Anonymous

fast paced and fun

Reviewed: 12-31-24

The voice actor has to do a lot of singing in this, it's a very musical audiobook for something that doesn't have a track backing it.
The villains are awful and obnoxious in a really fun way. The heroes do everything right and everything goes wrong anyway. There is a lot of gore and body horror.
Sidenote, it had way too many dream-dimension scenes for my taste. (She calls it "not a dream" at some point, but I don't know what else to call it. It's all in her head, because she has The Sight and is a Chosen One, etc.) It's all important stuff that moves the plot forward and half the most important characters only exist on that plane, so it's not just cryptic BS you can skip, but I personally just don't like it. I can never properly connect with these. Someone else probably won't care.

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I don't get it.

Reviewed: 09-01-24

I don't know this woman, and I don't want to just shit-talk her, but I feel like most of this is just made up.
It all just sounds so so incredibly embellished, starting with the cemetery she conveniently owned that immediately hits as very fanfic-y. Especially once she starts interacting with dying men, the way she talked to them and they talked to her was just weirdly off, I can't describe it. I had a very hard believing any of it.
(maybe this had something to do with the audiobook, which she voices herself. Technically, I feel like she did a fine job, but on the other hand, her tone was kind of condescending and fake-nice. Reminded me vaguely of a pissed-off kindergarten teacher.)
The only parts that I believed were the chapters where she doesn't talk about AIDS at all, and just complains about her scumbag ex-husband and inlaws. I didn't care about that though, because that's not why I bought this book. Also, Ruth often meanders wildly off topic in a very old-person way, which I was willing to look past because that's what she is, but at a certain point, I just had to skip when she started talking about Hot Springs again. sorry.
I usually wouldn't have bought something revolving around gay men if it's written by a straight woman, so I don't know what possessed me this time, but I regret it.
(and the bit with Bill Clinton was weird. There's this part where she's on the phone and goes: "Bill? Bill who?" and he says "Bill from church, I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to run for office" and she says "That's nice, sweety" or something. Why did they keep that in?)
Apparently, everyone else loves this book? I just don't get it.

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laughed myself sick and was bored to tears

Reviewed: 12-28-19

HE DOES NOT HAVE VIOLENCE WITHIN HIS SOUL. HE DOES NOT BELIEVE HE EVEN HAS A SOUL UNLESS IT WAS ONE INTENDED FOR A WOLF. I REGRETTT
Adam Verner did good, I suppose, but-
at one point I thought, maybe this is supposed to be all subversive and halfway through we'll go
"oh, he comes off as a delusional idiot because he actually IS a crazy person, how clever."
Is that it? Is that it?? no it is not
I thought maybe it's the first person POV or the child POV messing with my head but no. it is not that either. this is just really bad. do not. do NOT buy this I beg you. listen to your heart. listen to me. you know better. don't do this to yourself.
it starts off like a really bad humblebragging self-insert fanfiction and from then on it just goes from hilariously bad to sad bad to mindnumbingly BOOORING with some complete nonsense sprinkled on top.
at one point a character literally says "HOLY COW MAN SHE A HAWT"
at another point I though, ok. maybe I was just overreacting. this is starting to become moderately decent and then he said: "and that's it" and that was it.
don't waste your money on this p l e a s e

(i still bought the actual first book, this one being a prequel, because it's not in first person and doesn't have a child POV. It's that one I had looked at and then made the mistake of buying this one instead. BUT THEN I RETURNED IT BECAUSE IT IS JUST AS BAD BUT WITH SOME MORE MISOGYNY SPRINKLED IN that usually goes completely over my head but this time it was so one the nose it had me cringing into a small ball it's baaad)

PS: I just saw the editors compare this dumbass to Mitch Rapp and Alex Cross and how dare you-

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2 people found this helpful

liked it a lot but the ending ruined it

Reviewed: 12-28-19

nice spy-assassin plotline, the twists have subtle clues like they're supposed to, so you can catch on early, if you're one of those people.
brick did a really great job reading it out.
the epilogue did piss me off extremely, but I sort of have anger issues, so that might just be me.

The reviews are telling me to just skip the second one because it's kind of shit (also,
it sounds as if brick chucked his mic out the window and recorded book2 on his phone),
and the third one is apparently revolving around the fakeout-death/resurrection epilogue I hate so the series most likely ends for me here.

if you think you'll have the same issues you should pick a different series or look at this like a stand-alone that does definitely not have an epilogue.

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