February's Did Not Finish Post

True Crime and serial killers are normally my thing.  Especially when it's well written and well researched like this one.  Maybe I was just in a bad mood or maybe I was just in the mood for something else.  I got about a quarter of the way through it and moved on to lighter topics.  One issue I had with this book was that I had a really hard time keeping all the names straight and who everyone was, but that's hardly the author's fault.  When you're writing true crime you can't go in and rename everyone.

I really wish there would have been a disclaimer on After the Snow that said something like: "This book is written just like The Knife of Never Letting Go".  Then I would have known not to read it.  I tried to red The Knife and put it down because I didn't like the way it was written.  This book is written in a similar style...like a stream of consciousness, but in a broken English kind of way.  The premise looked really good so I was kinda bummed out that I didn't enjoy it.

French Lessons just didn't hold my interest.  Simple As That!  Nothing else wrong with it as far as I could tell.  I maybe got 10% through it and decided it was totally boring and I wasn't going to waste my time with it when I had about a bajillion other books I could be reading.

The Boy in the Suitcase was another one that I just sort of trailed off on.  I got about halfway through it and had to put it down for something else.  I decided I wasn't interested enough in it to pick it back up.  That kind of surprised me because I had been looking forward to reading it since I first heard about it last summer and I love the Scandinavian writers.

The Flame Alphabet has caused a lot of turmoil for me.  That might be a little dramatic, but I was really looking forward to this book.  Look at that awesome cover art.  The idea behind the story was really cool.  The speech of children was killing their parents.  Wow!  What an idea.  Then I started reading the book and it was like the writing of the author was killing me.  THAT's being a little dramatic, but seriously it was just boring.  I didn't care for the main character, I didn't like the way he interacted or felt about his daughter.  I didn't like his daughter period.  His wife was basically useless throughout most of the book.  I couldn't exactly tell how the writer felt about Jewish people.  In the book he had them in hiding worshipping alone in holes in the ground, but without any real explanation as to why.  They weren't allowed to talk to each other about what they learned in the holes.  It was just all really weird.  It kept making me think about Fight Club for some reason.  THEN...I started checking out Goodreads to see what other people were thinking.  Big mistake.  There were people that were attacking the people that didn't like the book.  What the heck??  It made me not want to finish the book even more. 

Under the Never Sky looked very interesting to both me and Autumn, so we decided to try it for a joint review.  Sadly, neither of us could get past the first few chapters.  I had a really hard time understanding what was going on.  Normally, I like dystopian novels (and I'm not even sure this qualifies as that), but I also like to have a hint as to what happened to change the world into what it has become.  I like the hint to be within the first few chapters so that I can orient myself. I never got that in this novel. I was having a hard time picturing anything about the "realms" and as Autumn put it, the alternate language was very off putting.  I just had to give up on it.

When Summer House became available for download from my library, I thought is looked like it might be a pretty good book.  Hey, at least I can say I tried, right?  Once I got to the part with the part where Helen overheard her husband speaking to his mistress on the phone, I had to shut it off.  The woman was spineless and just let it go like nothing was wrong.  Hello?  The guy is cheating on you and you do nothing?  The other characters weren't in the least bit interesting and I just knew it wasn't going to hold my interest for long. I also didn't care for the narrator on this one.  Her voices annoyed me.

I have had Fallen on my MP3 player for a while.  I finally decided to give it a try when I had nothing else that I HAD to listen to.  I saw that it got very mixed reviews on Goodreads, but that has usually never stopped me before.  I turned it off after the first disc.  I just couldn't take the teen angst.  OK... a gorgeous guy flips you off and you suddenly want to be with him?  I could see where this was going and was just not wanting to take the journey with the characters. I can only take so much teen angst and I could see the potential for a love triangle. No thanks.