Book #40 of 2016: Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks (Genius #1) This book got better around the halfway mark when the main character finally developed a conscience, but I still didn’t really love it. There were a lot of elements in this book that suggested a heightened comic-booky reality, but it never felt like the …
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Book #39 of 2016: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward A heartbreakingly visceral story about a poor black family in rural Mississippi in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. This whole novel feels like one long in-drawn breath, as things keep getting worse for the main character and her family while you, the reader, …
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Book #38 of 2016: The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands and Teeth #1) I like the setup for this novel, which takes place in what used to be America, several generations after a zombie apocalypse has wiped out most of humanity and our civilizations. The main character lives …
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Book #37 of 2016: Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff I like that this book spans decades while focusing closely on only two characters, so that you get a strong sense of how their lives change over time. And the central gimmick is neat: the first half of the novel shows the marriage of these …
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Book #36 of 2016: Daughter of Deep Silence by Carrie Ryan Another take on the Count of Monte Cristo bit, where a person who’s been presumed dead actually survives and takes on a new identity in order to enact revenge. In this case, that person is a teenage girl, one of only three passengers to …
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Book #35 of 2016: Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub (The Talisman #2) Most of Stephen King’s books connect to his other stories in one way or another, a process that’s aided by his Dark Tower series positing that all worlds are intertwined. Sometimes these connections between stories can be as simple as …
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Book #31 of 2016: The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub (The Talisman #1) I’m normally a sucker for stories about parallel universes, but the mechanics of the magic (particularly the world-hopping) in this one were so unclear that it was a pretty frustrating reading experience. I do like that there was plenty of …
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Book #23 of 2016: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins The Girl on the Train has been described by many reviewers as “the next Gone Girl,” and it honestly struggles to escape that novel’s shadow. In fact, without getting too spoilery for either, I would say that this book doesn’t truly get good until …
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Book #16 of 2016: The Dark Half by Stephen King Like much of Stephen King’s mid-career output, this horror thriller was just okay. I could see the novel having special significance for the writer himself, since it’s about an author forced to go public about his pseudonym (which then comes to life and starts murdering …
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Book #14 of 2016: Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn I really love the idea behind this book, and the author’s talent is definitely on display in carrying it out, but I’m not really sure whether I like the finished product or not. It’s about a small island society with a …
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