A Reader Is Me!

Title: Hidden Doors, Secret Rooms
Author: Jamie Eubanks
Number of pages: 341
Genre: thriller, sci-fi
Book Number/Goal: 45/52
My Rating: 3/5

Review:
A woman and her little daughter are stranded in the blizzard. Luckily, they stumble upon a cabin of a retired musician. But he can't decide if he wants to help; the woman appears to be on the run from the FBI, and moreover, she possesses some mysterious and dangerous abilities.

The atmosphere is genuinely tense, and the mystery is nicely developed and explained, including an eerie, unexpected twist. Two biggest annoyances: the prominent romantic angle, and too much focus on the little girl, promoting the message (unintended by the author) that children are a burden and always mess up good plans.

Title: Deadly Intruder
Author: Anne Kelsey
Number of pages: 292
Genre: thriller
Book Number/Goal: 38/52
My Rating: 1/5

Review:
Brent is generally satisfied with his life, due to a successful job, a beautiful wife and a good friend, until he signs up for a weird Internet game and becomes a target for a dangerous hacker.

The idea of the game (betting on celebrities' death) is cute, and it even has a promo web site to go with it: dieordietrying.com. Unfortunately, there's nothing thrilling about the story itself. There's a lot of trivial, boring conversations between Brent and his friends/coworkers, and bickering with his nagging bitch of a wife, with whom we're apparently supposed to empathise. The hacker's threats sound monotonous and annoying, not to mention that I couldn't care less about what happens to Brent and his family. The "computer security for dummies" infodumps also fail to add any excitement.

Title: Blood of Others
Author: Rick Mofina
Number of pages: 480
Genre: thriller
Book Number/Goal: 31/52
My Rating: 2/5

Review:
A serial killer preys on lonely women frequenting online chats, and murders them in elaborate grotesque ways. A detective, a cop and a journalist are trying to solve the case, working more-or-less independently.

The biggest flaw of the book is the lack of mystery: the identity of the killer is revealed early. Other promising mysteries, such as the strange illness of a character's son, are just distractions that do not add anything to the story. Another flaw is too many points of view, which doesn't enrich the story because most of the characters are similar to each other. (The murderer is the only halfway-interesting person.) The ending is entirely predictable. And there seems to be an implicit moral, "do not trust strangers on the Internet" - tired and old!

Title: Messages: Book 1 in the David Chance Series
Author: John Michael Hileman
Number of pages: 324
Genre: thriller
Book Number/Goal: 10/52
My Rating: 2/5

Review:
An ordinary guy, a TV intern, suddenly develops a weird ESP ability: his brain picks up specific words from any random sources of text around him, such as labels, sign posts and T-shirts, and assembles these words into personal messages. At first, these messages warn about accidents happening to his family and friends. The danger escalates when the messages want him to prevent the assassination of the President by a terrorist group. He's compelled to follow the invisible guide even though he has no experience in investigation work, and the terrorists discover what he's up to and start threatening him and his family.

The premise is unusual and promising, because it's much easier to create clear and unambiguous messages by combining separate words from unrelated sources than through subjective interpretation of full phrases, as it usually happens when people claim that the world is sending them personal messages. But somehow, the story is unexciting, despite being packed with action. The main character constantly ruminates on where the messages come from, are they from God and why, and keeps discussing it with everyone, which becomes repetitive, even though understandable. The characters are boring, so the tension doesn't really work; the "Arab terrorists" angle is straight from the media stereotypes, and there's some heavy moralizing in the end, which was probably the whole point of the story.

Title: American Psycho
Author: Bret Easton Ellis
Number of pages: 416
Genre: thriller
Book Number/Goal: 26/50
My Rating: 2.5/5

Review: A young and successful investment banker leads a double life as a serial killer, raping and/or torturing all kinds of victims (mostly young women) because he can't resist the bloodlust.

Great premise, lousy implementation. Most of the book consists of excruciatingly tedious descriptions of everyone's clothes, meals, furniture, gadgets, fitness procedures, music reviews etc, which are about as entertaining to read as shopping catalogues. The endless mundane conversations between the main character and his friends are not any better, though there are a few touching moments (such as Patrick's despair over losing a "contest" of business cards). The murder scenes, described in the same amount of detail, are the only bright spot in comparison, even though they feel dry and uninspiring because the character doesn't perceive them emotionally.

I believe the writing style is a device meant to show Patrick's obsessive-compulsive streak and the shallowness of his inner world (as well as his peers), but it becomes almost unreadable after the first few pages (but improves a little towards the end). It is not even educational because of the subject matter, though I learned some new words.

Don't waste time with it, watch the screen version - it's still partly tedious, but overall it's much more fun.