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Billie Wichkan (118 KP) rated Duncan in Books

May 22, 2019  
Duncan
Duncan
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
A cunning pederastic serial killer nicknamed “Santa” is making his way up the East Coast from New Orleans to Boston, leaving a trail of young bodies in his wake. Santa covers his tracks along the way by working as an itinerant bass player in a series of jazz combos. At the same time, the Driscoll family – Mark, Julie and their nine-year-old son Nate – who live in an upstate suburb of Syracuse, New York, struggle to come to grips with Mom’s quadriplegia following a horrific auto accident. The suspense builds to a fever pitch as these two plot strands approach each other for the inevitable confrontation. All this tension is heightened by the mystery of Duncan, Nate’s stuffed-toy gorilla, who is not only the boy’s beloved companion but becomes a kind of family totem, and, later on in the story, so much more.


Trigger warning for pedophilia, disability, murder, and so forth

This is a novel not only for readers addicted to thrill rides and maddening suspense, but also those who are curious about the abnormal psychology of the pedophiliac killer. The book gives food for thought as well as a kind of perverse satisfaction for the imagination and senses. It is a thinking reader’s thriller.
There are some graphic scenes that would make any normal human uncomfortable to say the least.
I loved how Mr. McCort portrays the heart-warming relationship dynamics within the Driscoll family. Oh I did love Duncan too!
The book also delivers on its' promise to the insight of the killers mind as well (the diabolical Santa).
Disturbing but excellent read.
Recommend reading.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
  
Here We Lie
Here We Lie
Paula Treick DeBoard | 2018 | Mystery
9
9.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Two Worlds Collide
Megan Mazeros and Lauren Mabrey are polar opposites. While Megan comes from a middle-class family in Kansas, Lauren hails from a wealthy Connecticut-based family. While Megan’s father slowly succumbed to mesothelioma which he referred to as the poor man’s cancer, Lauren’s father is a well-liked U.S. Senator with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto. While Megan has to use her father’s life insurance money to pay for tuition and housing at Keale College (a prestigious, private, and all-girls school), Lauren is given a continual allowance that gets her through her college years with utmost ease. When they meet during their freshman year at Keale College, they unexpectedly become the best of friends. Sharing clothes, secrets, roommates, ambitions, and more, the pair goes through many ups and downs in their friendship during the following years. But one fateful night while they’re vacationing with Lauren's family on an island off the coast of Maine, something terrible happens to Megan and their friendship is irreparably damaged afterwards.

Told in an alternating first-person perspective between Megan and Lauren, Here We Lie is a powerful and relevant story about friendship, betrayal, political scandal, and abuse. I enjoyed everything about it, from the back-and-forth jumps between past and present to the incredible growth of both the main characters. The narrative is fast-paced and compelling, and the ending is beautiful and inspiring. With the rise of the #MeToo movement in the present-day world, Paula Treick DeBoard’s incredibly timely latest novel is sure to spark plenty of conversation about sexual abuse victims and perpetrators, motivation for reform and accountability, and at the very least food for thought.
  
BT
Beneath the Stands ( Sugarlake 2)
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
66 of 220
Kindle
Beneath the Stands ( Sugarlake 2)
My Emily McIntire
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Elliot Carson left Sugarlake and has never looked back. Revered as the next big thing in basketball, Eli’s a star until an injury ends his career, sending him spiraling with no direction.

But he won’t go home.

He can’t.

Instead, he accepts a coaching gig at Florida Coast University, determined to leave his past behind. But fate has other plans when Becca, his sister’s best friend, shows up as a student and, even worse, becomes the new team manager.

Rebecca Sanger is the preacher’s daughter and the town's disappointment. When she ignores her family’s demands to come home, she’s cut off and needs a job so she can stay enrolled at FCU. She thought she had everything figured out, until Eli Carson—the person she hates more than anything in the world—ends up being her new boss.

Forced together, Becca and Eli’s hatred turns to heat, and they start an affair. But disaster quickly strikes, ripping them apart.

