasm, I detonated”�.ok babe.

This book is the “American psycho� for the girl that rewatches hallmark romance for comfort but she can fuck with black coffee. Edgy, but no cliff face. ]]> 3.99 2023 Butcher & Blackbird (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #1)
author: Brynne Weaver
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, cupids-library, eye-roll-into-next-week, far-fetched-asf, psychos, read-during-renos, vices-and-virtues
review:
DNF at halfway. This is insanely unbelievable. I mean, obviously it is - two serial killers falling for each other - but it was the Insta romance for me. The good looking descriptions of both of them. The sex scenes that made me feel awkward reading this when my kids were awake.


Imagine if they were average looking people with ACTUAL psychopathic tendencies like masking emotions, devoid of attachment, a hate for humanity, etc etc


But instead these are two extremely good looking people that kill for sport and� what in the far fetched is going on.
And the sex scenes weren’t even like� surprising. “I didn’t orgasm, I detonated”�.ok babe.

This book is the “American psycho� for the girl that rewatches hallmark romance for comfort but she can fuck with black coffee. Edgy, but no cliff face.
]]> Carnivore 35132980 Shortlisted for the Polari First Book Award 2018



‘So you liked Irvine Welsh? Read Carnivore� Cosmopolitan


Meet Leander: lover, fighter, liar.



He learnt a long time ago that nothing is as intoxicating as blood. But whether it’s his or someone else’s doesn’t matter any more. There’s a mysterious pain in every muscle of his body � and it’s got so bad that he’ll do anything to escape it.


Up to now, it’s been his secret. But it’s hard to remain invisible when you leave a trail of destruction everywhere you go. So, when he comes to the attention of one of London’s most infamous criminals, Leander decides to put his appetite for violence to the ultimate test.


Let the villain win.]]> 306 Jonathan Lyon 0008232571 b e a c h g o t h 3 3.06 2017 Carnivore
author: Jonathan Lyon
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.06
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, psychos, read-during-renos, struck-a-cord, vices-and-virtues
review:
I thought this would be similar to Bret Easton Ellis but it’s giving Irvine Welsh and I loathe Irvine Welsh
]]> Nightwatching 150246179 The Fallon Spring Reads Book Club Pick

A mother is forced to the breaking point when her life and the lives of her children are threatened by an intruder

Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in the middle of the night. She hears a noise—old houses are always making some kind of noise. But this sound is disturbingly familiar: it’s the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow, coming up the stairs.

She sees the figure of a man appear down the hallway, shrouded in the shadows. Terrified, she quietly wakes her children and hustles them into the oldest part of the house, a tiny, secret room concealed behind a wall. There they hide as the man searches for them, trying to tempt the children out with promises and scare the mother into surrender.

In the suffocating darkness, the mother struggles to remain calm, to plan. Should she search for a weapon or attempt escape? But then she catches another glimpse of him. That face. That voice. And at once she knows her situation is even more dire than she’d feared, because she knows exactly who he is—and what he wants.]]> 368 Tracy Sierra 0593654765 b e a c h g o t h 2 No. This is not it. 3.79 2024 Nightwatching
author: Tracy Sierra
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, far-fetched-asf, mom-noir, not-even-at-gunpoint
review:
No. This is not it.
]]> Hate (Madison Kate, #1) 48642680
Those words changed my life, and not for the better.

They were wrong, of course. I wasn’t dead. But I was set up.

After being charged with a string of offences--and made an example of by my political minded father--I’m eventually released back into Shadow Grove with one thing on my mind.

Hate.

Someone is going to pay for derailing my carefully laid out future. Someone is going to catch the full force of my hate. How very convenient that someone just moved into the bedroom down the hall from me.

Archer D’Ath and his boys messed with the wrong chick and they’re about to learn just how cold Madison Kate’s hate can run.


HATE is a full length mature college/new adult romance with enemies-to-lovers/love-hate themes. This is a reverse harem novel, meaning the main character has more than one love]]> 418 Tate James b e a c h g o t h 2 4.20 2020 Hate (Madison Kate, #1)
author: Tate James
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: could-not-finish, cupids-library, eye-roll-into-next-week, far-fetched-asf, not-even-at-gunpoint, read-during-renos
review:
What in the cringe did I just read. 1/2 way in and I’m getting eye strain from rolling my eyes
]]> <![CDATA[Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life]]> 22609341
Researchers have spent the last decade trying to develop a “pink pill� for women to function like Viagra does for men. So where is it? Well, for reasons this book makes crystal clear, that pill will never exist—but as a result of the research that’s gone into it, scientists in the last few years have learned more about how women’s sexuality works than we ever thought possible, and Come as You Are explains it all.

The first lesson in this essential, transformative book by Dr. Emily Nagoski is that every woman has her own unique sexuality, like a fingerprint, and that women vary more than men in our anatomy, our sexual response mechanisms, and the way our bodies respond to the sexual world. So we never need to judge ourselves based on others� experiences. Because women vary, and that’s normal.

Second lesson: sex happens in a context. And all the complications of everyday life influence the context surrounding a woman’s arousal, desire, and orgasm.

Cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines tells us that the most important factor for women in creating and sustaining a fulfilling sex life, is not what you do in bed or how you do it, but how you feel about it. Which means that stress, mood, trust, and body image are not peripheral factors in a woman’s sexual wellbeing; they are central to it. Once you understand these factors, and how to influence them, you can create for yourself better sex and more profound pleasure than you ever thought possible.

And Emily Nagoski can prove it.]]> 400 Emily Nagoski 1476762090 b e a c h g o t h 3 4.28 2015 Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life
author: Emily Nagoski
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read, could-not-finish, ear-candy, read-during-renos
review:

]]> The Eye Collector 18721916 Ready or not, here he comes...

He plays the oldest children's game in the world, hide and seek. Only the Eye Collector plays it to death.

It's the same each time. A woman's body is found with a ticking stopwatch clutched in her dead hand. A distraught father must find his child before the boy suffocates - and the killer takes his left eye. Alexander Zorbach, a washed-up cop turned journalist has reported all three of the Eye Collector's murders. But this is different. His wallet has been found next to the corpse and now he's a suspect. The Eye Collector wants Zorbach to play. Zorbach has exactly forty-five hours, seven minutes to save a little boy's life. And the countdown has started...]]> 448 Sebastian Fitzek b e a c h g o t h 3 3.90 2010 The Eye Collector
author: Sebastian Fitzek
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, predicable-asf, psychos, read-during-renos
review:
I know this book surprised heaps of people with its big reveal but I figured out the twist the first 1/3 of the book and then I wanted so desperately to be wrong and get the same shock most people got reading this. Sighhhh. I feel a reading slump coming on.
]]> In My Dreams I Hold a Knife 50485649 Six friends.
One college reunion.
One unsolved murder.

A college reunion turns dark and deadly in this chilling and propulsive suspense novel about six friends, one unsolved murder, and the dark secrets they’ve been hiding from each other—and themselves—for a decade.

Ten years after graduation, Jessica Miller has planned her triumphant return to southern, elite Duquette University, down to the envious whispers that are sure to follow in her wake. Everyone is going to see the girl she wants them to see—confident, beautiful, indifferent—not the girl she was when she left campus, back when Heather’s murder fractured everything, including the tight bond linking the six friends she’d been closest to since freshman year. Ten years ago, everything fell apart, including the dreams she worked for her whole life—and her relationship with the one person she wasn’t supposed to love.

But not everyone is ready to move on. Not everyone left Duquette ten years ago, and not everyone can let Heather’s murder go unsolved. Someone is determined to trap the real killer, to make the guilty pay. When the six friends are reunited, they will be forced to confront what happened that night—and the years� worth of secrets each of them would do anything to keep hidden.

Told in racing dual timelines, with a dark campus setting and a darker look at friendship, love, obsession, and ambition, In My Dreams I Hold A Knife is an addictive, propulsive read you won’t be able to put down.]]> 345 Ashley Winstead 172822988X b e a c h g o t h 2 3.79 2021 In My Dreams I Hold a Knife
author: Ashley Winstead
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, dark-academia, ear-candy, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, read-during-renos
review:
Which did I loathe more? Jessica’s 2D narcissistic monologue or the cringeworthy description of the “cool boys� and “beautiful girls� that became the overdone elite-group-of friends-with-a-secret murder mystery? I don’t care who killed heather. Maybe she faked her own death so she didn’t have to be part of this cringe story. DNF.
]]> What Have We Done 60784578
A stay-at-home mom with a past.
A has-been rock star with a habit.
A reality TV producer with a debt.
Three disparate lives.
One deadly secret.

Twenty five years ago, Jenna, Donnie, and Nico were the best of friends, having forged a bond through the abuse and neglect they endured as residents of Savior House, a group home for parentless teens. When the home was shut down―after the disappearance of several kids―the three were split up.

Though the trauma of their childhood has never left them, each went on to live accomplished―if troubled―lives. They haven’t seen one another since they were teens but now are reunited for a single haunting reason: someone is trying to kill them.

To survive, the group will have to revisit the nightmares of their childhoods and confront their shared past―a past that holds the secret to why someone wants them dead.

It’s a reunion none of them asked for . . . or wanted. But it may be the only way to save all their lives.

What Have We Done is both an edge-of-your-seat thriller and a gut-wrenching coming-of-age story.]]> 358 Alex Finlay 1250863724 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.50 2023 What Have We Done
author: Alex Finlay
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/15
date added: 2024/06/15
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, dark-academia, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, far-fetched-asf, read-during-renos
review:
This is 100% not my cup of tea. I went into this blind expecting a psychological crime story� and I got Jason Bourne style assasins. I’m sure this is a good read if you’re into that kind of thing, but it’s definitely not for me.
]]> Hex 52272255
Surrounded by Nell's ex, her best friend, her best friend's boyfriend, and Joan's buffoonish husband, the two scientists are tangled together at the center of a web of illicit relationships, grudges, and obsessions. All six are burdened by desire and ambition, and as they collide on the university campus, their attractions set in motion a domino effect of affairs and heartbreak.

Meanwhile, Nell slowly fills her empty apartment with poisonous plants to study, and she begins to keep a series of notebooks, all dedicated to Joan. She logs her research and how she spends her days, but the notebooks ultimately become a painstaking map of love.]]> 272 Rebecca Dinerstein Knight 1526611414 b e a c h g o t h 3 3.29 2020 Hex
author: Rebecca Dinerstein Knight
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/01
date added: 2024/04/01
shelves: could-not-finish, dark-academia, ended-up-skim-reading, next-secret-history-claim, read-during-renos
review:
If it has “secret history� or “dark academia� on the cover, I will pick it up immediately. But this was so intensely written, entering crazy realm. A mad botanists poetic reflections on obsession, desire and relationships. This COULD have had potential but I found myself getting bored and flicking over pages to find something meaty.
]]> The Appeal (The Appeal, #1) 54621096 447 Janice Hallett 1788165292 b e a c h g o t h 2 It’s a collection of emails, texts, evidence and stuff and you, the reader, tries to discover the killer.
But all I saw was a pile of paperwork, instead of a blissful escape from reality.]]> 3.83 2021 The Appeal (The Appeal, #1)
author: Janice Hallett
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/25
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, read-during-renos
review:
Cluedo but in book form. SHOULD have grabbed me from the get go but.. idk maybe I’m just too overstimulated in my mom-life to have *time* for this but I felt like� ugh.. looking at this sitting on my bedside table waiting to be read, it felt like a uni assignment or something.
It’s a collection of emails, texts, evidence and stuff and you, the reader, tries to discover the killer.
But all I saw was a pile of paperwork, instead of a blissful escape from reality.
]]> <![CDATA[The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures]]> 25614997
While set in the libertine atmosphere of 1970s San Francisco, Minnie's journey to understand herself and her world is universal: this is the story of a young woman troubled by the discontinuity between what she thinks and feels and what she observes in those around her. Acclaimed cartoonist and author Phoebe Gloeckner serves up a deft blend of visual and verbal narrative in her complex presentationof a pivotal year in a girl's life, recounted in diary pages and illustrations, with full narrative sequences in comics form. The Diary of a Teenage Girl offers a searing comment on adult society as seen though the eyes of a young woman on the verge of joining it.

This edition has been updated by the author with an introduction reflecting on the book's critical reception and value as diary or novel, historical document or work of art. Also included in this revised edition are supplementary photographs and illustrations from the author's childhood, including some of her own diary entries.]]> 310 Phoebe Gloeckner 1623170346 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.76 2002 The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures
author: Phoebe Gloeckner
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2002
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/12/20
shelves: could-not-finish, eye-roll-into-next-week
review:

]]> Rattled 60433874

'As gripping as a thriller, as moving as a tragedy, as passionate as a polemic and as practical as a manual. An extraordinary, candid, wise and terrifying book for our times.' Jane Caro AM, Award-winning writer

Rattled tells a frighteningly honest story of what it feels like to be pursued by a stalker.

What if your life were suddenly transformed by anxiety and fear? The fear of being alone, the anxiety compelling you to stay in public places and avoid predictable routines. The horrible uncertainty of not knowing whether you should fear for your life, and maybe even the lives of your children. The dreadful knowledge that, ultimately, you are powerless to escape.

Ellis Gunn's world is turned upside down when she realises that she is being followed by a man she doesn't know-and that she can't make him stop. The experience conjures up other incidents of sexual harassment and abuse that she has endured, incidents she often accepted as 'normal'. Spurred on to look deeper, she discovers that stalking is part of an underlying misogyny that more than half the population is dealing with on a daily basis.

Alarming, and at times even darkly amusing, Rattled is a thought-provoking, heart-in-your-throat memoir that begins in outrage and ends with a celebration of the howling winds of change sweeping the globe.]]> 320 Ellis Gunn 1761065998 b e a c h g o t h 2 It’s a collection of abuse stories from the authors life, varying in forms of severity. At times, this book reads well and is engaging but a bulk of this book is soaked in white-male hating, pro-abortion, all-men-are-pigs rhetoric which made me feel tricked - Ellis advertised her book as a peek into what it’s like to be stalked, when actually it’s like sitting down for a coffee with an excruciatingly liberal woman who intends to talk for entirety of the coffee date about her opinions. I don’t care to read your imaginary debate with a conservative guy over abortion. (I found this cringey as too, like when you think of all the coolest comebacks to an argument days later in the shower) and although I started out enjoying this it quickly started to feel like an echo chamber of opinions and I skim read the rest.
Spoiler: nothing happens with the “stalker”]]> 3.69 Rattled
author: Ellis Gunn
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.69
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/20
date added: 2023/12/20
shelves: could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, non-fic, poets, read-during-renos, recommended-to-me, struck-a-cord
review:
This book is not � a nail biting memoir of stalking�.
It’s a collection of abuse stories from the authors life, varying in forms of severity. At times, this book reads well and is engaging but a bulk of this book is soaked in white-male hating, pro-abortion, all-men-are-pigs rhetoric which made me feel tricked - Ellis advertised her book as a peek into what it’s like to be stalked, when actually it’s like sitting down for a coffee with an excruciatingly liberal woman who intends to talk for entirety of the coffee date about her opinions. I don’t care to read your imaginary debate with a conservative guy over abortion. (I found this cringey as too, like when you think of all the coolest comebacks to an argument days later in the shower) and although I started out enjoying this it quickly started to feel like an echo chamber of opinions and I skim read the rest.
Spoiler: nothing happens with the “stalker�
]]> The 120 Days of Sodom 6351885 376 Marquis de Sade 1604594187 b e a c h g o t h 1
De Sade may have had a disturbing life, making him write this hell-worthy scroll, but that’s no excuse. France, can’t believe this book is hailed as a national treasure in your country, I mean what the in actual F.

]]> 3.12 1785 The 120 Days of Sodom
author: Marquis de Sade
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.12
book published: 1785
rating: 1
read at: 2023/12/09
date added: 2023/12/09
shelves: could-not-finish, ear-candy, ended-up-skim-reading, henry-beckett, not-even-at-gunpoint, pretentious-classics, psychos, struck-a-cord, rory-gilmore
review:
I listen to the classics as audiobooks usually while cleaning up the house or cooking dinner so I can make my way through the list of “books you should read in your life� but this was so disgusting and disturbing. No one with a conscience could enjoy this.

De Sade may have had a disturbing life, making him write this hell-worthy scroll, but that’s no excuse. France, can’t believe this book is hailed as a national treasure in your country, I mean what the in actual F.


]]> Spilt Milk 61740381 What if you said the worst thing a mother could say?
What if your husband found out about it in the national press?
And what if after all that, you didn’t regret it�?

‘My life is a tight knot I would like to undo. And, yes, there’s no use crying over spilt milk but, the truth is, I’d rather die than spill any more…�

Bea has a husband and daughter. Bea also has an appointment for a termination. Her first child changed everything � her life, her relationship, her identity. Now she has a pregnancy test and a decision to face.

