We are all Completely Fine

We are all Completely Fine
by  Daryl Gregory

Genre:  Horror; Speculative Fiction; Fantasy
Publisher: Tachyon Publications on 
12 August 2014
Source:  NetGalley - 182 pages
Reading with my ears:  Unabridged 
04 hours 14 minutes
Narrator:  Tavia Gilbert

Harrison is the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-thirties and spends most of his time not sleeping.
Stan became a minor celebrity after being partially eaten by cannibals. Barbara is haunted by the messages carved upon her bones. Greta may or may not be a mass-murdering arsonist. And for some reason, Martin never takes off his sunglasses.
Unsurprisingly, no one believes their horrific tales until they are sought out by psychotherapist Dr. Jan Sayer. What happens when these likely-insane outcasts join a support group? Together they must discover which monsters they face are within and which are lurking in plain sight.

My thoughts:
I have not been in therapy myself but this was exactly as I would imagine group therapy sessions to be.  Awkward meetings that slowly turn into meetings that are looked forward to. Strangers that turn into friends or at least people you are comfortable with.

Off course it would have to include those in the group you would like and those that just want to share too much all the time.  And even in this little group of trauma survivors, this is true.  You will like some of the characters and others will leave you cold.

This small group has been the victims of some terrible crimes and slowly you begin to see that their perpetrators might not be all human all the time.   You are given little tidbits of the crimes as the novella progresses and all seems a little "off".  

I don't want to give too much away - this is a story that you have to into blind.  It is only a short novella so there is not much fluff to fill out pages.  The story is presented to you in black and white.

I will recommend it for a few hours' escape.

Is it still worth requesting titles from NetGalley?

I have been "away" from reviewing books for a while and what a shock when I returned to NetGalley.  Almost all the "most requested/popular" books are only for American/European or Australian readers.

Out-of-region-requests-will-most-probably-be-denied.

Once again we are the unpopular kids on the playground.  If you are not in the "in crowd" it is unlikely you will get any hyped ARC's.  I would think that an author would like his or her book to be given to many different types of readers as possible.  But apparently I am wrong.

I saw a book from an South African author (BeastKeeper) on NetGalley today and I am keeping an eye on it.  It is not open for request yet.  It will be interesting to see if this book will also be "limited". If so, I might just stop coming back for a look . . .  

What happened to this popular site?

Is it still worth being a member of NetGalley?

Review: Forget me Knot

Forget me Knot 

by Mary Marks 

Source: eARC from NetGalley 
Publication date: 07 January 2013 
Genre: Cozy Mystery 
Date read:  24 October 2013

Welcome to San Fernando Valley, California, where Martha Rose and her coterie of quilters are enjoying life on the good side of retirement--until murder pulls a stitch out of their plans. . .
Martha and her besties Lucy and Birdie are set to expand their Quilty Tuesdays by inviting newcomer Claire Terry into their group. Though at forty Claire's a tad younger than their average age, her crafty reputation could perk up their patchwork proceedings, especially as they prepare for the fancy quilt show coming to town. But when they arrive at Claire's home and find her dead inside the front door, and her exquisite, prize-winning quilts soon missing, Martha is not one to leave a mystery unraveled. Especially if she wants to stop a killer from establishing a deadly pattern. . .

My thoughts: 
I haven't read a cozy mystery in quite a while, so this was a special kind of fun for me!   

According to Wikipedia cozy mysteries, also referred to simply as "cozies," are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community.   

This just means that cozies are fun reads where the crime solver is not a professional detective. 

Martha Rose is our crime buster in Forget me Knot.  She and her friends, Lucy and Birdie, find Claire, a potential 4th member of their quilting group,  murdered in her own home when they arrive for the Tuesday morning quilting date.  The next day at their quilting show, Claire's quilts are stolen.  Why would someone want to steal her quilts? 

Martha starts snooping and soon uncovers some awful family secrets which makes her look at Claire's life (and her family) with new eyes.  The list of potential murderers are getting more and more interesting.

I liked Martha Rose from the start.  Even though she was nosing around in other people's business, I never felt that she was a busy-body :)  Her friends was also developed throughout the story and they turned into loveable people with a lot of heart.  Their friendship was very believable and even when her friends' husbands were introduced, it just made the story flow easier.

There was a little bit of chemistry between Martha and Lt Arlo Beavers (the homicide detective on the case) but it was just a breath of fresh air in between the break-ins and dog-poop on the stoops :)

I will definitely be keeping an eye out for the next in the Quilting Mystery series.  It was a fun being part of Martha's world for a few days.   

