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saareman's reviews
2952 reviews
Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
4.0
I was curious (grey). I know you're supposed to sneer at this if you're not in the target audience, but I actually found it fun.
There's humour, esp. in the email exchanges and in the ongoing ways that Anastasia Steele's "inner goddess" expresses her delight in Ana's sexual initiations.
On the other hand, Ana's prude side is called her "subconscious" and she keeps using that word, but I don't think it means what she thinks it means.
Generally fairly "vanilla" really on the sex side, although there is an underlying tension and suspense of how far Christian Grey will go and how much of his background he will reveal to Ana.
There's humour, esp. in the email exchanges and in the ongoing ways that Anastasia Steele's "inner goddess" expresses her delight in Ana's sexual initiations.
On the other hand, Ana's prude side is called her "subconscious" and she keeps using that word, but I don't think it means what she thinks it means.
Generally fairly "vanilla" really on the sex side, although there is an underlying tension and suspense of how far Christian Grey will go and how much of his background he will reveal to Ana.
The Boyfriend by Thomas Perry
3.0
Thomas Perry has always been one of my favourite suspense authors. This is especially so when he is writing in his specialized niche of 'hunt and evade' thrillers. Some of these have been one-off novels such as "Pursuit" or "Death Benefits", and some have made for excellent series characters such as the Jane Whitefield or the Butcher's Boy series. With "The Boyfriend" we now have the 2nd of the Jack Till books, the 1st being 2007's "Silence", thus turning Till into a further series character. So why such a relatively low rating of 3 for "The Boyfriend"? For a favourite author you'd expect to give at least or 4 or 5 usually.
I had too much the sense of recycled plot ideas in this novel, probably esp. from the Butcher's Boy, with the scenes of a veteran hit-man teaching a novice the trade. Also, the 'hunt' element just seemed too unbelievable. Jack Till is able to single-handedly identify the patterns of a serial killer and hit-man and is able to start predicting and tracking down future victims when the entire police services of several major cities and that of state and federal authorities were completely clueless to these things. Of course, there would be no novel if this wasn't the case, but you hope for a bit more cleverness, a bit more outside-the-box thinking, to propel the hero over the regular crowd, and i just didn't feel that sort of kick from the steps that Jack Till takes to track down the killer. It all seems to come remarkably easily to him, even if he is often a step behind where he needs to be (and he has to be or the book would end too quickly). Lastly, especially from Thomas Perry, who has written strong female characters in the past, this book's recurring victimhood of a series of otherwise sharp self-employed call-girls was another distressing element.
Of course I finished it within a few days, Perry has not lost his knack for writing compulsive reads. It just didn't win me over. The women are sadly interchangeable victims, the Jack Till character is just too bland and you aren't exactly going to side with the sociopathic killer, so who is there left to root for?
I had too much the sense of recycled plot ideas in this novel, probably esp. from the Butcher's Boy, with the scenes of a veteran hit-man teaching a novice the trade. Also, the 'hunt' element just seemed too unbelievable. Jack Till is able to single-handedly identify the patterns of a serial killer and hit-man and is able to start predicting and tracking down future victims when the entire police services of several major cities and that of state and federal authorities were completely clueless to these things. Of course, there would be no novel if this wasn't the case, but you hope for a bit more cleverness, a bit more outside-the-box thinking, to propel the hero over the regular crowd, and i just didn't feel that sort of kick from the steps that Jack Till takes to track down the killer. It all seems to come remarkably easily to him, even if he is often a step behind where he needs to be (and he has to be or the book would end too quickly). Lastly, especially from Thomas Perry, who has written strong female characters in the past, this book's recurring victimhood of a series of otherwise sharp self-employed call-girls was another distressing element.
Of course I finished it within a few days, Perry has not lost his knack for writing compulsive reads. It just didn't win me over. The women are sadly interchangeable victims, the Jack Till character is just too bland and you aren't exactly going to side with the sociopathic killer, so who is there left to root for?