This is a story about the women we (think we) know, the choices we make, the friends who stand by us and how the secrets we keep and the words left unsaid can be more dangerous than any lie we tell…]]> 320 Amy Beashel 0008526435 b e a c h g o t h 4 3.64 2023 Spilt Milk
author: Amy Beashel
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/15
date added: 2023/11/15
shelves: could-not-finish, literary-crack, not-even-at-gunpoint, read-during-renos, sad-girl-lit, struck-a-cord, this-book-is-a-mood
review:
This is the first book I’ve given such a high rating to but couldn’t finish. I didn’t not finish because it wasn’t good or terribly written or anything like that�.actually because it was too well written, it was too well done on a subject that cuts me too the bone. I couldn’t read even more than a page without feeling the raw guilt that comes with the thoughts you don’t want to have as a mother, the thoughts that come after 3 months of sleep deprivation and bleeding nipples, that maybe you aren’t a good enough mother at all. This was heart wrenching to read and I couldn’t keep going, Motherhood has clearly turned me soft.
]]> <![CDATA[The Jigsaw Man (Inspector Anjelica Henley, #1)]]> 53331565
When body parts are found on the banks of the River Thames in Deptford, DI Anjelica Henley is tasked with finding the killer. Eerie echoes of previous crimes lead Henley to question Peter Olivier, aka The Jigsaw Killer, who is currently serving a life sentence for a series of horrific murders.

When a severed head is delivered to Henley's home, she realises that the copycat is taking a personal interest in her and that the victims have not been chosen at random.

To catch the killer, Henley must confront her own demons - - and when Olivier escapes from prison, she finds herself up against not one serial killer, but two.]]> 496 Nadine Matheson b e a c h g o t h 1 “Tough cop� chat between the officers
Main character’s relationship on the rocks because “works too much�
Oh no a “severed arm�

Please make it stop. ]]> 3.80 2020 The Jigsaw Man (Inspector Anjelica Henley, #1)
author: Nadine Matheson
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2020
rating: 1
read at: 2023/10/18
date added: 2023/10/19
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, not-even-at-gunpoint, predicable-asf, psychos, read-during-renos
review:
This is the type of book that when I saw I enjoy crime novels I hope people don’t think I mean books like this.
“Tough cop� chat between the officers
Main character’s relationship on the rocks because “works too much�
Oh no a “severed arm�

Please make it stop.
]]> <![CDATA[The Oracle: The Jubilean Mysteries Unveiled]]> 44565891 New York Times andUSA Today Best Seller!Discover the amazing secret of the ages...and the mystery of your life!The Oracle will reveal the mystery behind everything...the past, the present, current events, even what is yet to come! Open the seven doors of revelation—and prepare to be blown away!Jonathan Cahn, author of theNew York Timesbest sellersThe Harbinger, The Mystery of the Shemitah, The Book of Mysteries,andThe Paradigm, now unveilsThe Oracle,in which he opens up the Jubilean mysteries and a revelation so big that it lies behind everything from the rise and fall of nations and empires (even America), to the current events of our day, to the future, to end-time prophecy, and much more. Could an ancient prophecy and a mysterious ordinance given in a Middle Eastern desert over three thousand years ago be determining the events of our day?Could some of the most famous people of modern history and current events be secretly linked to this mystery-even a modern president of the United States?Could this ancient revelation pinpoint the events of our times down to the year, month, and day of their occurring?Could a mysterious phenomenon be manifesting on the world stage on an exact timetable determined from ancient times?Could these manifestations have altered-and now be altering-the course of world events? Jonathan Cahn takes the reader on a journey to find the man called the Oracle. One by one each of the Jubilean mysteries will be revealed through the giving of a vision. The Oracle will uncover the mysteries of The Stranger, The Lost City, The Man With the Measuring Line, The Land of Seven Wells, The Birds, The Number of the End, The Man in the Black Robe, The Prophet's Song, The Matrix of Years, The Day of the Lions, The Awakening of the Dragon, and much more. The reader will discover the ancient scrolls that contain the appointed words that have determined the course of world history from the onset of modern times up to our day. The revelation is so big that it will involve and open up the mysteries of everything and everyone from Mark Twain to Moses, from King Nebuchadnezzar to Donald Trump, from the fall of empires to the rise of America, from a mystery hidden in a desert cave to another in an ancient scroll, from the palace of the Persian Empire to the US Senate, from the Summer of Love to the Code of Babylon, and much, much more. Ultimately the Oracle will reveal the secret that lies behind end-time prophecy and the mystery of the end of the age. As withThe HarbingerandThe Book of Mysteries, Cahn reveals the mysteries through a narrative. A traveler is given seven keys; each will open up one of seven doors. Behind each door lies a stream of mysteries. The reader will be taken on a journey of angels and prophetic revelations waiting to be discovered behind each of the seven doors-the ancient secrets that lie behind the world-changing events of modern times-and revelations of what is yet to come. Hailed as a mind-blowing masterpiece,The Oraclewill reveal mysteries that are absolutely real, amazing, stunning, mind-blowing, and life-changing.Prepare to be blown away.]]> 291 Jonathan Cahn 1629996300 b e a c h g o t h 1 I was hoping for this book to explain, in researched detail, the Book of Jubilees. Instead it’s a conversation with an “oracle� about visions this guy has.]]> 4.41 2019 The Oracle: The Jubilean Mysteries Unveiled
author: Jonathan Cahn
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2019
rating: 1
read at: 2023/10/06
date added: 2023/10/06
shelves: could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, read-during-renos, yhwh
review:
Make it stop. This book is “The alchemist� for Christians.
I was hoping for this book to explain, in researched detail, the Book of Jubilees. Instead it’s a conversation with an “oracle� about visions this guy has.
]]> <![CDATA[Shadow Sands (Kate Marshall, #2)]]> 48676331
Criminology academic Kate Marshall is on a scuba jaunt with her son when they dive toward a shocking discovery: the body of a teenage boy entangled below the surface of the Shadow Sands reservoir. The detective chief inspector’s too-quick narrative of a tragic drowning doesn’t add up, and when Kate follows the evidence, it leads to a darker discovery.

The victim is only the latest in a series of mysterious deaths and disappearances linked to the moorlands—and a mythic phantom said to hide in the rolling fog. When a researcher of urban legends vanishes without a trace, Kate and her associate Tristan Harper must act fast and look deep if they hope to find her alive.

But the elusive serial killer they’re hunting isn’t the only one a step ahead of Kate and Tristan. Someone else is making dead certain that the secrets of Shadow Sands stay buried.]]> 317 Robert Bryndza b e a c h g o t h 3 4.23 2020 Shadow Sands (Kate Marshall, #2)
author: Robert Bryndza
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/16
date added: 2023/06/16
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, ended-up-skim-reading, psychos, read-during-renos, recommended-to-me
review:
I don’t know what it is about this book but I just couldnt get into it. I really liked Nine Elms too, so I had high hopes for this one. I think there was more focus on character development than a thumping undercurrent of “whodunnit� and it missed the mark for me.
]]> <![CDATA[Perfect Silence (D.I. Callanach, #4)]]> 36589626
The body of a young girl is found dumped on the roadside on the outskirts of Edinburgh. When pathologists examine the remains, they make a gruesome discovery: the outline of a doll carved into the victim’s skin.

DCI Ava Turner and DI Luc Callanach are struggling to find leads in the case, until a doll made of skin is found nestled beside an abandoned baby.

After another young woman is found butchered, Luc and Ava realise the babydoll killer is playing a horrifying game. And it’s only a matter of time before he strikes again. Can they stop another victim from being silenced forever � or is it already too late?]]> 432 Helen Sarah Fields 0008275165 b e a c h g o t h 2
But like COME ON. The police “tough guy� act from every character? The descriptions that make you feel as if you’re reading a B grade crime drama script?

I loved the gore but even that was written in such a way I could feel the author feeling so stoked she’s grossing her readers out like “look at me, how bold am I!�

]]> 4.31 2018 Perfect Silence (D.I. Callanach, #4)
author: Helen Sarah Fields
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2023/04/30
date added: 2023/04/30
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week
review:
It takes a lot for me to literally not GAF what happens in a crime novel - especially when it contains this amount of gore.

But like COME ON. The police “tough guy� act from every character? The descriptions that make you feel as if you’re reading a B grade crime drama script?

I loved the gore but even that was written in such a way I could feel the author feeling so stoked she’s grossing her readers out like “look at me, how bold am I!�


]]> Bad Fruit 60258642 For fans of My Dark Vanessa and Celeste Ng, Bad Fruit is an unforgettable portrayal of a toxic mother-daughter relationship and a young woman's search for truth and liberation.

Just graduated from high school and waiting to start college at Oxford, Lily lives under the scrutiny of her volatile Singaporean mother, May, and is unable to find kinship with her elusive British father, Charlie. When May suspects that Charlie is having an affair, there's only one thing that calms May down: a glass of perfectly, spoiled orange juice served by Lily, who must always taste it first to make sure it's just right.

As her mother becomes increasingly unhinged, Lily starts to have flashbacks that she knows aren't her own. Over a sweltering London summer, all semblance of civility and propriety is lost, as Lily begins to unravel the harrowing history that has always cast a shadow on her mother. The horrifying secrets she uncovers will shake her family to its core, culminating in a shattering revelation that will finally set Lily free.

Beautiful and shocking, Bad Fruit is as compulsive as it is thought-provoking, as nuanced as it is explosive. A masterful exploration of mothers and daughters, inherited trauma and the race to break its devastating cycle, Bad Fruit will leave readers breathlessly questioning their own notions of femininity, race and redemption.]]> 256 Ella King 1662601492 b e a c h g o t h 2
Merged review:

I loved the first 20 pages but it’s like the first 20 pages are written over and over until the end of this book and I simply do not give a sh*t anymore]]> 3.73 2022 Bad Fruit
author: Ella King
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2022/10/26
date added: 2022/12/22
shelves: could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, pretentious-classics, read-during-renos, struck-a-cord, sad-girl-lit
review:
I loved the first 20 pages but it’s like the first 20 pages are written over and over until the end of this book and I simply do not give a sh*t anymore

Merged review:

I loved the first 20 pages but it’s like the first 20 pages are written over and over until the end of this book and I simply do not give a sh*t anymore
]]> Before You Knew My Name 57932195
When she arrived in New York on her 18th birthday carrying nothing but $600 cash and a stolen camera, Alice Lee was looking for a fresh start. Now, just one month later, she is the city's latest Jane Doe, an unidentified murder victim.

Ruby Jones is also trying to start over; she travelled halfway around the world only to find herself lonelier than ever. Until she finds Alice's body by the Hudson River.

From this first, devastating encounter, the two women form an unbreakable bond. Alice is sure that Ruby is the key to solving the mystery of her life - and death. And Ruby - struggling to forget what she saw that morning - finds herself unable to let Alice go. Not until she is given the ending she deserves.

Before You Knew My Name doesn't ask whodunnit. Instead, this powerful, hopeful novel Who was she? And what did she leave behind? The answers might surprise you.]]> 262 Jacqueline Bublitz 176106147X b e a c h g o t h 2 4.09 2021 Before You Knew My Name
author: Jacqueline Bublitz
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2022/12/01
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, eye-roll-into-next-week, read-during-renos
review:
Oh my gosh� I do not care. I CANNOT CARE. This was� wanting to be my dark Vanessa crossed with crime but it was a flop for me. I know, I know, I’m in the minority. Again.
]]> Never Saw Me Coming 56383038
Chloe is one of seven students at her DC-based college who are part of an unusual clinical study for psychopaths—students like herself who lack empathy and can’t comprehend emotions like fear or guilt. The study, led by a renowned psychologist, requires them to wear smart watches that track their moods and movements.

When one of the students in the study is found murdered in the psychology building, a dangerous game of cat and mouse begins, and Chloe goes from hunter to prey. As she races to identify the killer and put her own plan into action, she’ll be forced to decide if she can trust any of her fellow psychopaths—and everybody knows you should never trust a psychopath.

Never Saw Me Coming is a compulsive, voice-driven thriller by an exciting new voice in fiction, that will keep you pinned to the page and rooting for a would-be killer.]]> 400 Vera Kurian 0778311554 b e a c h g o t h 2
But every single thing fell short, it was a total let down.
And the subtle “anti-conservative� content really got me down, I’m reading to escape politics thanks. ]]> 3.60 2021 Never Saw Me Coming
author: Vera Kurian
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2022/11/21
date added: 2022/11/21
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, psychos, vices-and-virtues
review:
2 stars for the premise of this book - a group of psychopaths getting free tuition if they agree to be monitored at college? Um yes!!!

But every single thing fell short, it was a total let down.
And the subtle “anti-conservative� content really got me down, I’m reading to escape politics thanks.
]]> Mad Honey 59912428 A soul-stirring novel about what we choose to keep from our past, and what we choose to leave behind.

Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father's beekeeping business.

Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.

And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet at times, she wonders if she can she trust him completely . . .

Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in him, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.

Mad Honey is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.]]> 464 Jodi Picoult 1984818384 b e a c h g o t h 2 4.05 2022 Mad Honey
author: Jodi Picoult
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2022/11/18
date added: 2022/11/18
shelves: could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, pretentious-classics, read-during-renos
review:
Telling you how you should react and feel to on-trend topics disguised as fiction. Two stars for the info on the bees.
]]> God's Callgirl 550029 508 Carla van Raay 0732282365 b e a c h g o t h 1 2.86 2004 God's Callgirl
author: Carla van Raay
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 2.86
book published: 2004
rating: 1
read at: 2022/09/05
date added: 2022/11/04
shelves: could-not-finish, eye-roll-into-next-week, non-fic, not-even-at-gunpoint, read-during-renos
review:
Wow the catholic faith is bloody exhausting. And so is this book. Many interesting things happened to Carla but so many pages on Catholicism, guilt, sinning, penance, etc etc completely destroyed it, I’m mean come ON
]]> Cleopatra and Frankenstein 57693262 For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage.

Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank's life is full of all the excesses Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could've predicted.

Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. Whether it's Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo's marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off, or Cleo and Frank themselves as they discover the trials of marriage and mental illness, each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last.

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.]]> 368 Coco Mellors 1635576814 b e a c h g o t h 2 The writing of this novel was gorgeous and was definitely the only reason I persevered� but then again, I still felt like the lyrical prose was layered on thick to cover a less-than-desirable storyline. The cheese of this novel seasoned with vulgarity was a bizarre flavour that left a bad taste in my mouth. I think if Coco had chosen a genre - picked a lane, so to speak, we would be holding in our hands a beautiful novel. But instead I felt it was fluffy and boring (which has a place in the world, don’t get me wrong. Even I enjoy a rom com while eating ice cream from the tub every once in a while) and mixed with brash sexual statements which I can only describe as a wannabe Bret Easton Ellis. I imagine Coco was trying, ever so hard, to merge two genres together - the decreation of a love affair merged with modern bohemian Manhattanites that drink too much, do too many drugs and have too much sex with the wrong people. Unfortunately, I’ve read too many of these style novels lately. Sad Girl Literature, I’ve heard it called, and I instantly hate it. Please no more of this pick me main character girl who is equal parts outrageously dressed, an aspiring artist and Insta-love from a brooding, damaged, wealthy guy. Chucking in trauma, addictions and animal abuse does not lift this book out of the sad well of modern day manic pixie dream girl status.

Also, ridiculous side note, the way Cleo is described? Looks identical to the author’s pic on the back page. Who also grew up in London and then New York. And Cleo� sounds a lot like Coco doesn’t it? Kinda feel like I was reading a script for a self-indulgent author writing her own memoir-esque film. Like telling someone Megan Fox would play you in a movie and whole heartedly believing that you two look alike.

Yes, I know, everyone loves it. *yawn*
But I’m notorious for loathing what everyone loves so here we are.]]> 3.70 2022 Cleopatra and Frankenstein
author: Coco Mellors
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2022/10/28
date added: 2022/11/04
shelves: could-not-finish, cupids-library, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, french-cigarettes, this-book-is-a-mood, read-during-renos, sad-girl-lit
review:
This should have been everything but it fell so flat for me.
The writing of this novel was gorgeous and was definitely the only reason I persevered� but then again, I still felt like the lyrical prose was layered on thick to cover a less-than-desirable storyline. The cheese of this novel seasoned with vulgarity was a bizarre flavour that left a bad taste in my mouth. I think if Coco had chosen a genre - picked a lane, so to speak, we would be holding in our hands a beautiful novel. But instead I felt it was fluffy and boring (which has a place in the world, don’t get me wrong. Even I enjoy a rom com while eating ice cream from the tub every once in a while) and mixed with brash sexual statements which I can only describe as a wannabe Bret Easton Ellis. I imagine Coco was trying, ever so hard, to merge two genres together - the decreation of a love affair merged with modern bohemian Manhattanites that drink too much, do too many drugs and have too much sex with the wrong people. Unfortunately, I’ve read too many of these style novels lately. Sad Girl Literature, I’ve heard it called, and I instantly hate it. Please no more of this pick me main character girl who is equal parts outrageously dressed, an aspiring artist and Insta-love from a brooding, damaged, wealthy guy. Chucking in trauma, addictions and animal abuse does not lift this book out of the sad well of modern day manic pixie dream girl status.