Thank you NetGalley!

Review: Plants vs. Zombies: Lawnmageddon

Plants vs. Zombies: Lawnmageddon 

by Paul Tobin, Phillip Simon, Ron Chan 

Publication date: 19 November 2013 
Source: eARC received from NetGalley 
Date read:  07 October 2013

PopCap's immensely popular Plants vs. Zombies game finally gets the plant-filled, zombie-zapping comics treatment it deserves!

The confusing-yet-brilliant inventor known only as Crazy Dave helps his niece, Patrice, and young adventurer Nate Timely fend off a "fun-dead" neighborhood invasion in Plants vs. Zombies: Lawnmageddon!

Winner of over thirty "Game of the Year" awards, Plants vs. Zombies is now determined to shuffle onto bookshelves to tickle funny bones and thrill...brains.

Paul Tobin (Marvel Adventures, Falling Skies) and Ron Chan (The Guild, Husbands) join forces with a bevy of battling plants to deliver a hilarious, all-ages, action filled zombie romp to your neighborhood! (Goodreads)

My thoughts: 
Do you love the game, Plants vs Zombies as much as I do?  If so, you are going to be thrilled by this new offering by Paul Tobin.  

What fun as we get to see all our favorite characters (plants and zombies) interact with Crazy Dave, Patrice and Nate.   The beautiful and colorful pages are filled with witty dialogue that will keep you smiling until the last frame.

This is the perfect Christmas gift for anyone with a  Plants vs Zombie addiction. 

Review: The Uninvited

The Uninvited
by Liz Jensen
 

Source: eARC from NetGalley
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 
Publication date:  08 January 2013 

A seven-year-old girl puts a nail gun to her grandmother's neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious? As chilling murders by children grip the country, anthropologist Hesketh Lock has his own mystery to solve: a bizarre scandal in the Taiwan timber industry. Hesketh has never been good at relationships: Asperger's Syndrome has seen to that. But he does have a talent for spotting behavioral patterns and an outsider's fascination with group dynamics. Nothing obvious connects Hesketh's Asian case with the atrocities back home. Or with the increasingly odd behavior of his beloved stepson, Freddy. But when Hesketh's Taiwan contact dies shockingly and more acts of sabotage and child violence sweep the globe, he is forced to acknowledge possibilities that defy the rational principles on which he has staked his life, his career, and, most devastatingly of all, his role as a father. Part psychological thriller, part dystopian nightmare, The Uninvited is a powerful and viscerally unsettling portrait of apocalypse in embryo. (Goodreads)

My thoughts:
I loved Hesketh's character.  I admired how he coped with the outside world while suffering from Asperger's Syndrome.  His ability to spot patterns in the strange things that started happening all over the world, just draw me in.  I enjoyed all the interviews with the characters that was part of the first of the unusual happenings.   

Unfortunately after the first part of the book, I started feeling irritated with him.  His disability causes him to not connect with other people but his son, Freddy, is the exception.  Let me just say that I am not a parent.  I don't know if I would have felt different if I was.   But his blind obsession with the fact that his son would not turn into a stranger like the rest of the children of the world, just irked me.  I wanted to shake him and force him to look at the facts.  If I had in the story in book form, I probably would have thrown it across the room a few times. 

The ending just sort of crept up on me.  I have read some reviews, that mentioned that they felt cheated but I can see that there was no other way out for the characters.

All in all, it was a satisfying read even with the irritating stages.  I guess that is the essence of a good book when you feel like shaking some sense into the characters.

PS:  Just on a little side note that has no other use than just me venting -  there is little editing adjustment in the NetGalley edition.  Every word that uses the letter-combinations "ff", "fi" or "fl" will just have those letters omitted completely.  I assume it was to stop "would-be-torrenting" but still . . . annoying!

