Stacey > Recent Status Updates

Honestly, after reading Belinda Bauer's SNAP I am really hating this book. Everyone in it is gross, everything they're involved with is disgusting, and I'm halfway through and still feel absolutely no connection with the main character. This whole thing feels like it was written by yet another female writer, trying to prove she can be as puke-inducing as all the top male crime fic authors. Overall repellant.

I hope by the time this book ends Lexie gets hit by a bus. One she sees coming.

She married the son. Lawd have mercy. I'd hoped the man who wound up with her step dad's estate would turn out to be awesome, would be mortified to learn what had become of Hephzibah, return, seek her out, and HE would win the prize. Zee's turning out to be a big fool. That boy's just using her to piss off Daddy. This will not turn out well.

"She wanted to go to school with him. She wanted to don a gang jacket and sit in the back of the classroom with a bat so everyone understood what would happen to them if they messed with her kid."

I never had kids, never wanted to. But if I had... I TOTALLY "get" this. I FELT this as I read.

I hate most of the people in this true story. But someone should beat TOOTSIE to death. She is pure EVIL.

I don't know why but, tense as this book is and, having already learned quite a few of Father Yates former students became train wrecks in one way or another, finding out one left a priest-infested school to join The Taliban made me laugh till tears ran down my face. Thank God I didn't have a sip of tea in my mouth when I read that! Damn.

268 pages and I STILL don't "get" what Cyril sees in serial-hetero wanker, Julian. The guy is gross.

Why am I getting the distinct impression this book is GASLIGHT for the 21st century... but with a higher body count?

Sara's OTHER daughter just donated bone marrow, is in extreme pain, and needs her mommy. But all that hideous wench wants is to get back to daughter #1, the "real" sick child. I genuinely detest Sara.

Am I the only one wondering why DANTE doesn't run around town snapping selfies to see if CARO's in any of THEM. A pretty simple solution for getting double the clues I would think...

Oh man... Ned Weaver is not an artist, he's just a capital-P PREDATOR. I'm a artist and I know a lot of artists. If they want to bang their models they're direct about it. But THIS guy is nothing but a seedy pervert, setting up scenarios to ensnare his model. Nobody with his alleged stature does that. They don't have to.

David Salle. I never cared for his work (nor his hero, Polke) but I like him, if that makes sense. Still, if this book is designed to help non-artists appreciate art it's a fail. I mean, I've been a painter for four decades and even I have focus (and consult Google, sometimes to remind myself & sometimes because I do not know the name). A non-artist would be completely lost, imo.

Best line: "It's a shame he's such a sadistic bastard, because he has wonderful manners."

We start in the present day & I'm at a point where Grace is looking back to when she first met her strange husband. I have to say she's either really dumb or nobody ever told her the warning signs of controlling men or why not to jump into marriage with a man you don't know. It's early but you don't have to be brilliant to know this won't end well.

I realize this is a Spanish-to-English translation but this is at least the fourth time I've encountered the word "ingenuous(ness)." Annoying. There are other words.

I am no fan of Juan de Vere. I was already irritated that his asshole boss was having him follow his wife but the very second he assigned de Verre the task of wasting his UNPAID evening hours buddying up to the much older doctor to get information (about what?) de Verre should have told his wealthy boss yo hire a less suspicious PROFESSIONAL. Two creeps.

Nice allusion to Sherlock Holmes (huge fan of the BBC Cumerbatch show). But I've never been so sad for a woman in a book in my life.

Finally. It's getting good.

I'm giving it till the halfway point before I DNF. Ten pages to make a point? Repeatedly? Saramago's All the Names started like that but became a rich reward. But all signs point to the run-on boredom of Pessoa and Proust. Reading should be a challenge sometimes but never a test of endurance.

Everything thus far screams Pessoa and Proust, two writers whose work is about repeatedly stating the exact same thing over and over with ever more beautiful language that becomes impossible to notice beyond the veil of boredom. Saramago (All the Names) eventually won me over and turned me into a HUGE fan but if by the halfway point it's STILL Swans Way I am OUT.

Covering a murder scene, a rival reporter tries to chat up our heroine, Eve Singer. She observes "She didn't trust Guy Smith any further than she could throw him. He was as vain as a teenage girl and lied like one too. Plus he routinely spoke to her breasts, as if tits were the windows to the soul." This and so much more is why I LOVE Belinda Bauer.

When the Turkish man at the hotel saw Lo had Anne's credit cards and mentioned Richard & Anne Bullmer were regular guests her antenna should have immediately gotten a big fat signal. Lots of great stuff in this book but moments like that kind of kill my belief in the heroine's intelligence.

I've been giving this story the side eye since I started (pre-ship burglary segment, heroine with a nasty alcohol problem... again...) but I just got to the online forum at the end of part 5. The Sherlock references remind me of the awesome online discussions of Sherlock's "death/resurrection" on the BBC drama (what fun!). This bit just made me sit up, all happy and stuff.

I suspected the woman William Stoner married was struggling with mental illness, now I'm certain. I feel so bad for him but he really should have paid attention before he committed. She was a very strange girl.

I should never have read the Introduction which, essentially, is a Wikipedia page informing the reader of everything that's coming. Stoner just married the woman who's going to make this sweet guy utterly miserable. Thanks to the Introduction, I'm incredibly sad for this man. In advance.

The labels on the wine bottles. This jealous waiter is going to be a serious problem on down the road, I think.

Being invisible. This book has taken the saddest turn.

Fun as all get out, so far. But by page 20 I've read a mustache referred to three times as "moustachES." This is quite possibly a lack of education on my part but "moustaches", far as I know, is the plural form of mustache/moustache. Does our hero wear more than one?