Also, ridiculous side note, the way Cleo is described? Looks identical to the author’s pic on the back page. Who also grew up in London and then New York. And Cleo� sounds a lot like Coco doesn’t it? Kinda feel like I was reading a script for a self-indulgent author writing her own memoir-esque film. Like telling someone Megan Fox would play you in a movie and whole heartedly believing that you two look alike.

Yes, I know, everyone loves it. *yawn*
But I’m notorious for loathing what everyone loves so here we are.
]]> Girl A 55271524 352 Abigail Dean b e a c h g o t h 2 3.54 2021 Girl A
author: Abigail Dean
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2022/10/26
date added: 2022/10/26
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, ear-candy, struck-a-cord, read-during-renos
review:
Look I gave this book a lot. 50 pages of audio, which made me cringe and so I tried hardback copy but the taste of the audio book wouldn’t leave my literary tongue and sorry I couldn’t even care enough to finish it
]]> The Goldfinch 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 b e a c h g o t h 4 3.94 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2019/03/09
date added: 2022/10/16
shelves: could-not-finish, henry-beckett, next-secret-history-claim
review:
DNF at 48%. I hate myself for not loving this book - I mean, The Secret History is my ultimate favourite book of all time so... what happened with this one? I tried to read it 2 years ago. Tried again last year. Tried again this year. I have picked this up over and over for the last 3 months and I’m finally pulling the plug on it. It’s intriguing, for sure, but HOW AM I SO BORED. I can’t. I can’t push through. Not when there’s so many other books that are waiting for me out there! So... I apologise, Donna. I really did try.
]]> Beartown (Beartown, #1) 31443394
A victory would send star player Kevin onto a brilliant professional future in the NHL. It would mean everything to Amat, a scrawny fifteen-year-old treated like an outcast everywhere but on the ice. And it would justify the choice that Peter, the team's general manager, and his wife, Kira, made to return to his hometown and raise their children in this beautiful but isolated place.

Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semifinal match is the catalyst for a violent act that leaves a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Hers is a story no one wants to believe since the truth would mean the end of the dream. Accusations are made, and like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.]]> 418 Fredrik Backman 1501160761 b e a c h g o t h 2
I loved the wintery setting, the small town and the characters.

But the hockey. The CONSTANT talk of sports.
This book was as if Jodi Picoult had sex with an athletes biography. All this talk about how hockey isn’t just a game, it consumes you, blah blah.

And I actually like hockey.
I couldn’t shake the groan in me every time it was mentioned. Which is always. Even though the book gets considerably more interesting after about half way - by then I was done with the book and I simply did not give a crap anymore.

]]> 4.26 2016 Beartown (Beartown, #1)
author: Fredrik Backman
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2022/10/12
date added: 2022/10/12
shelves: could-not-finish, eye-roll-into-next-week, read-during-renos
review:
Anddddd I’m in the minority on opinions of this book, clearly.

I loved the wintery setting, the small town and the characters.

But the hockey. The CONSTANT talk of sports.
This book was as if Jodi Picoult had sex with an athletes biography. All this talk about how hockey isn’t just a game, it consumes you, blah blah.

And I actually like hockey.
I couldn’t shake the groan in me every time it was mentioned. Which is always. Even though the book gets considerably more interesting after about half way - by then I was done with the book and I simply did not give a crap anymore.


]]> Devotion 42388020 A captivating debut novel about a woman who falls into an overwhelming mutual obsession with the Upper East Side mother who hires her as a nanny

Ella is flat broke: wasting away on bodega coffee, barely making rent, seducing the occasional strange man who might buy her dinner. Unexpectedly, an Upper East Side couple named Lonnie and James rescue her from her empty bank account, offering her a job as a nanny and ushering her into their moneyed world. Ella’s days are now spent tending to the baby in their elegant brownstone or on extravagant excursions with the family. Both women are just twenty-six—but unlike Ella, Lonnie has a doting husband and son, unmistakable artistic talent, and old family money.

Ella is mesmerized by Lonnie’s girlish affection and disregard for the normal boundaries of friendship and marriage. Convinced there must be a secret behind Lonnie’s seemingly effortless life, Ella begins sifting through her belongings, meticulously cataloguing lipstick tubes and baby teeth and scraps of writing. All the while, Ella’s resentment grows, but so does an inexplicable and dizzying attraction. Soon she will be immersed so deeply in her cravings—for Lonnie’s lifestyle, her attention, her lovers—that she may never come up for air.

Riveting, propulsive, and startling, Devotion is a masterful debut novel in which mismatched power collides with blinding desire, incinerating our perceptions of femininity, lust, and privilege.]]> 304 Madeline Stevens 0062883224 b e a c h g o t h 1 2.78 2019 Devotion
author: Madeline Stevens
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 2.78
book published: 2019
rating: 1
read at: 2022/10/09
date added: 2022/10/09
shelves: could-not-finish, cupids-library, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, read-during-renos
review:
I usually LOVE stories about obsession-gone-wrong but this was boring. So boring. I felt like the author just embellished her past of working as a nanny for 10 years, adding flair, drama and obsession. It read like reality - not nearly as interesting as fiction. Instead of all the dark, creepy and shocking moments the cover quotes promised� it just came across as a strange bisexual friendship turned affair. Chuck a murder or two in there would you?
]]> Imaginary Friend 43522576 Christopher is the new kid in town.
Christopher has an imaginary friend.

We can swallow our fear or let our fear swallow us.

Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It's as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out.

At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six long days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again.

Twenty years ago, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower made readers everywhere feel infinite. Now, Chbosky has returned with an epic work of literary horror, years in the making, whose grand scale and rich emotion redefine the genre. Read it with the lights on.]]> 705 Stephen Chbosky 1538731339 b e a c h g o t h 3 And then it turned.. weird? It was terrifying and strange but.. not in a good way. Everyone says this was Christian fiction but it’s more catholic/religion focused and even then it completely changes the roles and acts of the characters of the catholic faith, do it’s almost not even catholic by the end of it either ]]> 3.52 2019 Imaginary Friend
author: Stephen Chbosky
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2022/08/31
date added: 2022/08/31
shelves: could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, far-fetched-asf, netflix-pls-make-this-a-series, read-during-renos
review:
Ugh I don’t know if I like this or loathed it? I lovedddd the first 1/3, it was giving me a mixture of coming of age drama & sadness with the dark dreams from a horror TV series (like the deer antlers in Hannibal). In short, I was so here for it. I had no idea where it was going, but I liked that.
And then it turned.. weird? It was terrifying and strange but.. not in a good way. Everyone says this was Christian fiction but it’s more catholic/religion focused and even then it completely changes the roles and acts of the characters of the catholic faith, do it’s almost not even catholic by the end of it either
]]> <![CDATA[The Second Coming of the Antichrist]]> 18873465 384 Peter Goodgame 0985604514 b e a c h g o t h 1 3.55 2012 The Second Coming of the Antichrist
author: Peter Goodgame
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2012
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2022/08/04
shelves: apocalypse-2020, could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, far-fetched-asf, recommended-to-me, tinfoil-hat, yhwh
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What the Good Book Didn't Say: Popular Myths and Misconceptions About the Bible]]> 2003568 320 Stephen J. Lang 080652460X b e a c h g o t h 2 I know, it’s a harsh review.
I really appreciate the time Stephen took to right this book and describe his view points on biblically what’s correct, I just think it carried too many undertones of a man “correcting everyone� instead of a man in awe and understanding of scripture that’s explaining it to the layman. ]]> 3.22 2003 What the Good Book Didn't Say: Popular Myths and Misconceptions About the Bible
author: Stephen J. Lang
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2003
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2021/11/22
shelves: could-not-finish, eye-roll-into-next-week, non-fic, own-tbr, recommended-to-me, yhwh
review:
I understand where this author is coming from but I could not stand the small subtleties of stabs at the bible or people that believed what they had been taught of it. I also couldn’t stand that although I appreciate this author considers himself a truth seeker and fact finder, he ignores the depth of scripture and other historical texts that define there scriptures in an entirely different way. In short, he took something holy and scared and tried to reason with it as if it was an essay written by a college student he needed to correct.
I know, it’s a harsh review.
I really appreciate the time Stephen took to right this book and describe his view points on biblically what’s correct, I just think it carried too many undertones of a man “correcting everyone� instead of a man in awe and understanding of scripture that’s explaining it to the layman.
]]> <![CDATA[Where Monsters Hide: Sex, Murder, and Madness in the Midwest]]> 40972846 A tragic missing person case spirals into an unrelenting murder mystery. Intrigue, deception, and serial homicide erupt in the latest real-life thriller byNew York Timesbestselling investigative journalist M. William Phelps.

In October 2014, after Chris Regan failed to arrive at his new job, his ex-girlfriend filed a missing-person report. Something was off. It was not like Chris, a devoted father, avid hiker, and all-around great guy, not to show up. When local Michigan police chief Laura Frizzo learned Chris was having an affair with Kelly Cochran, a married co-worker, suspicion fell on her husband, Jason. After a search warrant on their house revealed several suspicious items, the Cochrans abruptly moved to Indiana. As questions swirled around the case, the whereabouts of Chris Regan remained unknown.

Sixteen months later Jason Cochran died from a drug overdose. Friends and family rallied around the grieving and distraught Kelly. But when the coroner ruled Jason’s death a homicide, no one reacted more bizarrely than his widow. For months detectives tried to put Kelly’s past into focus, but the truth was buried under a patchwork of lies, contradictions, and brutally horrific revelations. As Kelly Cochran, a Purdue graduate and psychology major, played “catch me if you can,� a mesmerizing story emerged that rivals today’s bestselling fiction in its drama and fascination. In the hands of veteran investigative journalist M. William Phelps, her staggering saga of murder, revenge, and payback surpasses anything that could go wrong in a season ofFargo.

“Phelps is the Harlan Coben of real-life thrillers.� —Allison Brennan

“Anything by Phelps is an eye-opening experience.”� �Suspense Magazine

“Phelps is one of America’s finest true-crime authors.”—Vincent Bugliosi

“Master of true crime . . .� �Real Crime magazine]]> 400 M. William Phelps b e a c h g o t h 2 3.78 2019 Where Monsters Hide: Sex, Murder, and Madness in the Midwest
author: M. William Phelps
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2021/11/22
date added: 2021/11/22
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, eye-roll-into-next-week, non-fic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Apocalyptic Rapture Exodus]]> 14481939 312 Daniel E. Almonz 1594672679 b e a c h g o t h 2 2.00 2004 The Apocalyptic Rapture Exodus
author: Daniel E. Almonz
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 2.00
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at: 2021/09/30
date added: 2021/09/30
shelves: apocalypse-2020, could-not-finish, non-fic, yhwh
review:
This covered a topic I’m OBSESSED with - eschatology and the study of biblical prophecies in relation to the end of days. I could literally read about this topic forever, even if the view point of something I’ve read elsewhere before. So it’s not that I have already read books that came to a similar conclusion, it’s the pain staking way this was written to get there - I felt like it took pages and pages to make a single point, explaining things that didn’t need in- depth paragraph by paragraph explanations and I could feel my brain logging off while I read. Which considering this is my ultimate favourite subject, that’s pretty disappointing, hence the two stars.
]]> Sleeping with a Psychopath 52033911 THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER

A Divorced Woman. A Dangerous Man. A Devastating Affair.

‘You’re right. It is totally extraordinary. My life is like a film; you couldn’t make it up � But there’s something I have to tell you,� he confided, as he leaned across the table towards me. ‘I’m not normal.�

Carolyn Woods was living happily in a quiet Cotswolds village when an attractive stranger abruptly arrived in her life.

Introducing himself as Mark Conway, he exuded confidence and to her surprise Carolyn quickly became captivated by this mysterious man. A rich Swiss banker (who later confessed to being a spy), he offered Carolyn companionship and introduced her to an exciting, glamorous world.

In fact, some things were so astonishing she began to question her new lover. Was all as it seemed?

The truth was even harder to believe. For a start, his real name was Mark Acklom, he was wanted by Interpol, and he was rich but for one reason only�

A true-crime story that reads like a thriller, Sleeping with a Psychopath is a blow-by-blow account of the power of manipulation and a testament to the human will to survive.]]> 322 Carolyn Woods 0008398666 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.21 2021 Sleeping with a Psychopath
author: Carolyn Woods
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2021/08/28
date added: 2021/08/28
shelves: could-not-finish, electronic-literature, eye-roll-into-next-week, non-fic, psychos
review:
Ew Ew Ew I couldn’t shake the feeling these characters were elderly horny people with lame jokes and cringe flirting
]]> <![CDATA[Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen]]> 3267537 Politics and the Occult offers a lively history of this enduring phenomenon. Author and cultural pundit Gary Lachman provocatively questions whether the separation of church and state so dear to modern political philosophy should be maintained. A few of his fascinating topics include the fate of the Knights Templar and the medieval Gnostic Cathars, the occult roots of America and the French Revolution in Freemasonry, Gurdjieff and the swastika, Soviet interest in UFOs, the CIA and LSD, the Age of Aquarius, the millenarian politics that inform the struggle with Islamic terrorism, fundamentalism, and more.]]> 336 Gary Lachman 0835608573 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.69 2008 Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen
author: Gary Lachman
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2020/10/11
date added: 2021/04/08
shelves: apocalypse-2020, could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, non-fic, tinfoil-hat
review:
For such a fascinating subject... this book is so f%*king boring I couldn’t even get ONE of my brain cells to enjoy it. Maybe I’m completely illiterate when it comes to non fiction but there is a way to write that flows from the author’s pen straight into the soul of the reader and this is not it.
]]> <![CDATA[The Lost Key: The Supranatural Secrets of the Freemasons]]> 11804306 384 Robert Lomas 1444710591 b e a c h g o t h 3 This is basically Robert Lomas wanting to write an autobiography about his life... and experience with freemasonry - complete with elegant language, and as a general book, this is beautifully written.
As for the “secrets�.... this just gave me a feeling he just wants to sell copies.
Read Albert Pike and Manly P Hall if you wanna know some serious secrets. Read this book if you want a romanticised version of one of histories darkest occultic secret societies. ]]> 3.74 2008 The Lost Key: The Supranatural Secrets of the Freemasons
author: Robert Lomas
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2021/01/26
date added: 2021/04/08
shelves: apocalypse-2020, could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, non-fic, tinfoil-hat
review:
Hardly “secrets of the Freemasons�... that wouldn’t be allowed to remain in print lol
This is basically Robert Lomas wanting to write an autobiography about his life... and experience with freemasonry - complete with elegant language, and as a general book, this is beautifully written.
As for the “secrets�.... this just gave me a feeling he just wants to sell copies.
Read Albert Pike and Manly P Hall if you wanna know some serious secrets. Read this book if you want a romanticised version of one of histories darkest occultic secret societies.
]]> In Search of Ancient Gods 278489 620 Erich von Däniken 0517687844 b e a c h g o t h 2 However, I continued to press on.
And then. THEN. He arrived in NZ and trash talked spaghetti toasted sandwiches. And that confirmed it for me, Erik and I shall have to agree to disagree.. on almost everything. ]]> 3.40 1973 In Search of Ancient Gods
author: Erich von Däniken
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1973
rating: 2
read at: 2021/01/28
date added: 2021/04/08
shelves: apocalypse-2020, could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, far-fetched-asf, non-fic, yhwh, tinfoil-hat
review:
I disagreed with this authors assumptions on many things and... disliked his apparent lack of understanding... for example: Cuneiform is Babylonian. Hieroglyphics are Egyptian. They are not the same. He also has a strong distrust of biblical text which was leaking through his writing in very sarcastic, mocking tones.
However, I continued to press on.
And then. THEN. He arrived in NZ and trash talked spaghetti toasted sandwiches. And that confirmed it for me, Erik and I shall have to agree to disagree.. on almost everything.
]]> <![CDATA[The Secret History of the Reptilians]]> 13722912 From the Serpent, Nachash, in the Garden of Eden; Atum, the Egyptian snake-man; and Quetzalcotl, the feathered serpent god of the Mayans to the double-helix snake symbol of Enki/Ea in ancient Sumerian literature, the serpent has been the omnipresent link between humans and the gods in every culture.]]> 224 Scott Alan Roberts 1601632517 b e a c h g o t h 2
I expected more modern day investigations like... families that believe they have reptilian bloodlines today and I formation on RHnegative People’s but basically this book is about an author who “believes� in reptilians but not their creator - which is a bit laughable.. snake people are all good but a creator of humankind no way?