Review: The Sum of my Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

The Sum of my Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder 
by Olga Trujillo 

Source: eARC from NetGalley 
Published by New Harbinger Publications 
Publication Date: 01 October 2011 

By the first day of kindergarten, Olga Trujillo had already survived years of abuse and violent rape at the hands of her tyrannical father. Over the next ten years, she would develop the ability to numb herself to the constant abuse by splitting into distinct mental “parts.” Dissociative identity disorder (DID) had begun to take hold, protecting Olga’s mind from the tragic realities of her childhood. In The Sum of My Parts, Olga reveals her life story for the first time, chronicling her heroic journey from survivor to advocate and her remarkable recovery from DID. Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, DID is defined by the presence of two or more identities. In this riveting story, Olga struggles to unearth memories from her childhood, and parallel identities—Olga at five years old, Olga at thirteen—come forth and demand to be healed. This brave, unforgettable memoir charts the author’s triumph over the most devastating conditions and will inspire anyone whose life has been affected by trauma. (Goodreads)

My thoughts: 
This was a very difficult book to read. I have never known anyone that have been abused but I can imagine it must be devastating. The first six chapters telling the hell that Olga went through was horrible. Here and there, I had to skip a paragraph as it just seemed unbearable, even for an outsider. 

It is a miracle that Olga survived, physically as well as mentally. Her mind protected her, making different rooms where some of the bad could hidden. But this wonderful self preservation also caused her to “forget” the abuse, giving her parents the opportunity to sell her again and again. It was heartbreaking reading about her excitement for a special date with her parents, knowing what was really in store for her. 

After the first chapters, we learn about the long road that Olga had to walk to become the woman she is today. She had developed a multiple personality disorder and has a few identities, only identified by her age at the time that they were formed. Three was the first personality that entered her consciousness when she started her sessions with her doctor. Three described the “first” rape by her father. Olga was devastated. How could she continue, knowing what the past held? 

Even with all her success (both professionally and personally) there is still some days that she does not pick up the warning signs. Some days are just too much. Some days she falls back into the awful self destructive routines. I understand that this type of book will never have a “happy ending” but it was hard to know that Olga struggles, even today. She is a very brave woman and I take off my hat to her . . . 

Review: Parasite

Parasite

 by Mira Grant

Series: Parasitology #1 
Publication date:  29 October 2013 
Source:  eARC NetGalley 

 

A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease.
We owe our good health to a humble parasite - a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the tapeworm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system - even secretes designer drugs. It's been successful beyond the scientists' wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them.
But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives...and will do anything to get them. (Goodreads)

My thoughts:
Sal was implanted with the genetically engineered tapeworm like most of the population in the not too distant future.  It is not mandatory yet but more and more people are taking the step.  The tapeworm controls all your health needs.   
But it cannnot prevent the terrible car crash that Sal was involved in.  The tapeworm did however help her heal and come out of the coma just as her parents were discussing taking her off life support.  

The tapeworms are engineered by the all powerful SymboGem Corporation. The SymboGem Corporation started out with a good intentions, wanting to make the world a better, healthier place.  Unfortunately greed and the lust for power soon drives them into cloudy waters.  
Parasite follows Sal's life after she wakes from her coma.  After six years, she still finds it difficult to fit in - with life in general and with her family at home.  She is not the Sally from before the accident and her family does not let her forget that.

I must admit that I guessed what the ending would be quite early on in the book.  It did however not take away any of the enjoyment I felt reading of Sal and her boyfriend's journey to discover this truth.  

Mira Grant is an excellent author and she made me suspect everyone at one time, even Sal's boyfirend was part of the "enemy" in my mind at one stage.

The ending leads us right up to the next in the series and I for one, cannot wait . . . 

 

Thank you NetGalley!

Review: 101 Things You Thought You Knew about the Titanic... But Didn't!

Title: 101 Things You Thought You Knew about the Titanic... But Didn't!
Author: Tim Maltin
Source: eARC from NetGalley









Blurb:


April 15th, 2012, will be the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the "Titanic."

People have an endless fascination with the "Titanic," yet much of what they know today is a mixture of fact and fiction. In one hundred and one brief and engaging chapters, Tim Maltin, one of the foremost experts on the Titanic, reveals the truth behind the most common beliefs about the ship and the night it sank. From physics to photographs, lawsuits to love stories, Maltin doesn't miss one tidbit surrounding its history. Heavily researched and filled with detailed descriptions, quotes from survivors, and excerpts from the official inquiries, this book is guaranteed to make readers rethink everything they thought they knew about the legendary ship and its tragic fate.


Review:


All things Titanic have always interested me.  I have watched countless documentaries, read a lot of books and even watched all the movies :)  Having said that, I am not a Titanic expert.  I am more of a casual Titanic trivia lover.

This book was something different though.  Yes, there are all the facts and trivia we already know but there are also quotes from survivors, detailed transcripts of the official inquiries (which was not impartial at all in my view) and some fun mentions of the myths surrounding this great ship.


I loved finding this gem of a book and know that it will be very popular with all Titanic lovers.