Years pass, and Becca’s back home, under her parent’s thumb, and living a mundane life. When Eli shows up out of the blue with a fiancée in tow, Becca is tasked with planning their wedding.

There’s only one problem.

Becca still loves Eli.

And he hates her.

A pretty decent read especially as lately I’ve struggled with romance. It was interlinked with book one so if you haven’t read it you will need to. It was good seeing conclusion to one story as well as it leading to the next. Flowed well and was a nice hit of that spice. It’s good to read a bit of spicy romance now and again.
  
The Lone Ranger (2013)
The Lone Ranger (2013)
2013 | Action, Comedy, Fantasy, Western
With much of the pre-release coverage of the film centered on the reportedly $250 million plus shooting budget, audiences can finally see the fruits of this labor as Disney brings “The Lone Ranger” to the big screen. The movie stars Johnny Depp as Tonto and tells a slightly updated tale of the masked ranger, yet stays refreshingly grounded in the traditions and history of the source material.

 

Armie Hammer stars as John Reid, a district attorney who returns to Texas to provide justice to a lawless land that is in the process of great expansion thanks to the pending completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. In the 1860s, the country is in a great state of change as the completion of the railroad will allow people to travel coast-to-coast across, something that was once an extremely long and dangerous journey to undertake.

 

The local railroad administrator plans to do a public hanging of notorious outlaw murder Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner), as an example of how law and order has come to the wild frontier, a show to encourage Western expansion and install a sense of security in the local populace. The local Comanche tribes are told that as long as they continue to honor the established treaties they will be able to coexist in peace with the Western settlers.

 

Following a daring escape from the train that is carrying him to justice, Cavendish departs into the desert with his gang of outlaws. Not willing to let him escape justice once again, Reid’s brother Dan deputizes John, and leads the posse to bring Cavendish to justice. Now as anybody who’s followed any of the previous incarnations of the story knows, the posse is ambushed and all the Rangers are brutally murdered by Cavendish and is outlaws. Enter Tonto, who discovers John barely alive, and overseas his restoration to health. It is Tonto who convinces Reid to wear a mask as he is convinced that Cavendish had help and that it would be best for John and his brother’s family if the world believed John died with the other rangers to save them from any possible retribution

 

In a refreshing change of pace, Reid is not a swaggering fountain of machismo. He is a man who puts his faith in the law rather than in a six shooter and is actually hesitant to fire a weapon and use lethal forms of violence to dispense justice. This brings him at odds from time to time with Tonto who tries to walk the thin line between his people and his beliefs and the ever-changing modern world around him.

 

When the military began systematically retaliating against Tonto’s people for perceived raids against the townspeople, Reid and Tonto not only must deal with Cavendish and his gang of outlaws but must get to the bottom of a larger mystery that threatens to not only eradicate the Comanche people but to threaten the good citizens of the area. With his trusty and at times comical white horse, Silver, Reid and Tonto must learn to coexist with each other in a desperate race against time.

 

The film was an extremely enjoyable and fresh take on the characters that I really enjoyed. By giving the characters slightly more updated and relatable personas and traits yet retaining their core identities in history, Depp and Hammer made this a Western that was fun and cool and yet stayed true to the origins of the characters while making them more appealing to a modern audience. What really impressed me was Depp how he took what is often jokingly seen as a stereo typical Western sidekick and made him a very compelling yet diverse character. Yes, there is a lot of humor in the film but it is entertainingly at the expense of Reid, most often with Tonto getting some of the best lines in the film. I really appreciated the fact how it told a story without being overly politically correct or preaching, letting the characters and the action convey the message.

 

The action in the film is solid and the harrowing finale had people in the test screening cheering the action. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Director Gore Verbinski are to be commended for bringing a lively story that introduces the iconic characters to a new generation of fans. I hope that the film is able to draw fans and gives Disney’s a good return on its large investment as I would love to see Depp and Hammer back for future adventures. “The Lone Ranger” was the most pleasant surprise of the summer to date and the only summer film so far that I would pay to see again.

http://sknr.net/2013/07/03/the-lone-ranger/