UGH I had my tinfoil all read to start making a hat on my way down a rabbit hole and instead I yawned and put this aside.
]]> 3.19 2013 The Secret History of the Reptilians
author: Scott Alan Roberts
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2021/02/02
date added: 2021/04/08
shelves: apocalypse-2020, could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, far-fetched-asf, non-fic, yhwh, tinfoil-hat
review:
For someone who claims that he isn’t religious and thinks that �..God doesn’t give two shits about humanity� I find it hilarious that most (at least 80%) of this book is solely investigating Christian bible beliefs.

I expected more modern day investigations like... families that believe they have reptilian bloodlines today and I formation on RHnegative People’s but basically this book is about an author who “believes� in reptilians but not their creator - which is a bit laughable.. snake people are all good but a creator of humankind no way?

UGH I had my tinfoil all read to start making a hat on my way down a rabbit hole and instead I yawned and put this aside.

]]> The Witch Elm 46007673 509 Tana French 0735224641 b e a c h g o t h 3
Yes, this book is based on that true mystery and I almost fainted when I finally got my notification at the library that it was ready for me to loan. I’m absolutely fascinated with “Bella and the witch elm� mystery so even though this was just a fiction based on it, I was bloody excited to read this.

Well, what a f**cking let down.
Unlike every other one of Tana’s books, which I loved, this isn’t through the eyes of a detective but of a regular guy. Or more appropriately, a regular douche bag.

True to Tana’s classic style of character building, drawn out storyline’s and complex character background, this book doesn’t fall short. It’s just that... with this guy, Toby, you don’t care.
He’s annoying asf, a self-proclaimed “lucky bastard� and so after you remove the mystery from the book you just have pages and pages inside the mind of a guy you don’t really like.

Tana’s approach to crime novels is to place a lot of importance about the characters, instead of the crime itself, and though that approach has worked wonders for her in the past, she falls short here.
I gave this three stars because, ITS TANA FRENCH, but I skim read this and I’m not even sorry.]]> 3.55 2018 The Witch Elm
author: Tana French
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2019/12/18
date added: 2021/03/07
shelves: ended-up-skim-reading, could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime
review:
“Who put Bella in the Witch Elm�

Yes, this book is based on that true mystery and I almost fainted when I finally got my notification at the library that it was ready for me to loan. I’m absolutely fascinated with “Bella and the witch elm� mystery so even though this was just a fiction based on it, I was bloody excited to read this.

Well, what a f**cking let down.
Unlike every other one of Tana’s books, which I loved, this isn’t through the eyes of a detective but of a regular guy. Or more appropriately, a regular douche bag.

True to Tana’s classic style of character building, drawn out storyline’s and complex character background, this book doesn’t fall short. It’s just that... with this guy, Toby, you don’t care.
He’s annoying asf, a self-proclaimed “lucky bastard� and so after you remove the mystery from the book you just have pages and pages inside the mind of a guy you don’t really like.

Tana’s approach to crime novels is to place a lot of importance about the characters, instead of the crime itself, and though that approach has worked wonders for her in the past, she falls short here.
I gave this three stars because, ITS TANA FRENCH, but I skim read this and I’m not even sorry.
]]> <![CDATA[The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500-Year-Old Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark]]> 1979858 384 Tudor Parfitt 0061371033 b e a c h g o t h 2 I wanted more of a historical understanding and less of a semi-biography. ]]> 3.38 2008 The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500-Year-Old Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark
author: Tudor Parfitt
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2021/02/01
date added: 2021/02/01
shelves: could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, non-fic, yhwh
review:
I can’t. Help. Feeling. Like.... this author loves himself. Not in the regular sense but in a way that he... fancies himself to be a character in a archeological thriller film. The scenes were written almost to fiction standards except there were many MANY drawn out conversations that I felt really didn’t go anywhere. Ugh.
I wanted more of a historical understanding and less of a semi-biography.
]]> Holy Blood, Holy Grail 606818
Priča koja govori o zakopanom blagu ubrzo prerasta u pravu detektivsku avanturu istorijskih razmera. Ova savremena potraga za Gralom donosi nam uvid u šifrovane poruke na pergamentima, saznajemo mnogo o tajnim udruženjima, templarima, jereticima iz 12. veka, kao i o mračnim franačkim kraljevima koji su vladali pre više od 1.300 godina. Autori zaključuju da nije najvažnije sticanje materijalnih dobara i bogatstva već upravo razotkrivanje prastare tajne koja baca novu svetlost na savremenu politiku i osnove hrišćanstva. Kakve se to misterije provlače kroz vekove? Knjiga koja intrigira i uznemirava javnost od kada se prvi put pojavila.]]> 496 Richard Leigh b e a c h g o t h 2
This is fiction. But, I found it in the non-fix part of my library, sigh.

I love conspiracies and biblical history so basically this should be my new favourite but let’s call this for what it is.. bullsh*t.

Even if purely for the fact that if this was true *cough* no way it would be published for the general public and kept in print /available at my library ]]> 3.48 1982 Holy Blood, Holy Grail
author: Richard Leigh
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1982
rating: 2
read at: 2021/01/05
date added: 2021/01/05
shelves: could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, far-fetched-asf, non-fic, recommended-to-me, yhwh
review:
Knights Templar blah blah Jesus wasn’t actually crucified blah blah Jesus had an affair with Mary Magdalene....

This is fiction. But, I found it in the non-fix part of my library, sigh.

I love conspiracies and biblical history so basically this should be my new favourite but let’s call this for what it is.. bullsh*t.

Even if purely for the fact that if this was true *cough* no way it would be published for the general public and kept in print /available at my library
]]> <![CDATA[Out of Darkness into the Light: A Journey of Inner Healing]]> 528633
"If there is hope for one like me, who thought that he was beyond all help, and who believed he had more guilt, more shame, and a greater feeling of inadequacy than anyone else in the world, then rest assured that there is hope for you."

Millions of men and women have had their lives transformed by Dr. Gerald Jampolsky's pioneering work in the field of attitudinal healing and by his bestsellers Love Is Letting Go of Fear, Goodbye to Guilt, and Teach Only Love . In his most important book, Dr.Jampolskytells his own deeply moving story of inner struggle and personal transformation.

As we share the story of his passage from sorrow to joy, Dr. Jampolsky sheds new light on the path to personal happiness, on letting go of fear and guilt, and on escaping the "Fifty Ego Defenses" that keep us in darkness. Here is a book of advice and inspiration from a man who has been there and back—a road map to guide you to a life of peace, fulfillment, and lasting hapiness.

"A life-enhancing book written from the only perspective Gerry Jampolsky knows—total honesty and unconditional love. I loved every page."—Wayne Dyer, author of Your Erroneous Zones]]> 272 Gerald G. Jampolsky 0553347918 b e a c h g o t h 2 It was exactly the perfect example of why self-help non-fic is my most least favourite genre.]]> 3.94 1989 Out of Darkness into the Light: A Journey of Inner Healing
author: Gerald G. Jampolsky
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1989
rating: 2
read at: 2020/12/08
date added: 2020/12/08
shelves: could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, non-fic, yhwh
review:
I... wanted to enjoy this but I couldn’t FOR THE LIFE OF ME finish it.
It was exactly the perfect example of why self-help non-fic is my most least favourite genre.
]]> <![CDATA[People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo—and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up]]> 18877989
Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, covered Lucie's disappearance and followed the massive search for her, the long investigation, and the even longer trial. Over ten years, he earned the trust of her family and friends, won unique access to the Japanese detectives and Japan's convoluted legal system, and delved deep into the mind of the man accused of the crime, Joji Obara, described by the judge as "unprecedented and extremely evil."

The result is a book at once thrilling and revelatory, "In Cold Blood for our times" (Chris Cleave, author of Incendiary and Little Bee).

The People Who Eat Darkness is one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Best Books of 2012]]> 465 Richard Lloyd Parry 1466820020 b e a c h g o t h 3 3.81 2010 People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo—and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up
author: Richard Lloyd Parry
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2020/11/19
date added: 2020/11/19
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, ear-candy, non-fic
review:

]]> The Devil All the Time 10108463 The Devil All the Time follows a cast of characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrifi­cial blood he pours on his “prayer log.� There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill­ers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.]]> 261 Donald Ray Pollock 038553504X b e a c h g o t h 3 4.13 2011 The Devil All the Time
author: Donald Ray Pollock
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2020/11/19
date added: 2020/11/19
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, ended-up-skim-reading
review:

]]> Dancing with Demons 35492515 352 Tim Watson-Munro 1760552666 b e a c h g o t h 1 3.64 Dancing with Demons
author: Tim Watson-Munro
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 1
read at: 2020/10/29
date added: 2020/10/29
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, ear-candy, eye-roll-into-next-week, non-fic, not-even-at-gunpoint
review:
Wow the arrogance of this author overshadowed any enjoyment of this novel
]]> <![CDATA[Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man]]> 54114950
Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents� large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.

A first-hand witness to countless holiday meals and family interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for re-gifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.

Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.]]> 236 Mary L. Trump 1982141484 b e a c h g o t h 3 I think if anyone had a book written about them... by someone they hate, that it would be terrible.
I agree Trump is narcissistic, pompous, blasphemous (tbh I think he’s the antichrist) but this inside did make me feel like I was at a family gathering of trumps and cousin Mary had a few too many champagne-on-arrival drinks and was standing in a corner with me spilling family secrets. Even though it was intriguing, it quickly lost the lustre of “omfg SHES SPILLING THE TEA� to... ok this is weird. ]]> 3.87 2020 Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
author: Mary L. Trump
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2020/10/11
date added: 2020/10/11
shelves: apocalypse-2020, could-not-finish, electronic-literature, ended-up-skim-reading, non-fic
review:
Ok so... Mary hates Trump.
I think if anyone had a book written about them... by someone they hate, that it would be terrible.
I agree Trump is narcissistic, pompous, blasphemous (tbh I think he’s the antichrist) but this inside did make me feel like I was at a family gathering of trumps and cousin Mary had a few too many champagne-on-arrival drinks and was standing in a corner with me spilling family secrets. Even though it was intriguing, it quickly lost the lustre of “omfg SHES SPILLING THE TEA� to... ok this is weird.
]]> The Keeper 52471722 An addictive literary thriller about a crime as shocking as it is commonplace

When Katie Straw's body is pulled from the waters of the local suicide spot, the police are ready to write it off as a standard-issue female suicide. But the residents of the domestic violence shelter where Katie worked disagree. These women have spent weeks or even years waiting for the men they're running from to catch up with them. They know immediately: This was murder.

Still, Detective Dan Whitworth and his team expect an open-and-shut case--until they discover evidence that suggests Katie wasn't who she appeared. Weaving together the investigation with Katie's final months as it barrels toward the truth, The Keeper is a riveting mystery and a searing examination of violence against women and the structures that allow it to continue, marking the debut of an incredible new voice in crime fiction.]]> 336 Jessica Moor 0143134523 b e a c h g o t h 3 3.44 2020 The Keeper
author: Jessica Moor
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2020/08/25
date added: 2020/08/25
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime
review:
I dunno I just COULDNT get into this. After 150 pages I’m abandoning it.
]]> Who Did You Tell? 52119270 A recovering alcoholic's dark secerts catch up with her in this gripping novel of psychological suspense from the internationally bestselling author of The Rumor.

"Instantly immersive, then intriguing, then insanely suspenseful, then . . . the truth. Believe me, Lesley Kara knows what she's doing."--Lee Child

We said to keep it a secret, that no one needed to know.

Astrid is newly sober and trying to turn her life around. Having reluctantly moved back in with her mother, in a quiet seaside town away from the temptations and darkness of her previous life, she is focusing on her recovery. She's going to meetings. Confessing her misdeeds. Making amends to those she's wronged. If she fills her days, maybe she can outrun the ghosts that haunt her. Maybe she can start anew.

But someone is tormenting me now. Someone knows where I am and what I've done.

Someone knows exactly what Astrid is running from. And they won't stop until she learns that some mistakes can't be corrected. Some mistakes, you have to pay for . . .

The question is: Who did you tell? ]]> 304 Lesley Kara 0593156900 b e a c h g o t h 2 I. Just. Don’t. Care.
Astrid, you drain me.
The romantic relationship with Josh was odd and didn’t feel natural and the whole “thriller aspect� took a backseat for me, the twist aren’t even really twists.
This reminds me of “safe haven� by Nicholas Sparks - but at least with safe haven you know you’re getting into a slow burning thriller/romance. ]]> 3.73 2019 Who Did You Tell?
author: Lesley Kara
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2020/08/15
date added: 2020/08/15
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature
review:
It’s been a long time since I dnf’d a book but here we are.
I. Just. Don’t. Care.
Astrid, you drain me.
The romantic relationship with Josh was odd and didn’t feel natural and the whole “thriller aspect� took a backseat for me, the twist aren’t even really twists.
This reminds me of “safe haven� by Nicholas Sparks - but at least with safe haven you know you’re getting into a slow burning thriller/romance.
]]> <![CDATA[Written in Blood: Innocent or Guilty?]]> 40699010
Accident or Murder?

The Petersons seemed like the ideal couple: well-respected, prosperous and happy. All that came crashing down December 2001, when Kathleen apparently fell to her death in their secluded home. But blood-spattered evidence and a missing fireplace poker suggested calculated, cold-blooded murder. Her trusted husband, Michael, stood accused. So what did happen on the staircase that fateful night?


This is the inside look at the Michael Peterson case. It will make you question everything you’ve seen before.


‘The Staircase is an emotionally riveting drama, but it is nowhere near the whole truth. If anybody wants to know the whole story, read Fanning’s Book� Ann Christensen, Michael Peterson's sister]]> 416 Diane Fanning 1529103398 b e a c h g o t h 2 This SHOULD BE so creepy and addictive. I mean, the guy pushed both of his wives down staircases when he got over them but instead? It’s like reading a family tree of who came from where and did what... instead of the crime itself and just like the Netflix series.. it loses all attraction because of the fluffy BS info they pepper everywhere to bulk it out. ]]> 3.16 2005 Written in Blood: Innocent or Guilty?
author: Diane Fanning
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2020/06/27
date added: 2020/08/10
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, non-fic
review:
Omggggg how is this book and the Netflix series so similar? And by that I mean, I lost interest in both.
This SHOULD BE so creepy and addictive. I mean, the guy pushed both of his wives down staircases when he got over them but instead? It’s like reading a family tree of who came from where and did what... instead of the crime itself and just like the Netflix series.. it loses all attraction because of the fluffy BS info they pepper everywhere to bulk it out.
]]> <![CDATA[Girls with Sharp Sticks (Girls with Sharp Sticks, #1)]]> 36442895 “Enough plot twists to give a reader whiplash.� �Cosmopolitan

From New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Young comes the start of a thrilling, subversive new series about a girls-only boarding school with a terrifying secret and the friends who will stop at nothing to protect each other.

Some of the prettiest flowers have the sharpest thorns.

The Girls of Innovations Academy are beautiful and well-behaved—it says so on their report cards. Under the watchful gaze of their Guardian, they receive a well-rounded education that promises to make them better. Obedient girls, free from arrogance or defiance. Free from troublesome opinions or individual interests.

But the girls� carefully controlled existence may not be quite as it appears. As Mena and her friends uncover the dark secrets of what’s actually happening there—and who they really are—the girls of Innovations Academy will learn to fight back.

Bringing the trademark plot twists and high-octane drama that made The Program a bestselling and award-winning series, Suzanne Young launches a new series that confronts some of today’s most pressing ethical questions.]]> 400 Suzanne Young 1534426132 b e a c h g o t h 2 I went into this I guess wanting a secret boarding school slash secrets slash gore and...
all I got was girl-power-high-school.]]> 3.94 2019 Girls with Sharp Sticks (Girls with Sharp Sticks, #1)
author: Suzanne Young
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2020/08/04
date added: 2020/08/04
shelves: could-not-finish, electronic-literature, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, young-adult
review:
Ugh I just simply don’t care.
I went into this I guess wanting a secret boarding school slash secrets slash gore and...
all I got was girl-power-high-school.
]]> How Far We Fall 37806850 From the author of bestselling phenomenon Daughter comes a thrilling exploration of a marriage consumed by ambition and revenge . . .

The perfect couple

Meeting Albie gave Beth a fresh start - a chance to leave her past behind. Now she has her new husband; an ambitious, talented young neurosurgeon.

The perfect marriage

Their marriage gives Beth the safe haven she's always wanted - with just one catch. Albie has no idea of the secrets she's keeping. He doesn't know that years ago, Beth had an affair with Ted, the boss helping Albie's star ascend. Nor that the affair's devastating ending will have consequences for their own future.

The perfect storm

So when Ted's generous patronage begins to sour, Beth senses everything she's built could crumble. And she sees an opportunity. To satisfy Albie's ambitions, and her own obsessive desire for revenge . . .

