I am in love with Jennifer McMahon. Totally and utterly in love with her. So feel free to disregard this as a rabid fangirl review. I loved this book. I left work early so I could finish this book. It was just as good, maybe even better than ‘Don’t Breathe a Word’.

As Rhonda sits at a gas station, she witnessing a bizarre kidnapping. Someone in a giant bunny suit leading a young girl to their car and driving away. Upset that she didn’t do anything to stop it, Rhonda joins the search. Each clue she finds brings up her own past, and a friend she lost long ago.

I love how McMahon weaves the two stories, one of the past, one of the present into one story line and I actually thought it worked better in this book than in the other one. And she ‘gets’ children. I love when authors can write a great book about children like this. Stephen King can do it, and McMahon can do it. Yes, I just put them in the same category.

Somehow with the book being set completely in real life, McMahon spins a fairy tale. That’s amazing and I want to learn how to do it. I think it comes from having half the story be told by children, because children see a fairy tale more easily than adults. I also loved that the play the kids were doing was Peter Pan. There were just so many perfect things about this book. The interactions between the kids were a perfect display of what life is like at that age. Maybe I am a little extra loving of the book because the girls in the flashbacks were almost exactly the age I would have been. One of the dates in the book is the day I turned 11. I can see this being my story and that is why it is so amazing. McMahon has displayed a totally believable snatch of life.

I enjoyed the parts that took place in the ‘now’ a little more in this book because they were a little cut and dry. My only complaint about ‘Don’t Breathe a Word’ was that it doesn’t quite commit to whether the magical parts of the book are real or not. It left me wondering and I wish it hadn’t. In this book it’s very clear what is going on and how it ties back to all the childhood events.

Overall, a great book. I can’t wait to read the other two.

I’ll start off by admitting that I’ve been drooling over this author since I read Ashes last summer. Why did it take me so long to get around to reading another book by her? Fear. Total fear that Ashes was a one off and I would be disappointed by her other work, especially a book written before Ashes. Was I disappointed? Hell no!

This book almost reminded me of The Dreamhunter Duet by Elizabeth Knox, but it’s not quite as developed as those books. That didn’t stop it from being hard to put down and thoroughly enjoyable though.

Christian has always been a little different from other kids. He’s way into art, and sometimes the things he draws seem to be a little too alive. Sometimes they seem to make things happen in the real world. When his drawings put him on the trail of an unsolved murder from over 50 years ago, he can’t help but be sucked in.

Christian’s growing understanding of his powers and the clues to the murder they reveal are intriguing and a big part of what makes this book hard to put down. As soon as you are just about ready to stop, something happens that makes you need to read just one more chapter. I really enjoyed the flashbacks to the time when the murder took place and everything having to do with that.

Christian’s home life and relationships in the current time were well done, if not a huge part of the story for him. He never really gets over his eagerness to leave it all behind, but that’s okay. The only thing that stopped this from being a 5 star book for me is the sideways place. The book opens and ends with Christian thinking about his dead parents and how they went to the sideways place. However, that’s really all there is to it. From the way the book starts I expected to be visiting that place with Christian. Not getting to do that is a disappointment that can be remedied by a sequel!

Overall, really good, just not quite what I was expecting.

This is one of those books I started reading and couldn’t wait to keep reading. I listened to it, and I think that adds a lot to Stephen King books. I’m listening to something else now and I keep getting sad that I’m not listening to this anymore!

So Jake finds out his friend Al Templeton has a doorway to the past in his pantry. Al is dying and asks Jake to finish what he started and stop the Kennedy assassination. He believes by stopping the assassination history will be changed for the better.

So Jake takes on the persona of George and goes back in time to do just that. Of course things are never simple or happy in a Stephen King book, so that doesn’t go so well!

What a great book, it’s not the usual King horror, it’s much more science fiction than that, but it has all of the relationship and life stuff that King does so well. Let’s all just admit that that is why his books are so good. Sure, the scary is fun, but it’s the relationships that make that scary seem so real.

There is so much leading up to George attempting to stop the assassination that you can almost forget for a moment that’s the goal of all this, which I think is what he was going for. I mean, if you went back in time and had five or so years before the time you were waiting for, you would start to forget why you were there and begin living a life. Like George though, you realize in small moments that these relationships aren’t meant to last, because there is a good chance things will F up and you will have to go back to your own time and if you come back to try again, everything will be reset.

So yeah, the stuff about the assassination was interesting and good on King for putting in the time to research it all, because I bet it took some real time. It comes off as totally believable. I found myself excepting everything he wrote about the Oswalds as fact, even though it’s obviously made up. That aside, it’s the rest of George’s life that keeps pulling you through the story. There is so much happiness and heart ache that you can’t help but want to keep reading. Of course, it’s also what makes the ending such a bitch too!

Grade A book, a must read!

Usually a sci-fi book that slips this much into girly love interest territory loses it for me, but this one pulled it off beautifully.

Daisy can’t die. She is one of 21 kids who died on a bus crash and were brought back to life using an experimental drug called ‘revive’. Because of this, she has a pretty crooked view on death, but all that changes when she dies again and is forced to move across the country so no one will know she didn’t really die.

In a lot of ways, this book read like a very normal high school experience book. Girl has to got a new school, girl finds new friend, girl falls for cute boy in English class. However, the undercurrent of the mysterious government agency and Daisy’s past with revive never quite got swept under the rug.

The normal girl school stuff was some of the best I have read lately. Daisy’s relationship with Matt was believable and progressed naturally while her friendship with Aubrey had that perfect over eager excitedness of a new friendship. When it becomes clear that Aubrey has a secret, the appropriate amount of time passes before you figure it out and when you are told what it is, you die just a little.

Anything else is too spoilerish, but trust me, this book takes you through the emotions!

Then you have Daisy and her government agent fake parents. When they’re alone, things revolve more around the drug, which has become a normal part of their lives. However, strange things are happening within the program and the three of them are right in the middle of it. Mason, her fake dad, senses something is wrong, but it’s Daisy and her revived friend Megan who really start digging into figuring out what is going on.

I loved the idea of revive and what it would really mean if there was a drug that, with only a few limitations, could bring people back to life. Daisy is reckless because she has no reason to be afraid of death, and who wouldn’t be? How much more stupid stuff would we all do if we knew there was a reset button? And if revive went into widespread use, what would that do to the population? If anything, they didn’t go into the moral complications of the drug far enough for me.

Overall though, it was a really good book; exciting, emotional, and fun.