Carries Book Reviews

The General and Monaville, Texas by Joe G. Bax
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I won this book from Goodreads First Reads.

The General and Monaville, Texas is told mostly from the standpoint of the General’s grandson John Ross Wilhite. It takes place in the small Texas town of Monaville shortly after the Civil War. A time of unease after the war and the freeing of the slaves we get a glimpse of the citizens trying to bring their town back after the war and the beginning of the Klan.

The book was a short read at only 168 pages but I felt you still got a good look into the characters and this era. You can’t help but feel for those still fighting for their freedoms even after the war had ended.

Blueprints by Barbara Delinsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I won this book from Goodreads First Reads.

Blueprints focuses on the lives of Caroline and Jamie MacAfee who are a mother and daughter team working for the family real estate business. MacAfee homes has a reality show that Caroline has been hosting but the network wants Jamie to take over to stating that Caroline is getting to old and they want Jamie for a new “fresh” look. The story follows these two as they go through some tough times. Caroline handling the rejection and losing her spot on the show. Jamie the loss of her father (Caroline’s ex-husband) and now having her half-brother to raise.

Barbara Delinsky is a great writer. I got pulled into this story even though I thought it started off a bit slow for my taste with all the remodeling/architecture in the beginning. I did have some issues with where events went but in the end it all seemed to work. I struggled with the idea of Caroline being so mad with Jamie over the hosting change, Jamie didn’t have anything to do with it and she’s her daughter, you love and support your kids, discuss it with her instead of the temper tantrum Caroline was having. The fact though that I actually cared about what was happening even if I didn’t always agree with their decisions made me end up actually enjoying reading this book and where the story went.

Girl From Above: Betrayal by Pippa DaCosta
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Girl From Above: Betrayal is the first book in a series introducing us to Captain Caleb Shepperd who has secrets from his past coming back to haunt him. After being released from prison Caleb became a smuggler/fixer. After leaving a port he finds a stowaway aboard his ship, a synthetic human who calls herself #1001.

#1001 is different from the other synthetics. She’s had her programming tampered with and assigned one mission, to kill. Unlike the other synthetics though #1001 begins to feel and remember what it was to be human and who she was when she was human.

This being the first in a series there’s a lot of backstory being told between Caleb and #1001 to get the feel for who they are and who they were. But the story moves along quite nicely while filling in those details to bring about the current situation. It got a bit predictable though when it came to #1001’s human identity before it was truly revealed. Although that detail works for building up the future books and wanting to know where the story is going in the later books in the series.

I just couldn’t help myself though thinking of Caleb as a somewhat r-rated Han Solo. Fans of Star Wars know that Han was a smuggler and somewhat criminal before meeting Luke and Leia so maybe that brought more appeal to me reading this. The story is nothing like anything out of the movies though so don’t get me wrong in that regard but it made me like Caleb a bit more from the start.

There’s still a lot of mystery surrounding #1001 by the end of the book. She’s obviously gone against what she was created for and has her own agenda which I’m highly interested in reading more about.

Also, a few typos in the book which brought my rating down a bit. Overall though a fun, quick read with a lot of potential for the continuation in the series. 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars.

Under the Dome by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Really there has never been a Stephen King book that I haven’t liked or even loved. Under the Dome falls into the just like category. Perhaps I would’ve been more into the book if I had not already watched the TV series for two seasons before finally picking up this book. In my defense though Stephen King novels tend to be just so long and daunting.

Normally I don’t like to include spoilers in a review but if you haven’t read and/or watched the TV series you may not want to read anymore of this review.

Both the book and the series have the same main characters and the town is surrounded by and invisible dome but that’s somewhat where the similarity ends. James Rennie Sr. is still the complete egotistical, power hungry jerk in both and Dale Barbara “Barbie” along with Julia Shumway are still the ones battling Big Jim and trying to save the town. But otherwise the stories run off in completely different directions. Not sure if that’s necessarily a bad thing either as I did find the book dragging in parts. The story focuses on so many characters that you have to wait to find out what is going on with each for quite awhile as it jumps around.

Seeing the show first I was a bit shocked when we start off with with Junior Rennie murdering Angie… Angie was a featured character in the show for a while and Junior is somewhat a good guy at this point. Had to continue reading on from there to see how close both would be. So many small changes though, such as they can talk to people outside the dome, the backgrounds of characters, early deaths of some that were on the TV series etc etc.

In the end I can understand why the differences as the book comes somewhat to a rather abrupt and slightly disappointing ending. Would have preferred more info about what caused the dome to appear but the book mainly covers the town’s reactions and both Rennies evil actions. It’s still a good read, suspenseful and plenty of action going on.

A Dubious Device by Gerald J. Kubicki
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

A Dubious Device is the 10th book in the Colton Banyon series. The book starts off with Colton being arrested under suspicion of murder. We find that there have been a series of murders of death row inmates that had no contact with the outside other than the mail they had received.

Once Colton is cleared of the murders his team is tasked from the President to help solve the case. We are introduced to the leader behind the murders, a former Nazi and find his plans to take over the US and wipe out other races. From there it’s a chase for Colt and his group to find and stop the plans before millions could die.

The book started a bit slow to me. The first several chapters did a great job of catching a reader up on who was who if not having read the previous books so this read fine as a standalone. But the beginning also seemed to start feeling a bit more of a textbook lesson than pulling me into the story too. Getting 10-15 chapters in though the action picks up and the story got moving a lot better.

One complaint though factoring in on my overall rating though is I found a lot of words in the story that seemed to be wrong. Perhaps it was my copy I was given but it’s one of my biggest pet peeves when reading as I find it completely distracting to be reading and have to stop at a sentence to figure out what it meant. A few off the top of my head were no instead of not, shot instead of shoot, microscope instead of microscopic and draw instead of drawer etc. I’d almost forgive someone using for instance the wrong version of they’re/there/their easier than a completely different word as it breaks up the flow of the story. For instance “Their at the park” instead of They’re could be read the same instead of coming across “The at the park” and spending time reading and re-reading trying to figure out that “the” meant They’re.

As far as the story went though I found it overall interesting and fun to read. The science aspects were believable to me although I have no clue how close to the truth it actually is. I did get a little disappointed in the character Wolf in the story. I just found it a lot more exciting when the team is working on solving the case and then a bit letdown when Colt gets handed the answers from Wolf not even halfway into reading. It seemed they were doing fine working the leads and evidence and the book would’ve flowed nicely without so much being given away by Wolf.