She'll keep her marriage and her secret safe.

But how far will the fall take them?

'A modern Macbeth, with a compelling sense of place, good twists, and a tense, intense ending' Sarah Vaughan, bestselling author of Anatomy of a Scandal]]> 384 Jane Shemilt 0718183495 b e a c h g o t h 1 I didn’t even get to the murders before I gave up so there was nothing thrilling at all about this for me. Sigh.]]> 3.11 2018 How Far We Fall
author: Jane Shemilt
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2018
rating: 1
read at: 2020/07/01
date added: 2020/07/01
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week, far-fetched-asf
review:
Wow I couldn’t care less about this book. Everyone said it got good after 200 pages so I persevered... plus I love this author so I gave it 110% but FARRRR OUT does anyone even like these characters? I couldn’t give a single fuck about any of them. And this whole hospital setting was too much for me, after working in theatre and hearing the rumours about every surgeon and his “special nurse� I couldn’t be effed wasting time reading about it.
I didn’t even get to the murders before I gave up so there was nothing thrilling at all about this for me. Sigh.
]]> The Wife Stalker 44801898
Meanwhile, Joanna has been waiting patiently for Leo, the charismatic man she fell in love with all those years ago, to re-emerge from the severe depression that has engulfed him. Though she’s thankful when Leo returns to his charming, energetic self, paying attention again to Evie and Stelli, the children they both love beyond measure, Joanna is shocked to discover that it’s not her loving support that’s sparked his renewed happiness—it’s something else.

Piper. Leo has fallen head over heels for the flaky, New Age-y newcomer, and unrepentant and resolute, he’s more than willing to leave Joanna behind, along with everything they’ve built. Of course, he assures her, she can still see the children.

Joanna is devastated—and determined to find something, anything, to use against this woman who has stolen her life and her true love. As she digs deeper into Piper’s past, Joanna begins to unearth disturbing secrets . . . but when she confides to her therapist that she fears for the lives of her ex-husband and children, her concerns are dismissed as paranoia. Can she find the proof she needs in time to save them?]]> 400 Liv Constantine 0008363838 b e a c h g o t h 1 3.68 2020 The Wife Stalker
author: Liv Constantine
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2020
rating: 1
read at: 2020/06/30
date added: 2020/06/30
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, eye-roll-into-next-week, not-even-at-gunpoint
review:
What can I say... books about cheating just aren’t for me.
]]> The Death of Mrs. Westaway 36373481
Soon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased…where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the centre of it.]]> 368 Ruth Ware 1501156217 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.79 2018 The Death of Mrs. Westaway
author: Ruth Ware
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2020/06/30
date added: 2020/06/30
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, eye-roll-into-next-week
review:
I can confirm that I do not care at all about Harriet or this already way overdone storyline, plot twist or no plot twist. Last Ruth Ware book for me, I think
]]> <![CDATA[The Spider and the Fly: A Writer, a Murderer and a Story of Obsession]]> 28594388
“Extraordinarily suspenseful and truly gut-wrenching. . . . A must-read.”—Gillian Flynn, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Gone Girl

In this superb work of literary true crime—a spellbinding combination of memoir and psychological suspense—a female journalist chronicles her unusual connection with a convicted serial killer and her search to understand the darkness inside us.

"Well, well, Claudia. Can I call you Claudia? I’ll have to give it to you, when confronted at least you’re honest, as honest as any reporter. . . . You want to go into the depths of my mind and into my past. I want a peek into yours. It is only fair, isn’t it?"—Kendall Francois

In September 1998, young reporter Claudia Rowe was working as a stringer for the New York Times in Poughkeepsie, New York, when local police discovered the bodies of eight women stashed in the attic and basement of the small colonial home that Kendall Francois, a painfully polite twenty-seven-year-old community college student, shared with his parents and sister.

Growing up amid the safe, bourgeois affluence of New York City, Rowe had always been secretly fascinated by the darkness, and soon became obsessed with the story and with Francois. She was consumed with the desire to understand just how a man could abduct and strangle eight women—and how a family could live for two years, seemingly unaware, in a house with the victims� rotting corpses. She also hoped to uncover what humanity, if any, a murderer could maintain in the wake of such monstrous evil.

Reaching out after Francois was arrested, Rowe and the serial killer began a dizzying four-year conversation about cruelty, compassion, and control; an unusual and provocative relationship that would eventually lead her to the abyss, forcing her to clearly see herself and her own past—and why she was drawn to danger.]]> 287 Claudia Rowe 0062416146 b e a c h g o t h 1 3.21 2017 The Spider and the Fly: A Writer, a Murderer and a Story of Obsession
author: Claudia Rowe
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2017
rating: 1
read at: 2020/06/27
date added: 2020/06/27
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, non-fic
review:
The book version of clickbait. Basically nothing we don’t already know. Except about Rowe’s life and her showing off her writing “skills�. She writes well, it’s not sh*t writing by any means, but it seeps through her words how this book is all about her and nothing about true crime.
]]> <![CDATA[Anthropology of an American Girl]]> 6393809
Self-published in 2003, Hilary Thayer Hamann’s Anthropology of an American Girl touched a nerve among readers, who identified with the sexual and intellectual awakening of its heroine, a young woman on the brink of adulthood. A moving depiction of the transformative power of first love, Hamann’s first novel follows Eveline Auerbach from her high school years in East Hampton, New York, in the 1970s through her early adulthood in the moneyed, high-pressured Manhattan of the 1980s.

Centering on Evie’s fragile relationship with her family and her thwarted love affair with Harrison Rourke, a professional boxer, the novel is both a love story and an exploration of the difficulty of finding one’s place in the world. As Evie surrenders to the dazzling emotional highs of love and the crippling loneliness of heartbreak, she strives to reconcile her identity with the constraints that all relationships—whether those familial or romantic, uplifting to the spirit or quietly detrimental—inherently place on us. Though she stumbles and strains against social conventions, Evie remains a strong yet sensitive observer of the world around her, often finding beauty and meaning in unexpected places.

Newly edited and revised since its original publication, Anthropology of an American Girl is an extraordinary piece of writing, original in its vision and thrilling in its execution.]]> 624 Hilary Thayer Hamann 0385527144 b e a c h g o t h 2 Someone told me this was “catcher in the rye for the 20 year old woman� and... that person canNOT be trusted. You lost me at only a couple pages in, I mean between how much this author thinks she’s being so “deep� with the weird beautiful philosophical thoughts thrown in everywhere amongst the utter NOTHING THATS HAPPENING and the in depth description of Eveline’s dreams I mean... is there really almost 600 pages of this? Gag. ]]> 3.31 2003 Anthropology of an American Girl
author: Hilary Thayer Hamann
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2003
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2020/06/06
shelves: own-tbr, could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week
review:
I don’t care. I don’t careeeeeeee.
Someone told me this was “catcher in the rye for the 20 year old woman� and... that person canNOT be trusted. You lost me at only a couple pages in, I mean between how much this author thinks she’s being so “deep� with the weird beautiful philosophical thoughts thrown in everywhere amongst the utter NOTHING THATS HAPPENING and the in depth description of Eveline’s dreams I mean... is there really almost 600 pages of this? Gag.
]]> Garnethill (Garnethill, #1) 94177
She soon uncovers a trail of deception and repressed scandal that could clear her name - or make her the next victim.]]> 348 Denise Mina 0786708395 b e a c h g o t h 0 3.83 1998 Garnethill (Garnethill, #1)
author: Denise Mina
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at: 2020/06/06
date added: 2020/06/06
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature
review:
Where’s my head at? I don’t know but I couldn’t finish this book if I was given a decade to do it. The way my life is now, being a mum, I need something that DEMands to be read, not something that’s just an interesting way to pass the time.
]]> The Devil Inside 48929760 Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Revelation 2:10

In a peaceful coastal town, a young woman is found brutally murdered, a piece of scripture held tightly in her hand. Local detective Charlotte Callaghan is put on the case, and she’s glad for the distraction � Gull Bay can be a hard place to keep a secret, and she’s holding on to a few.

After Charlotte asks her brother, Father Joseph Callaghan, about the verse, her suspicions fall on his parishioners. Then a second victim is found, along with another biblical message.

A dark betrayal is concealed within the small community. For Charlotte, there’s something personal about this case, something that threatens the very core of her beliefs. Can she unravel this mystery before it tears her town apart?

A gripping crime novel about murder, betrayal, and the monsters who hide in plain sight.



‘A world where evil begets evil, none of the good guys can trust each other and the bad guy has a hell of an axe to grind.� � Jack Heath, bestselling author of Hangman]]> 318 D.L. Hicks 192570081X b e a c h g o t h 2 If you hadn’t read a lot of crime/mystery in the past, im sure this would be a 4 stars for you, but I couldn’t get past the recycled police jargon, forensic explanations and overdone typical police characters.
Gripping storyline though - I wish this was written better cause it’s dark undertones were awesome. ]]> 3.72 The Devil Inside
author: D.L. Hicks
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.72
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2020/05/25
date added: 2020/05/25
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, ended-up-skim-reading, eye-roll-into-next-week
review:
The shoddy writing ruined this for me but it was the cliches that were the last nail in the coffin.
If you hadn’t read a lot of crime/mystery in the past, im sure this would be a 4 stars for you, but I couldn’t get past the recycled police jargon, forensic explanations and overdone typical police characters.
Gripping storyline though - I wish this was written better cause it’s dark undertones were awesome.
]]> Babes in the Wood 52736046 With unique access to the officers charged with catching the killer, former senior detective Graham Bartlett and bestselling author Peter James tell the compelling inside story of the investigation as the net tightens around local man Russell Bishop. The trial that follows is one of the most infamous in the history of Brighton policing � a shock result sees Bishop walk free.

Three years later, Graham is working in Brighton CID when a seven-year-old girl is abducted and left to die. She survives . . . and Bishop’s name comes up as a suspect. Is history repeating itself? Can the police put him away this time, and will he ever be made to answer for his past horrendous crimes? Both gripping police procedural and an insight into the motivations of a truly evil man, Babes in the Wood by Graham Bartlett with Peter James is a fascinating account of what became a thirty-two year fight for justice.

]]> 336 Graham Bartlett 1529025575 b e a c h g o t h 2
I don’t even know. But after a week of trying so desperately to get into this book I thought....you know what - fuck it. ]]> 4.17 2020 Babes in the Wood
author: Graham Bartlett
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2020/05/07
date added: 2020/05/07
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, read-in-the-2020-isolation
review:
I have no idea why this was so HARD to get into or care about, it seemed to be written well and was a super dark crime and miscarriage of justice so. Why. Didn’t. I. Like. It.

I don’t even know. But after a week of trying so desperately to get into this book I thought....you know what - fuck it.
]]> The Arrangement 42201920
Though more than thirty years her senior, Gabe, a handsome corporate finance attorney, seems like the perfect candidate, and within a month, they are madly in love. At least, Nat is…Gabe already has a family, whom he has no intention of leaving.

So when he abruptly ends things, Nat can’t let go. She begins drinking heavily and stalking him: watching him at work, spying on his wife, even befriending his daughter, who is not much younger than she is. But Gabe’s not about to let his sugar baby destroy his perfect life. What was supposed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement devolves into a nightmare of deception, obsession, and, when a body is found near Gabe’s posh Upper East Side apartment, murder.]]> 343 Robyn Harding 198211049X b e a c h g o t h 1 I felt like it was something I’d find on wattpad or a tumblr fan fiction, this is written so badly. Every storyline, every character background just felt like filler for what the author really wanted to write about - sex for money.
I couldn’t stop cringing at the “subtle� introduction to sugar babying ....”omg HOW DO YOU DO IT AVA? Have money and a nice apartment at our age?�
]]> 3.70 2019 The Arrangement
author: Robyn Harding
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2019
rating: 1
read at: 2020/04/16
date added: 2020/04/15
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, eye-roll-into-next-week, read-in-the-2020-isolation
review:
CRINGE I couldn’t get past 200 pages of this one.
I felt like it was something I’d find on wattpad or a tumblr fan fiction, this is written so badly. Every storyline, every character background just felt like filler for what the author really wanted to write about - sex for money.
I couldn’t stop cringing at the “subtle� introduction to sugar babying ....”omg HOW DO YOU DO IT AVA? Have money and a nice apartment at our age?�

]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Cage (Faye's Revenge, #1)]]> 53104610 An exhilarating new novel from a global superstar--a sexy, over-the-top psychological thriller that tells the story of the scorned wife of a billionaire and her delicious plot to get her revenge and bring him to his knees.

Faye has loved Jack since they were students at business school. Jack, the perpetual golden boy, grew up wealthy, unlike Faye, who has worked hard to bury a dark past. When Jack needs help launching a new company, Faye leaves school to support him, waitressing by day and working as his strategist by night. With the business soaring, Faye and Jack have a baby, and Faye finds herself at home, caring for their daughter, wealthier than she ever imagined, but more and more removed from the excitement of the business world. And none of the perks of wealth make up for the fact that Jack has begun to treat her coldly, undermining her intelligence and forgetting all she sacrificed for his success. When Faye discovers that he's having an affair, the polished facade of their life cracks wide open. Faye is alone, emotionally shattered, and financially devastated--but hell hath no fury like a woman with a violent past bent on vengeance. Jack is about to get exactly what he deserves--and so much more. In this splashy, electrifying story of sex, betrayal, and secrets, a woman's revenge is a brutal but beautiful thing.]]> 352 Camilla Läckberg 0525657975 b e a c h g o t h 1 SPOILERS AHEAD

After she had sex with the musician in the cinema, I decided I couldn’t go on. I love Camille Läckberg’s crime novels and I was so excited to try this psycho-female-revenge novel that when it didn’t quite hit home, it disappointed me far more than it should have.
Faye is a weakling and I couldn’t stand her continued whining about Jack not loving her enough... only for her to shag the first guy that txts her. It’s not fitting the domestically-abused-wife aesthetic for me.
I could get over that if it was just Faye that was off but the whole book (or the part I could wade though) was like that and I might be in quarantine but I’m not that desperate. Yet. ]]> 3.72 2019 The Golden Cage (Faye's Revenge, #1)
author: Camilla Läckberg
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2019
rating: 1
read at: 2020/04/02
date added: 2020/04/10
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, eye-roll-into-next-week, read-in-the-2020-isolation
review:
I confess I didn’t finish this book.
SPOILERS AHEAD

After she had sex with the musician in the cinema, I decided I couldn’t go on. I love Camille Läckberg’s crime novels and I was so excited to try this psycho-female-revenge novel that when it didn’t quite hit home, it disappointed me far more than it should have.
Faye is a weakling and I couldn’t stand her continued whining about Jack not loving her enough... only for her to shag the first guy that txts her. It’s not fitting the domestically-abused-wife aesthetic for me.
I could get over that if it was just Faye that was off but the whole book (or the part I could wade though) was like that and I might be in quarantine but I’m not that desperate. Yet.
]]> <![CDATA[The Rabbit Hunter (Joona Linna, #6)]]> 36448430
The sixth gripping thriller in Lars Kepler’s bestselling series featuring Joona Linna. Perfect for fans of Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo.

There’s a face at the window.
A stranger wearing a mask stands in the shadow of a garden. He’s watching his first victim through the window. He will kill him slowly, make it last � play him a nursery rhyme � make him pay.

A killer in your house.
There’s only one person the police can turn to � ex-Detective Joona Linna � but he’s serving time in a high-security prison. So they offer him a chance to secure his freedom: help superintendent Saga Bauer track down the vicious killer known as The Rabbit Hunter, before he strikes again.

Only one man can stop him.
Soon another three victims have been murdered and Stockholm is in the grip of terror. Joona Linna must catch a disturbed predator, whose trail of destruction leads back to one horrific night of violence � with consequences more terrifying than anyone could have imagined…]]> 528 Lars Kepler 0008205906 b e a c h g o t h 2 4.06 2016 The Rabbit Hunter (Joona Linna, #6)
author: Lars Kepler
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2020/03/10
date added: 2020/03/10
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, eye-roll-into-next-week
review:
I usually am unruffled by gore trauma, but this book and it’s rape/torture scenes were..uncomfortable to say the least. That + the descriptions of women in this novel (a husband and wife TEAM wrote this? Hard to imagine a wife being chill with how the women in this novel are “beautiful� and nothing more but whatever) is enough for me to stop reading.
]]> The Body Lies 42180216 A dark, thrilling new novel from the best-selling author of Longbourn: a work of riveting psychological suspense that grapples with how to live as a woman in the world--or in the pages of a book--when the stakes are dangerously high.

