No. 9 for 2013

Title: Private Berlin
Author: James Patterson and Mark Sullivan
Rating: 3/5
Book: 9/50
Pages: 429 pgs
Total Pages: 3,290 pages
Version: Book
Next up: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

This book was not my favourite of the Private series. I found the plot lagged and everything that was worth reading in this book happened in the last 20 pages.

It was very apparent to me that Patterson did not write this book and it was only written by his co-author as the writing style didn’t match Patterson’s. The short sentences bothered me and once I started to get annoyed by them, it was all I noticed. The villain in the book bored me and if I have to read “my friends” again, I might scream.

I wish I liked this book more than I did. I’m a fan of the Private series and I’m disappointed that I’m disappointed in this book.

About The Book:

IN EUROPE’S MOST DANGEROUS CITY

Chris Schneider is a superstar agent at Private Berlin, Germany headquarters for the world’s most powerful investigation firm. He keeps his methods secret as he tackles Private’s most high-profile cases-and when Chris suddenly disappears, he becomes Private Berlin’s most dangerous investigation yet.

AN INVESTIGATOR IS SEARCHING

Mattie Engel is another top agent at Private Berlin, gorgeous and ruthlessly determined-and she’s also Chris’s ex. Mattie throws herself headfirst into finding Chris, following leads to the three people Chris was investigating when he vanished: a billionaire suspected of cheating on his wife, a soccer star accused of throwing games, and a nightclub owner with ties to the Russian mob. Any one of them would surely want Chris gone-and one of them is evil enough to want him dead.

AND SHE’S AFTER MORE THAN THE TRUTH

Mattie’s chase takes her into Berlin’s most guarded, hidden, and treacherous places, revealing secrets from Chris’s past that she’d never dreamed of in the time they were lovers. On the brink of a terrifying discovery, Mattie holds on to her belief in Chris-in the face of a horror that could force all of Europe to the edge of destruction and chaos.

No. 8 for 2013

Title: Me Before You
Author: Jojo Moyes
Rating: 5/5
Book: 8/50
Pages: 368 pgs
Total Pages: 2,861 pages
Version: Book
Next up: Private Berlin by James Patterson and Mark Sullivan

This book is a book that is going to stay with me long after I read it. I’m going to remember this book as being the book that made me cry while in Starbucks as I finished it. I fell in love with the book and the characters from page one and I was truly sad to see this book come to an end. In fact, I slowed down my reading because I didn’t want it to end! This is an awesome book that EVERYONE needs to read.  Just be sure to have a box of tissues beside you!

About The Book:

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time

No. 7 for 2013

Title: World War Z: An Oral Histroy of the Zombie War
Author: Max Brooks
Rating: 3/5
Book: 7/50
Pages: 341 pgs
Total Pages: 2,493 pages
Version: Book
Next up: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

I have heard so much hype about this book so despite the fact that zombies really isn’t my thing, I thought I’d give it a try. While the premise was interesting and parts of the book was interesting, I found a good 40% of this book to be very dry. Still worth checking out if you have nothing to read.

About The Book:

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”