Apartment 255: A novel by Bunty Avieson

If you like cats, you might have to re-think your opinion after reading Bunty Avieson's book, Apartment 255. With enough drama and compulsive readability, Avieson keeps the tension going in this novel until the not quite so surprising ending. The novel is based around the friendship between Ginny and the beautiful Sarah, who seemingly has it all. Sarah has a great job, a wonderful fiancé Tom and everything in her world is just fine. Even though Ginny is her best friend and successful herself with a career as a veterinarian, Sarah is quite unaware of Ginny's powerful obsession with Sarah's life, and Sarah's fiance. I don't think it is an overstatement to say from the start that Ginny just seems a little off. She has weird relationships with cats, both dead and alive. There are scenes containing a cat, that I feel were added simply for shock value. I get it, Ginny is a lunatic who is slowly unraveling and not living in reality. Ginny begins to spy on Tom and Sarah while living in an apartment opposite them in a high rise building. Along with the spying, Ginny starts to slowly and methodically poison Sarah with steroids, which is kind of coincidental because Tom is doing research on steroids for his work. Ginny really wants to get Sarah out of the picture so she can have Tom all to herself. The story unfolds with several catastrophic mishaps/overreactions on Sarah's part, and the introduction of Tom's father and hippie-like mother. Pile upon pile of bad luck falls upon Sarah until the truth is revealed at the end about Ginny's true motivations and her reason for being. I thought this book was a pretty basic psychological thriller with a few memorable scenes. Watch out for the cat! Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Don't You Cry by Mary Kubica

So far, my experience reading anything written by Mary Kubica, has not been good. Whilst reading Pretty Baby, I found several grammatical errors that totally turned off this grammar maven. I mean, the spelling was atrocious among other things. After a while, I gave up. I can't attest to Mary Kubica being an excellent novelist or not, because Don't You Cry is the first book of hers that I have finished. Anyway, I received a free copy of Don't You Cry from Netgalley.com, and I thank them for that. Don't You Cry was a good, if not terribly exciting at all times novel. That being said, It kept my interest until the end. It is told from two different points of view, one being Quinn and the other Alex, an eighteen year old teenager. I find this technique getting a lot of play lately in writing; the alternating chapters and am not quite sure why it is so popular. Is it hard to simply write a linear novel and tell a story? The alternating views do however, provide a little bit of tension. The plot twists and turns in several areas, and I thought I had a good handle on what exactly was happening, but ultimately, I had to wait until the last 35 pages or so to have it all make sense. Don't You Cry is a good psychological thriller that should keep you up well into a late night. An easy read and would recommend for a scary, creepy diversion.

A Review: Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review. Hidden Bodies is the creepy sequel to You- another creepy novel by Caroline Kepnes. I would strongly recommend reading You before venturing on to Hidden Bodies, as this will familiarize you with Kepnes' writing style, which I must say is crazy, tense, fast, and can be distracting at times. Hidden Bodies is a pretty good sequel, if you like psychopaths for protagonists and murderers running rampant. Joe is the central character, and is the murderer you hate to love, but you just can't help yourself. Kepnes does a great job of defining Joe as a seemingly good guy, who is a loose cannon emotionally and is off kilter just enough to maintain tension throughout the writing. While not particularly likeable, Joe is normal enough that you kind of root for his life to have a good outcome. This is a dark novel, and Joe's character is fleshed out in such a way, that you're going along reading, thinking everything is relatively normal, and wham!!, he decides to murder someone. Joe has trouble relating to people and just ends up murdering them, or so it seems. The storyline is a bit of a stretch, and Joe's new found girlfriend Love is just too innocent a character to realistically become involved with Joe. Much of the plot line was hard to stomach, (surely people aren't that stupid?), but it goes along, quite rapidly into an ending that makes you think there will be yet another sequel, which to me, seems unnecessary.