When a young writer accepts a job at a university in the remote English countryside, it's meant to be a fresh start, away from the bustle of London and the scene of a violent assault she is desperate to forget. But despite the distractions of her new life and the demands of single motherhood, her nerves continue to jangle. To make matters worse, during class a vicious debate about violence against women inflames the tensions and mounting rivalries in her creative writing group. When a troubled student starts turning in chapters that blur the lines between fiction and reality, the professor recognizes herself as the main character in his book--and he has written her a horrific fate. Will she be able to stop life imitating art before it's too late? At once a breathless cat-and-mouse game and a layered interrogation of the fetishization of the female body, The Body Lies gives us an essential story for our time that will have you checking the locks on your doors.]]> 288 Jo Baker 0525656111 b e a c h g o t h 2 But, sadly, it’s not the best book.
It’s a slow burner - more drama than thrill - but that doesn’t ruin it. The main character ruined it for me.
Moves away from her husband for a job and is surprised when he has an affair? I mean... who separates and it ENHANCES a marriage?
Her willingness to engage with “incredibly good looking� students? It was a bit gross for me... “he looked up at me with those eyes� like ??? You’re married, with a kid, teaching a lecture. I don’t know... it was a bit insta-love for someone who has a fuckton of commitment going on.
I did really enjoy the way this was written and debated giving it 3 stars because of the writing itself but then once she starts getting stalked and obsessed over I kept rolling my eyes at how she NEVER REPORTS IT. Ever. Like, girl, take it to HR.
]]> 3.39 2019 The Body Lies
author: Jo Baker
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2020/03/02
date added: 2020/03/01
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, netflix-pls-make-this-a-series, psychos
review:
This book would make an EPIC tv series.
But, sadly, it’s not the best book.
It’s a slow burner - more drama than thrill - but that doesn’t ruin it. The main character ruined it for me.
Moves away from her husband for a job and is surprised when he has an affair? I mean... who separates and it ENHANCES a marriage?
Her willingness to engage with “incredibly good looking� students? It was a bit gross for me... “he looked up at me with those eyes� like ??? You’re married, with a kid, teaching a lecture. I don’t know... it was a bit insta-love for someone who has a fuckton of commitment going on.
I did really enjoy the way this was written and debated giving it 3 stars because of the writing itself but then once she starts getting stalked and obsessed over I kept rolling my eyes at how she NEVER REPORTS IT. Ever. Like, girl, take it to HR.

]]> <![CDATA[More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction]]> 137918 Prozac Nation, to astonishing literary acclaim. A cultural phenomenon by age twenty-six, she had fame, money, respecteverything she had always wanted except that one, true thing: happiness.
For all of her professional success, Wurtzel felt like a failure. She had lost friends and lovers, every magazine job she'd held, and way too much weight. She couldn't write, and her second book was past due. But when her doctor prescribed Ritalin to help her focus-and boost the effects of her antidepressants -- Wurtzel was spared. The Ritalin worked. And worked. The pills became her sugar...the sweetness in the days that have none. Soon she began grinding up the Ritalin and snorting it. Then came the cocaine, then more Ritalin, then more cocaine. Then I need more. I always need more. For all of my life I have needed more...
More, Now, Again is the brutally honest, often painful account of Wurtzel's descent into drug addiction. It is also a love story: How Wurtzel managed to break free of her relationship with Ritalin and learned to love life, and herself, is at the heart of this ultimately uplifting memoir that no reader will soon forget.]]> 336 Elizabeth Wurtzel 0743223314 b e a c h g o t h 2 I know deep deep down we all love ourselves but the way she whines and whines and whines. And I feel... embellished things a bit. “The first time I got stoned was at a concert. It was Neil Young I think�.
You think or you know?
Does it just sound cooler to say Neil Young?
I know I’m splitting hairs here, I mean, it really doesn’t matter... but the way she talks about herself in such a “poor me� way makes me hate moments like this all the more.
But then, what did I expect because I hated Prozac Nation too so....]]> 3.88 2000 More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction
author: Elizabeth Wurtzel
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2000
rating: 2
read at: 2020/02/26
date added: 2020/02/25
shelves: could-not-finish, eye-roll-into-next-week, non-fic
review:
Elizabeth Wurtzel LOVES HERSELF.
I know deep deep down we all love ourselves but the way she whines and whines and whines. And I feel... embellished things a bit. “The first time I got stoned was at a concert. It was Neil Young I think�.
You think or you know?
Does it just sound cooler to say Neil Young?
I know I’m splitting hairs here, I mean, it really doesn’t matter... but the way she talks about herself in such a “poor me� way makes me hate moments like this all the more.
But then, what did I expect because I hated Prozac Nation too so....
]]> Good Girls Lie 43193837 J.T. Ellison’s pulse-pounding new psychological thriller examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to in order to protect their secrets.

Goode girls don’t lie�

Perched atop a hill in the tiny town of Marchburg, Virginia, The Goode School is a prestigious prep school known as a Silent Ivy. The boarding school of choice for daughters of the rich and influential, it accepts only the best and the brightest. Its elite status, long-held traditions and honor code are ideal for preparing exceptional young women for brilliant futures at Ivy League universities and beyond.

But a stranger has come to Goode, and this ivy has turned poisonous.

In a world where appearances are everything, as long as students pretend to follow the rules, no one questions the cruelties of the secret societies or the dubious behavior of the privileged young women who expect to get away with murder.

When a popular student is found dead, the truth cannot be ignored. Rumors suggest she was struggling with a secret that drove her to suicide.

But look closely� because there are truths and there are lies, and then there is everything that really happened.]]> 387 J.T. Ellison 1488023565 b e a c h g o t h 2
Ughhhhhhhjjh I HATED ASH.
I hated the way this book told you how to feel, instead of showed you.
I hated The Goode Academy.
I hated the honour pledge - a school full of girls and no one is allowed to lie or keep secrets? And we’re meant to be shocked when *gasp* these girls have secrets???
GIMME A BREAK]]> 3.81 2019 Good Girls Lie
author: J.T. Ellison
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2020/02/23
date added: 2020/02/23
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, electronic-literature, eye-roll-into-next-week, next-secret-history-claim, young-adult
review:
DNF 46%

Ughhhhhhhjjh I HATED ASH.
I hated the way this book told you how to feel, instead of showed you.
I hated The Goode Academy.
I hated the honour pledge - a school full of girls and no one is allowed to lie or keep secrets? And we’re meant to be shocked when *gasp* these girls have secrets???
GIMME A BREAK
]]> Wilder Girls 42505366
It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.]]> 357 Rory Power 0525645586 b e a c h g o t h 2
This is sapphic feminist horror - so yes, it’s gory and gross, just like horror should be, but there’s also a lot of gay-ness, feminine heroism and “subtle implications� that girls can be badasses too and those things ruined it for me.

I can’t help but feel by trying to make this book “I’m so hip and trendy and inclusive because I have lesbian heroes� that the horror story was overshadowed and the horror story was really what I was here for so..

That + the way this was written annoyed me. Sometimes it was utterly perfect in its prose and other times I was so confused at to who was what and what was who. “I’m gate, she’s boat but sometimes we switch�. Sorry, what?]]> 3.46 2019 Wilder Girls
author: Rory Power
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2020/02/17
date added: 2020/02/16
shelves: could-not-finish, electronic-literature, ended-up-skim-reading, young-adult
review:
I had no idea what this was about because all I saw was the BEAUTIFUL cover and the word “horror� caught my eye and I thought damn this might be my new favourite. So very wrong I was.

This is sapphic feminist horror - so yes, it’s gory and gross, just like horror should be, but there’s also a lot of gay-ness, feminine heroism and “subtle implications� that girls can be badasses too and those things ruined it for me.

I can’t help but feel by trying to make this book “I’m so hip and trendy and inclusive because I have lesbian heroes� that the horror story was overshadowed and the horror story was really what I was here for so..

That + the way this was written annoyed me. Sometimes it was utterly perfect in its prose and other times I was so confused at to who was what and what was who. “I’m gate, she’s boat but sometimes we switch�. Sorry, what?
]]> <![CDATA[Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)]]> 13538873
Clay Jannon tells how serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has sent him from Web Drone to night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. After just a few days on the job, Clay realizes just how curious this store is.

A few customers come in repeatedly without buying anything. Instead they “check out� obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. All runs according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes.

He embarks on a complex analysis of the customers� behavior and ropes in friends to help. Once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore. A quest to New York City dips in a world conspiracy for eternal life. The current of romance pulls Clay onward.]]> 288 Robin Sloan 0374214913 b e a c h g o t h 2 I’ll forgive the elementary level writing, the 2 dimensional characters and the awful mix of “old books and new tech� because this bookstore sounds awesome.
Until, 100 pages in... even that wasn’t holding it up for me anymore. DNF.]]> 3.71 2012 Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)
author: Robin Sloan
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2020/02/03
date added: 2020/02/02
shelves: could-not-finish, recommended-to-me
review:
Started out great - this bookstore sounds like the Restricted Section of Hogwarts library and its customers frequenters of Diagon Alley.
I’ll forgive the elementary level writing, the 2 dimensional characters and the awful mix of “old books and new tech� because this bookstore sounds awesome.
Until, 100 pages in... even that wasn’t holding it up for me anymore. DNF.
]]> Trust Exercise 42649505
The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school's walls--until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true--though it's not false, either. It takes until the book's stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place--revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi's Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.]]> 272 Susan Choi 178816167X b e a c h g o t h 2

I... literally have no idea how to rate this. Was it good? Depends on what you want from this book, I guess.
If you go into this with the idea that is isn’t really a coming-of-age novel but more like... a fictional study on a more pretentious, super weird version of the TV series “Glee�, then I’ll think you’ll appreciate it in its true beauty and give it 5 stars.

There was so much I loved about this, the biggest reason being that FINALLY a book about teenagers that doesn’t read like it’s written by a teenager. No bullshit txt language, no “omg his eyes were as blue as the ocean and I can’t speak when I’m around him� waffle, just purely the dysfunction and miscommunication that is relationships when you’re barely 16 but somehow in love. This part of the book was absolutely perfect.
And I know a lot of people will find this writing pretentious and “so drama-student-y� with this insane drama teacher who clearly has watched too much Dead Poets Society..but thats what I loved about it. Mr. Kingsley was insane and awesome.
I loved that the Trust Exercises were weird and strange and confronting.
But then, came the dreaded page 131 where its now Karen’s turn to narrate.
Who tf is Karen you ask?
Exactly.
Karen pops out of nowhere and goes on to tell you that Sarah embellished the story you just got entangled into and that it was all bullshit.
Sorry you guys, it’s all lies.
Which should have been a good shock to the system of how we all remember things in different ways and how the emotional toll of being almost sixteen can warp interactions and experiences. But instead, it’s just weird.
I think, if you regard this book as an interesting piece of literature art.. you’ll enjoy this. If you go into this wanting a good novel, one that takes you into its world and gets you attached to its characters.. you’re gonna hate it. ]]> 3.17 2019 Trust Exercise
author: Susan Choi
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2020/02/02
date added: 2020/02/02
shelves: could-not-finish, cupids-library, ended-up-skim-reading, hate-that-i-enjoyed-this, next-secret-history-claim
review:
**not really spoilers but like.. spoilers**


I... literally have no idea how to rate this. Was it good? Depends on what you want from this book, I guess.
If you go into this with the idea that is isn’t really a coming-of-age novel but more like... a fictional study on a more pretentious, super weird version of the TV series “Glee�, then I’ll think you’ll appreciate it in its true beauty and give it 5 stars.

There was so much I loved about this, the biggest reason being that FINALLY a book about teenagers that doesn’t read like it’s written by a teenager. No bullshit txt language, no “omg his eyes were as blue as the ocean and I can’t speak when I’m around him� waffle, just purely the dysfunction and miscommunication that is relationships when you’re barely 16 but somehow in love. This part of the book was absolutely perfect.
And I know a lot of people will find this writing pretentious and “so drama-student-y� with this insane drama teacher who clearly has watched too much Dead Poets Society..but thats what I loved about it. Mr. Kingsley was insane and awesome.
I loved that the Trust Exercises were weird and strange and confronting.
But then, came the dreaded page 131 where its now Karen’s turn to narrate.
Who tf is Karen you ask?
Exactly.
Karen pops out of nowhere and goes on to tell you that Sarah embellished the story you just got entangled into and that it was all bullshit.
Sorry you guys, it’s all lies.
Which should have been a good shock to the system of how we all remember things in different ways and how the emotional toll of being almost sixteen can warp interactions and experiences. But instead, it’s just weird.
I think, if you regard this book as an interesting piece of literature art.. you’ll enjoy this. If you go into this wanting a good novel, one that takes you into its world and gets you attached to its characters.. you’re gonna hate it.
]]> <![CDATA[My Sweet Audrina (Audrina, #1)]]> 805023 Audrina Adare wanted so to be as good as her sister. She knew her father could not love her as he loved her sister. Her sister was so special, so perfect -- and dead.
Now she will come face to face with the dangerous, terrifying secret that everyone knows. Everyone except...
My Sweet Audrina
--back cover]]> 403 V.C. Andrews b e a c h g o t h 1 I even googled if V.C.Andrews was molested or something because heaps of her books involve incest and rape scenes and this is NEXT LEVEL.
I’m not one to throw the term “trigger warning� around like confetti but SERIOUSLY TRIGGER WARNINGS for all of the stuff you never want to read.
Sure, it’s almost like a train wreck in the way you can’t stop reading but I caught myself thinking “do I actually want this kind of trash in my brain?�.
The answer is no I fucking do not.

Ugh this book made my skin crawl and I feel like I need a shower after reading it, it’s so gross. ]]> 3.89 1982 My Sweet Audrina (Audrina, #1)
author: V.C. Andrews
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1982
rating: 1
read at: 2020/01/28
date added: 2020/01/28
shelves: could-not-finish, struck-a-cord
review:
I couldn’t get past 100 pages.. and not because of all the usual reasons I can’t finish a book (bad writing, flat characters, bullshit story etc etc) but because this book gave me the motherf*cking CREEPS.
I even googled if V.C.Andrews was molested or something because heaps of her books involve incest and rape scenes and this is NEXT LEVEL.
I’m not one to throw the term “trigger warning� around like confetti but SERIOUSLY TRIGGER WARNINGS for all of the stuff you never want to read.
Sure, it’s almost like a train wreck in the way you can’t stop reading but I caught myself thinking “do I actually want this kind of trash in my brain?�.
The answer is no I fucking do not.

Ugh this book made my skin crawl and I feel like I need a shower after reading it, it’s so gross.
]]> Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1) 43263680
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs� are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.]]> 461 Leigh Bardugo 1250313074 b e a c h g o t h 2
What the actual eff is wrong with me this is QUEEN BARDUGO ALEXA.

I could not for the life of me get into this, the characters were so bland, there’s heaps of intellectual jokes that I just didn’t get at all, so much information on spell casting and lingo of spells that I just had no idea about and after forcing myself to reach almost halfway, I gave up because nothing has really happened?? And, I admit, I read some other people’s reviews on this and they said almost nothing happens the entire book so CYA.

I. Don’t. Understand. This had everything going for it - Secret societies, occult, University, murder ugh ugh ugh why didn’t I like this. Maybe I’ll try it again one day? Or, more realistically, maybe it will continue to gather dust on my shelf while I plunge into the depths of my TBR for books I actually enjoy. ]]> 4.00 2019 Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2019/12/31
date added: 2019/12/30
shelves: could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading, far-fetched-asf, next-secret-history-claim, young-adult
review:
DNF @ 45%

What the actual eff is wrong with me this is QUEEN BARDUGO ALEXA.

I could not for the life of me get into this, the characters were so bland, there’s heaps of intellectual jokes that I just didn’t get at all, so much information on spell casting and lingo of spells that I just had no idea about and after forcing myself to reach almost halfway, I gave up because nothing has really happened?? And, I admit, I read some other people’s reviews on this and they said almost nothing happens the entire book so CYA.

I. Don’t. Understand. This had everything going for it - Secret societies, occult, University, murder ugh ugh ugh why didn’t I like this. Maybe I’ll try it again one day? Or, more realistically, maybe it will continue to gather dust on my shelf while I plunge into the depths of my TBR for books I actually enjoy.
]]> Based on a True Story 32878584 Based on a True Story is a chilling novel of suspense that will leave you questioning the truth and its significance long after you have turned the final page.]]> 384 Delphine de Vigan 1408878801 b e a c h g o t h 1 After L. moved in with Delphine I just thought "I don't even care if she kills you, I'm so done with this book". So I sped-read the ending. NOTHING WORTH WAITING FOR THERE.
Yes, it's creepy. Yes, it's odd.
No, it's not worth reading because of the horrible way this is written. Grammatically, that is.
I strongly blame the editor.
I feel like if this was translated correctly and "L." was given a psuedonym or even just written "L" with no FULL STOP after her initial, I think this would have been on par with GOTT creepy, main-character-loathing, psycho thriller where its not too gruesome but its totally addictive.
Instead, the translation was poor, bringing odd pauses in the novel where my brain would interject "that sentence just doesn't sound like it flows, it doesn't sound right".
And to ADD to that, they placed a full stop after L.'s initial every time she was mentioned.
Which was always.
So, in my head, I would stop the sentence after L. was mentioned.
Which was, after about 200 pages, inexcusable.
For example:


"I'd like to describe how L. came into my life. I'd like to describe the context that enabled L. to invade my private sphere, but it's not that simple."

These stars, this DNF shelf I've put this book on is 100% my point of view.... but I just couldn't.
Life is too short for broken up sentences and translations that suck.]]> 3.57 2015 Based on a True Story
author: Delphine de Vigan
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 1
read at: 2017/04/07
date added: 2019/12/17
shelves: could-not-finish, eye-roll-into-next-week, ended-up-skim-reading
review:
ughhhhh I just don't care anymore.
After L. moved in with Delphine I just thought "I don't even care if she kills you, I'm so done with this book". So I sped-read the ending. NOTHING WORTH WAITING FOR THERE.
Yes, it's creepy. Yes, it's odd.
No, it's not worth reading because of the horrible way this is written. Grammatically, that is.
I strongly blame the editor.
I feel like if this was translated correctly and "L." was given a psuedonym or even just written "L" with no FULL STOP after her initial, I think this would have been on par with GOTT creepy, main-character-loathing, psycho thriller where its not too gruesome but its totally addictive.
Instead, the translation was poor, bringing odd pauses in the novel where my brain would interject "that sentence just doesn't sound like it flows, it doesn't sound right".
And to ADD to that, they placed a full stop after L.'s initial every time she was mentioned.
Which was always.
So, in my head, I would stop the sentence after L. was mentioned.
Which was, after about 200 pages, inexcusable.
For example:


"I'd like to describe how L. came into my life. I'd like to describe the context that enabled L. to invade my private sphere, but it's not that simple."

These stars, this DNF shelf I've put this book on is 100% my point of view.... but I just couldn't.
Life is too short for broken up sentences and translations that suck.
]]> Gone, But Not Forgotten 80628 420 Phillip Margolin 0060737514 b e a c h g o t h 2 The story was good... until the "plot twist" which was beyond unbelievable.
The way this was written was very basic and it annoyed me incredibly how the author is a defense lawyer IRL but fabricated something so unbelievable law-wise as a plot twist.
I've watched enough SVU to think that this ending was ridiculous.
]]> 4.03 1993 Gone, But Not Forgotten
author: Phillip Margolin
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1993
rating: 2
read at: 2017/09/26
date added: 2019/12/17
shelves: creme-de-la-crime, could-not-finish, ended-up-skim-reading
review:
Oh god, no. CRINGE. This was so so cringe.
The story was good... until the "plot twist" which was beyond unbelievable.
The way this was written was very basic and it annoyed me incredibly how the author is a defense lawyer IRL but fabricated something so unbelievable law-wise as a plot twist.
I've watched enough SVU to think that this ending was ridiculous.

]]> <![CDATA[The String Diaries (The String Diaries #1)]]> 22208252
The String Diaries opens with Hannah frantically driving through the night -- her daughter asleep in the back, her husband bleeding out in the seat beside her. In the trunk of the car rests a cache of diaries dating back 200 years, tied and retied with strings through generations. The diaries carry the rules for survival that have been handed down from mother to daughter since the 19th century. But how can Hannah escape an enemy with the ability to look and sound like the people she loves?

Stephen Lloyd Jones's debut novel is a sweeping thriller that extends from the present day, to Oxford in the 1970s, to Hungary at the turn of the 19th century, all tracing back to a man from an ancient royal family with a consuming passion -- a boy who can change his shape, insert himself into the intimate lives of his victims, and destroy them.

If Hannah fails to end the chase now, her daughter is next in line. Only Hannah can decide how much she is willing to sacrifice to finally put a centuries-old curse to rest.]]> 449 Stephen Lloyd Jones 0316254452 b e a c h g o t h 3 Basically, in this book death is stalking an entire lineage - every descendant from a woman a man became obsessed with. He has sworn to kill everyone of her descendants and he’s bloody good at it too - morphing into any human possible makes the reader tend to second guess EVERY SINGLE PERSON.
I liked this, but I didn’t love it. And again, like bird box, I reckon I would love this as a series]]> 3.80 2013 The String Diaries (The String Diaries #1)
author: Stephen Lloyd Jones
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2019/01/30
date added: 2019/12/17
shelves: could-not-finish, far-fetched-asf, netflix-pls-make-this-a-series, ended-up-skim-reading
review:
This would make a brilliant Netflix series... but as a read, I’m not gonna rave about it.
Basically, in this book death is stalking an entire lineage - every descendant from a woman a man became obsessed with. He has sworn to kill everyone of her descendants and he’s bloody good at it too - morphing into any human possible makes the reader tend to second guess EVERY SINGLE PERSON.
I liked this, but I didn’t love it. And again, like bird box, I reckon I would love this as a series
]]> <![CDATA[Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland, #1)]]> 32075854
When Susan receives Alan's latest manuscript, in which Atticus Pünd investigates a murder at Pye Hall, an English manor house, she has no reason to think it will be any different from the others. There will be dead bodies, a cast of intriguing suspects, and plenty of red herrings and clues. But the more Susan reads, the more she realizes that there's another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript—one of ambition, jealousy, and greed—and that soon it will lead to murder.

Masterful, clever, and ruthlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage crime fiction.]]> 477 Anthony Horowitz 0062645226 b e a c h g o t h 2 In the way that Agatha’s novels are clean and not too gory, this was the same. In the way the characters reveal themselves overtime in Agatha’s work, this was the same. In the “shocking plot twist� - this was not the same. And, I admire Agatha’s ability to make the reader develop a connection to her characters, even when there are many of them. However, in Horowitz’s book, it look me a painstakingly long time to develop a connection or even a picture of what each character would look like. This was drawn out, slow and god, so boring. I felt like this was more of a coronation street drama instead of crime novel. The mystery within a mystery would have been fantastic.... had the **SPOILER ALERT** second mystery actually get solved? Instead it was left unfinished??? Um, who does this to a crime reader?
I put this on my DNF shelf because.. I don’t think skim reading the last third of the book really counts but I’m so glad it’s over. This wasn’t a bad book by any means, it’s just 900% not the kind of mystery I like to read. Give me shocking crimes over english family secrets any day of the week.]]> 3.93 2016 Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland, #1)
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2019/03/11
date added: 2019/12/17
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, ended-up-skim-reading
review:
Agatha Christie is a crime writing goddess so it’s a hefty call to state that your novel is a tribute to her.
In the way that Agatha’s novels are clean and not too gory, this was the same. In the way the characters reveal themselves overtime in Agatha’s work, this was the same. In the “shocking plot twist� - this was not the same. And, I admire Agatha’s ability to make the reader develop a connection to her characters, even when there are many of them. However, in Horowitz’s book, it look me a painstakingly long time to develop a connection or even a picture of what each character would look like. This was drawn out, slow and god, so boring. I felt like this was more of a coronation street drama instead of crime novel. The mystery within a mystery would have been fantastic.... had the **SPOILER ALERT** second mystery actually get solved? Instead it was left unfinished??? Um, who does this to a crime reader?
I put this on my DNF shelf because.. I don’t think skim reading the last third of the book really counts but I’m so glad it’s over. This wasn’t a bad book by any means, it’s just 900% not the kind of mystery I like to read. Give me shocking crimes over english family secrets any day of the week.
]]> Happy Like Murderers 1901816
'With his first forensic commitment to get behing the tabloid headlines Burn brilliantly reinvents reportorial writing ... Startlingly original.' - Matt Seaton, Esquire

'Long, brilliant, horrifying ... Burn researched with great care every detail (my God, the detail) of what went on in the Wests' household over decades.' - Libby Purves, The Times

'Brilliant, bleak, unflinching ... Layer after layer, level after level, deeper and deeper, until, at last, a pricture is constructed ... His interpretations make sense. They feel right. They explain the inexplicable.' - Deborah Orr, Guardian]]> 390 Gordon Burn 0571209971 b e a c h g o t h 1 Serial killer COUPLE? Unbelievable.
And yet, somehow this author managed to completely butcher this story. Jumping in and out of timelines can be a brilliant way to keep your reader on edge... but this was insane, almost like following the train of thought of someone with ADD. One minute you’re reading about Rose and Fred’s first attack and then you’re reading about Rose’s parents entire life history. And I mean entire, from Rose’s grandmothers birth story, Fred and Rose’s neighbours life story and their first victim’s YEAR BY YEAR from the day her parents met, conceived her and raised her up until moment she met the Wests. 62 pages of the beginning of this book I thought Carol was going to be a major character throughout the whole story. But no no, she escapes and then she’s gone. 62 pages of history on her and then POOF cya.
And don’t even get me started on the sexual scenes. I know the vague story behind Fred and Rose West and was hoping this book would give me so psychological insight on the inner workings of these two but instead this author graphically (and not in a forensic/crime scene way) described the sex scenes over and over and over. I feel like I read about “Fred’s need to turn every sentence into a disgusting sexual conversation� a million times before I gave this book up and only got to page 160!
Yes, I expected this couple to be perverse. And I am almost never put off by detail of heinous crimes. But instead of relating gory facts, this book almost glorified these acts, so severely so that at some points I felt like I was reading torture porn instead of how this couple got away with these killings for so long and what made them tick.
Written terribly, bored the eff out of me, and could do with mentioning scenes only once making the book half its size, this was a major disappointment.
Do yourself a favour and watch a YouTube doco on these two killers instead. ]]> 3.90 1998 Happy Like Murderers
author: Gordon Burn
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1998
rating: 1
read at: 2019/05/20
date added: 2019/12/17
shelves: could-not-finish, non-fic, psychos, ended-up-skim-reading
review:
I absolutely adore true crime. When I found this book in my local op shop I was so excited to get into it - a
Serial killer COUPLE? Unbelievable.
And yet, somehow this author managed to completely butcher this story. Jumping in and out of timelines can be a brilliant way to keep your reader on edge... but this was insane, almost like following the train of thought of someone with ADD. One minute you’re reading about Rose and Fred’s first attack and then you’re reading about Rose’s parents entire life history. And I mean entire, from Rose’s grandmothers birth story, Fred and Rose’s neighbours life story and their first victim’s YEAR BY YEAR from the day her parents met, conceived her and raised her up until moment she met the Wests. 62 pages of the beginning of this book I thought Carol was going to be a major character throughout the whole story. But no no, she escapes and then she’s gone. 62 pages of history on her and then POOF cya.
And don’t even get me started on the sexual scenes. I know the vague story behind Fred and Rose West and was hoping this book would give me so psychological insight on the inner workings of these two but instead this author graphically (and not in a forensic/crime scene way) described the sex scenes over and over and over. I feel like I read about “Fred’s need to turn every sentence into a disgusting sexual conversation� a million times before I gave this book up and only got to page 160!
Yes, I expected this couple to be perverse. And I am almost never put off by detail of heinous crimes. But instead of relating gory facts, this book almost glorified these acts, so severely so that at some points I felt like I was reading torture porn instead of how this couple got away with these killings for so long and what made them tick.
Written terribly, bored the eff out of me, and could do with mentioning scenes only once making the book half its size, this was a major disappointment.
Do yourself a favour and watch a YouTube doco on these two killers instead.
]]> The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone 40853191 'We lost all three girls that summer. Let them slip away like the words of some half-remembered song and when one came back, she wasn't the one we were trying to recall to begin with.'

So begins Tikka Molloy's recounting of the summer of 1992 - the summer the Van Apfel sisters, Hannah, the beautiful Cordelia and Ruth - disappear.

Eleven and one-sixth years old, Tikka is the precocious narrator of this fabulously endearing coming-of-age story, set in an eerie Australian river valley suburb with an unexplained stench. The Van Apfel girls vanish from the valley during the school's 'Showstopper' concert, held at the outdoor amphitheatre by the river. While the search for the sisters unites the small community on Sydney's urban fringe, the mystery of their disappearance remains unsolved forever.

Brilliantly observed, sharp, lively, funny and entirely endearing, this novel is part mystery, part coming-of-age story - and quintessentially Australian. Think The Virgin Suicides meets Jasper Jones meets Picnic at Hanging Rock.]]> 304 Felicity McLean 1460755065 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.39 2019 The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone
author: Felicity McLean
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2019/12/17
date added: 2019/12/17
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime, ended-up-skim-reading
review:
I hated how this was written, how she spent so much time talking about the "dingo stole my baby" case which had nothing to do with the girls and so I started to stray while I was reading, and that’s how I figure the book is basically over for me. So I read a few other reviews, to see if they could inspire me to keep preservering and FOUND OUT YOU NEVER FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS TO THE GIRLS. No. I refuse to keep trudging for no reward.
]]> <![CDATA[Special Topics in Calamity Physics]]> 3483
Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer.]]> 514 Marisha Pessl 067003777X b e a c h g o t h 3 But the analogies. And the (references to essays and papers, 1956) drove me nuts.
Marisha wrote one of my most favourite books, Night Film. And this was one of my least? I gotta admire the ability to be so completely different.]]> 3.72 2006 Special Topics in Calamity Physics
author: Marisha Pessl
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2017/05/10
date added: 2019/11/17
shelves: could-not-finish, pretentious-classics, recommended-to-me, next-secret-history-claim
review:
I really really REALLY wanted to love this.
But the analogies. And the (references to essays and papers, 1956) drove me nuts.
Marisha wrote one of my most favourite books, Night Film. And this was one of my least? I gotta admire the ability to be so completely different.
]]> Sympathy 27280467 An electrifying debut novel of obsessive love, family secrets,and the dangers of living our lives online

At twenty-three, Alice Hare leaves England for New York. She becomes fixated on Mizuko Himura, a Japanese writer living in New York, whose life story has strange parallels to her own and whom she believes is her “internet twin.� What seems to Mizuko like a chance encounter with Alice is anything but—after all, in the age of connectivity, nothing is coincidence.Their subsequent relationship is doomed from the outset, exposing a tangle of lies and sexual encounters as three families across the globe collide, and the most ancient of questions—where do we come from—is answered just by searching online.

In its heady evocation of everything from Haruki Murakami to Patricia Highsmith to Edith Wharton, Sympathy is utterly original—a thrilling tale of obsession, doubling, blood ties, and our tormented efforts to connect in the digital age.]]> 416 Olivia Sudjic 0544836626 b e a c h g o t h 2 could-not-finish, young-adult Sounds like this was written for me.
Except I was so wrong.
This. Was. So. Slow. I started skim reading at page 80 thinking maybe I was missing something. The descriptions in this book and the drawn out moments in time where nothing much happens? YAWN
The obsession was real and v dark... but everything else about this book was so bad I forgot all about the reason I started reading this in the first place.
Back the library you go, disappointing book.]]> 3.14 2017 Sympathy
author: Olivia Sudjic
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2019/03/17
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, young-adult
review:
� Obsession via social media and betrayal, this is a dark psychopathic novel, as if murikami had written a thriller for the millennial age�
Sounds like this was written for me.
Except I was so wrong.
This. Was. So. Slow. I started skim reading at page 80 thinking maybe I was missing something. The descriptions in this book and the drawn out moments in time where nothing much happens? YAWN
The obsession was real and v dark... but everything else about this book was so bad I forgot all about the reason I started reading this in the first place.
Back the library you go, disappointing book.
]]> The Rest of Us Just Live Here 22910900
The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death?

What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again.

Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.

Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions...]]> 348 Patrick Ness 1406331163 b e a c h g o t h 1
Is this book by THE Patrick Ness?
No. I refuse to believe it.
This was... Weird. Super lightly written story but touches on some heavy subjects like OCD, Anorexia, Coming Out and Unrequited Love.
Maybe "touches" is too heavy of a word. Lightly skins. Gently grazes. Breathes on.
You catch my drift, I love Patrick Ness because he created depth where depth normally isn't.
But this book should have been deep and was as shallow as a sidewalk puddle.
No, Patrick Ness didn't write this.
Surely.
2/5 because I just CANT give Mr Ness a 1/5. I want to though, and that makes me so sad
]]> 3.69 2015 The Rest of Us Just Live Here
author: Patrick Ness
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2015
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: young-adult, eye-roll-into-next-week, could-not-finish, far-fetched-asf
review:
THE REST OF US JUST LIVE HERE by Patrick Ness

Is this book by THE Patrick Ness?
No. I refuse to believe it.
This was... Weird. Super lightly written story but touches on some heavy subjects like OCD, Anorexia, Coming Out and Unrequited Love.
Maybe "touches" is too heavy of a word. Lightly skins. Gently grazes. Breathes on.
You catch my drift, I love Patrick Ness because he created depth where depth normally isn't.
But this book should have been deep and was as shallow as a sidewalk puddle.
No, Patrick Ness didn't write this.
Surely.
2/5 because I just CANT give Mr Ness a 1/5. I want to though, and that makes me so sad

]]> <![CDATA[Reckless: My Life as a Pretender]]> 25147580
Few other rock stars have managed to combine her swagger, sexiness, stage presence, knack for putting words to music, gorgeous voice and just all-around kick-assedness into such a potent and alluring package. From “Tatooed Love Boys� and “Brass in Pocket� to “Talk of the Town� and “Back on the Chain Gang,� her signature songs project a unique mixture of toughness and vulnerability that millions of men and women have related to. A kind of one- woman secret tunnel linking punk and new wave to classic guitar rock, she is one of the great luminaries in rock history.

Now, in her no-holds-barred memoir Reckless, Chrissie Hynde tells, with all the fearless candor, sharp humor and depth of feeling we’ve come to expect, exactly where she came from and what her crooked, winding path to stardom entailed. Her All-American upbringing in Akron, Ohio, a child of postwar power and prosperity. Her soul capture, along with tens of millions of her generation, by the gods of sixties rock who came through Cleveland—Mitch Ryder, David Bowie, Jeff Back, Paul Butterfield and Iggy Pop among them. Her shocked witness in 1970 to the horrific shooting of student antiwar protestors at Kent State. Her weakness for the sorts of men she calls “the heavy bikers� and “the get-down boys.� Her flight from Ohio to London in 1973 essentially to escape the former and pursue the latter. Her scuffling years as a brash reviewer for New Musical Express, shop girl at the Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood boutique 'Craft Must Wear Clothes But The Truth Loves To Go Naked', first-hand witness to the birth of the punk movement, and serial band aspirant. And then ,at almost the last possible moment, her meeting of the three musicians who comprised the original line-up of The Pretenders, their work on the indelible first album “The Pretenders,� and the rocket ride to “Instant� stardom, with all the disorientation and hazards that involved. The it all comes crashing back down to earth with the deaths of lead guitarist James Honeyman Scott and bassist Peter Farndon, leaving her bruised and saddened, but far from beaten. Because Chrissie Hynde is, among other things, one of rock’s great survivors.

We are lucky to be living in a golden age of great rock memoirs. In the aptly titled Reckless , Chrissie Hynde has given us one of the very best we have. Her mesmerizing presence radiates from every line and page of this book.]]> 312 Chrissie Hynde 0385540612 b e a c h g o t h 2 could-not-finish, non-fic 3.38 2015 Reckless: My Life as a Pretender
author: Chrissie Hynde
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, non-fic
review:

]]> On the Road 70401 307 Jack Kerouac 0140042598 b e a c h g o t h 1 3.63 1957 On the Road
author: Jack Kerouac
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1957
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, eye-roll-into-next-week, henry-beckett, pretentious-classics, rory-gilmore, recommended-to-me
review:

]]> Love May Fail 23287159
Will a sassy nun, an ex-heroin addict, a metal-head little boy, and her hoarder mother help or hurt Portia's chances on this quest to resurrect a good man and find renewed hope in the human race? Love May Fail is a story of the great highs and lows of existence: the heartache and daring choices it takes to become the person you know (deep down) you are meant to be.]]> 401 Matthew Quick 0062285564 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.51 2015 Love May Fail
author: Matthew Quick
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, cupids-library
review:

]]> The Light Between Oceans 13158800 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Australia, 1926. After four harrowing years fighting on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns home to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day's journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby's cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom's judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman's mesmerizing, beautifully written debut novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel's decision to keep this "gift from God." And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another's tragic loss.]]> 362 M.L. Stedman 1451681739 b e a c h g o t h 2 could-not-finish 4.02 2012 The Light Between Oceans
author: M.L. Stedman
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish
review:
This book reminds me of the quote "beauty is pain" ... It's so beautifully and elegantly written but so sad, it's almost painful. My hat goes off to M.L.Steadman for making me sympathise with all the characters for different reasons, wanting them all to come out ok... This book is truly an elegant essay on grief and heartbreak.
]]> Jesus' Son 15956637
The narrator of these interlinked stories is a young, unnamed man, reeling from his addiction to heroin and alcohol, his mind at once clouded and made brilliantly lucid by these drugs. In the course of his adventures, he meets an assortment of people, who seem as alienated and confused as he; sinners, misfits, the lost, the damned, the desperate and the forgotten. Our of their bleak, seemingly random lives, Denis Johnson creates modern-day parables of a harsh and devastating beauty.]]> 133 Denis Johnson 1847086705 b e a c h g o t h 2 4.09 1992 Jesus' Son
author: Denis Johnson
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1992
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, henry-beckett, pretentious-classics
review:

]]> The Honours 21947239
1935. Norfolk.

War is looming in Great Britain and the sprawling country estate of Alderberen Hall is shadowed by suspicion and paranoia. Thirteen-year-old Delphine Venner is determined to uncover the secrets of the Hall's elite society, which has taken in her gullible mother and unstable father.

As she explores the house and discovers the secret network of hidden passages that thread through the estate, Delphine uncovers a world more dark and threatening than she ever imagined. With the help of head gamekeeper Mr Garforth, Delphine must learn the bloody lessons of war and find the soldier within herself in time to battle the deadly forces amassing in the woods . . .

The Honours is a dark, glittering and dangerously unputdownable novel which invites you to enter a thrilling and fantastical world unlike any other.]]> 416 Tim Clare 1782114769 b e a c h g o t h 3 could-not-finish, young-adult 3.50 2015 The Honours
author: Tim Clare
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, young-adult
review:

]]> The Girl in the Red Coat 23289469 here

She is the missing girl. But she doesn't know she's lost.

Carmel Wakeford becomes separated from her mother at a local children's festival, and is found by a man who claims to be her estranged grandfather. He tells her that her mother has had an accident and that she is to live with him for now. As days become weeks with her new family, 8-year-old Carmel realises that this man believes she has a special gift...

While her mother desperately tries to find her, Carmel embarks on an extraordinary journey, one that will make her question who she is - and who she might become.]]> 384 Kate Hamer 0571313248 b e a c h g o t h 2 Call it transference of judgement but I couldn't shake the "Room" feeling.]]> 3.46 2015 The Girl in the Red Coat
author: Kate Hamer
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime
review:
Not a thriller by any means.....more psychological drama on grief, stress and religious brain washing. The reason I gave this 2 stars and not 3 is because I couldn't get into the way this book was narrated, both mother and daughters view points sound pretty similar and I couldn't help myself from thinking Carmel's view point read a bit like "Room" by Emma Donoghue. Which I loathed every second of.
Call it transference of judgement but I couldn't shake the "Room" feeling.
]]> The First Bad Man 21412400 No One Belongs Here More Than You, a spectacular debut novel that is so heartbreaking, so dirty, so tender, so funny � so Miranda July � readers will be blown away.

Here is Cheryl, a tightly-wound, vulnerable woman who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat. She is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six, who sometimes recurs as other people's babies. Cheryl is also obsessed with Phillip, a philandering board member at the women's self-defense non-profit where she works. She believes they've been making love for many lifetimes, though they have yet to consummate in this one.

When Cheryl's bosses ask if their twenty-one-year-old daughter Clee can move into her house for a little while, Cheryl's eccentrically-ordered world explodes. And yet it is Clee � the selfish, cruel blond bombshell � who bullies Cheryl into reality and, unexpectedly, provides her the love of a lifetime.

Tender, gripping, slyly hilarious, infused with raging sexual fantasies and fierce maternal love, Miranda July's first novel confirms her as a spectacularly original, iconic and important voice today, and a writer for all time. The First Bad Man is dazzling, disorienting, and unforgettable.]]> 288 Miranda July 1439172560 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.67 2015 The First Bad Man
author: Miranda July
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, struck-a-cord
review:

]]> Disclaimer 23615087
Finding a mysterious novel at her bedside plunges documentary filmmaker Catherine Ravenscroft into a living nightmare. Though ostensibly fiction, The Perfect Stranger recreates in vivid, unmistakable detail the terrible day she became hostage to a dark secret, a secret that only one other person knew—and that person is dead.

Now that the past is catching up with her, Catherine’s world is falling apart. Her only hope is to confront what really happened on that awful day . . . even if the shocking truth might destroy her.]]> 352 Renée Knight 0062362267 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.45 2015 Disclaimer
author: Renée Knight
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime
review:

]]> Dear Mr. M 28186095 New York Times bestselling author of The Dinner and Summer House with Swimming Pool

Once a celebrated writer, M's greatest success came with a suspense novel based on a real-life disappearance. The book was called The Reckoning, and it told the story of Jan Landzaat, a history teacher who went missing one winter after his brief affair with Laura, his stunning pupil. Jan was last seen at the holiday cottage where Laura was staying with her new boyfriend. Upon publication, M.'s novel was a bestseller, one that marked his international breakthrough.

That was years ago, and now M.'s career is almost over as he fades increasingly into obscurity. But not when it comes to his bizarre, seemingly timid neighbor who keeps a close eye on him. Why?

From various perspectives, Herman Koch tells the dark tale of a writer in decline, a teenage couple in love, a missing teacher, and a single book that entwines all of their fates. Thanks to The Reckoning, supposedly a work of fiction, everyone seems to be linked forever, until something unexpected spins the "story" off its rails.

With racing tension, sardonic wit, and a world-renowned sharp eye for human failings, Herman Koch once again spares nothing and no one in his gripping new novel, a barbed tour de force suspending readers in the mysterious literary gray space between fact and fiction, promising to keep them awake at night, and justly paranoid in the merciless morning.]]> 400 Herman Koch 1101903325 b e a c h g o t h 1 Calling" by Phil Hogan... Just much more slow paced and less suspenseful, more irritating. The twist... Was expected. The characters were unlikable. And I felt like this took forever to come to a conclusion that by the time I got to it I found I no longer cared.]]> 3.22 2014 Dear Mr. M
author: Herman Koch
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2014
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime
review:
Reminded me so much of "A Pleasure And A
Calling" by Phil Hogan... Just much more slow paced and less suspenseful, more irritating. The twist... Was expected. The characters were unlikable. And I felt like this took forever to come to a conclusion that by the time I got to it I found I no longer cared.
]]> The Darkest Corners 25639296 The Darkest Corners is a psychological thriller about the lies little girls tell, and the deadly truths those lies become.

There are ghosts around every corner in Fayette, Pennsylvania. Tessa left when she was nine and has been trying ever since not to think about it after what happened there that last summer. Memories of things so dark will burn themselves into your mind if you let them.

Callie never left. She moved to another house, so she doesn’t have to walk those same halls, but then Callie always was the stronger one. She can handle staring into the faces of her demons—and if she parties hard enough, maybe one day they’ll disappear for good.

Tessa and Callie have never talked about what they saw that night. After the trial, Callie drifted and Tessa moved, and childhood friends just have a way of losing touch.

But ever since she left, Tessa has had questions. Things have never quite added up. And now she has to go back to Fayette—to Wyatt Stokes, sitting on death row; to Lori Cawley, Callie’s dead cousin; and to the one other person who may be hiding the truth.

Only the closer Tessa gets to the truth, the closer she gets to a killer—and this time, it won’t be so easy to run away.]]> 336 Kara Thomas 0553521462 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.80 2016 The Darkest Corners
author: Kara Thomas
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage]]> 19549052 A mesmerising mystery story about friendship from the internationally bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and 1Q84

Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning ‘red pine�, and Oumi, ‘blue sea�, while the girls� names were Shirane, ‘white root�, and Kurono, ‘black field�. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it.

One day Tsukuru Tazaki’s friends announced that they didn't want to see him, or talk to him, ever again.

Since that day Tsukuru has been floating through life, unable to form intimate connections with anyone. But then he meets Sara, who tells him that the time has come to find out what happened all those years ago.]]> 298 Haruki Murakami 1846558336 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.77 2013 Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
author: Haruki Murakami
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, henry-beckett
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1)]]> 17199504 Welcome to Scion. No safer place.

The year is 2059. For two centuries, the Republic of Scion has led an oppressive campaign against unnaturalness in Europe.

In London, Paige Mahoney holds a high rank in the criminal underworld. The right hand of the ruthless White Binder, Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare and formidable kind of clairvoyant. Under Scion law, she commits treason simply by breathing.

When Paige is arrested for murder, she meets the mysterious founders of Scion, who have designs on her uncommon abilities. If she is to survive and escape, Paige must use every skill at her disposal � and put her trust in someone who ought to be her enemy.]]> 466 Samantha Shannon 1620401398 b e a c h g o t h 1 3.81 2013 The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2013
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, eye-roll-into-next-week, young-adult
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End: The Story of a Crime (Fall of the Welfare State #1)]]> 7945243
From these tiny beginnings, Leif GW Persson slowly begins to unravel a puzzle that gets larger and larger as it becomes more and more complex, until it sweeps us into a web of international espionage, backroom politics, greed, sheer incompetence, and the shoddy work of Sweden’s intelligence force that leads to the murder of the prime minister.

The first novel in a dark and dazzling trilogy that has become the defining fictional account of the unsolved 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme—an event that triggered the biggest criminal investigation in recorded history�Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End is a riveting insider’s combination of black satire, thriller, psychological drama, and police procedural by a writer universally acknowledged as Sweden’s leading criminologist.]]> 551 Leif G.W. Persson 0307377458 b e a c h g o t h 0 3.44 2002 Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End: The Story of a Crime (Fall of the Welfare State #1)
author: Leif G.W. Persson
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at: 2019/09/21
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, creme-de-la-crime
review:
I literally could not fit the life of me get into this book and life is way too short to read books you don’t love
]]> The Best of Adam Sharp 31451047 From the #1 bestselling author of The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect, an unforgettable new novel about lost love and second chances

On the cusp of turning fifty, Adam Sharp likes his life. He’s happy with his partner Claire, he excels in music trivia at quiz night at the local pub, he looks after his mother, and he does the occasional consulting job in IT.

But he can never quite shake off his nostalgia for what might have been: his blazing affair more than twenty years ago with an intelligent and strong-willed actress named Angelina Brown who taught him for the first time what it means to find—and then lose—love. How different might his life have been if he hadn’t let her walk away?

And then, out of nowhere, from the other side of the world, Angelina gets in touch. What does she want? Does Adam dare to live dangerously?]]> 314 Graeme Simsion 1250130409 b e a c h g o t h 1 3.00 2016 The Best of Adam Sharp
author: Graeme Simsion
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2016
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: could-not-finish, cupids-library
review:

]]> Arcadia Falls 6740418
Meg Rosenthal is driving toward the next chapter in her life. Winding along a wooded roadway, her car moves through a dense forest setting not unlike one in the bedtime stories Meg used to read to her daughter, Sally. But the girl riding beside Meg is a teenager now, and has exchanged the land of make-believe for an iPod and some personal space. Too much space, it seems, as the chasm between them has grown since the sudden, unexpected death of Meg’s husband.

Dire financial straits and a desire for a fresh start take Meg and Sally from a comfortable life on Long Island to a tucked-away hamlet in upstate New York: Arcadia Falls, where Meg has accepted a teaching position at a boarding school. The creaky, neglected cottage Meg and Sally are to call home feels like an ill portent of things to come, but Meg is determined to make the best of it and to make a good impression on the school’s dean, the diminutive, elegant Ivy St. Clare.

St. Claire, however, is distracted by a shocking crisis: During Arcadia’s First Night bonfire, one of Meg’s folklore students, Isabel Cheney, plunges to her death in a campus gorge. Sheriff Callum Reade finds Isabel’s death suspicious, but then, he is a man with secrets and a dark past himself.

Meg is unnerved by Reade’s interest in the girl’s death, and as long-buried secrets emerge, she must face down her own demons and the danger threatening to envelop Sally. As the past clings tight to the present, the shadows, as if in a terrifying fairy tale, grow longer and deadlier.

In Arcadia Falls, award-winning author Carol Goodman deftly weaves a mesmerizing narrative of passion: for revenge, for art, for love.
]]> 355 Carol Goodman 0345497538 b e a c h g o t h 3 3.67 2010 Arcadia Falls
author: Carol Goodman
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2019/11/14
shelves: creme-de-la-crime, could-not-finish
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh, #14)]]> 4162673 416 P.D. James 0571242448 b e a c h g o t h 1 3.78 2008 The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh, #14)
author: P.D. James
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2008
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2019/11/06
shelves: not-even-at-gunpoint, creme-de-la-crime, could-not-finish
review:

]]> We Need to Talk About Kevin 11717915 So Much for That and The Post-Birthday World, We Need to Talk About Kevin isa piercing, unforgettable, and penetrating exploration of violence, family ties, and responsibility,a book that the Boston Globe describes as “sometimes searing...[and] impossible to put down.”]]> 400 Lionel Shriver 0062119044 b e a c h g o t h 2 3.99 2003 We Need to Talk About Kevin
author: Lionel Shriver
name: b e a c h g o t h
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2003
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/11/06
shelves: could-not-finish, rory-gilmore, pretentious-classics
review:

]]>