
Laetitia Sadier recommended Ex-Futur Album by Veronique Vincent and Aksak Maboul in Music (curated)

Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer
Hannes Rastam, Henning Koch and Elizabeth Day
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'I wonder what you'd think of me if you found out that I've done something really serious ...' So...

Dear Lumpy: Letters to a Disobedient Daughter
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'Dearest Lumpy, I hope you are plump and well. Your mother bashed her car yesterday and chooses to...

Eyewitness Accounts: I Was a Slave in Russia
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"It is hard to describe a nightmare adequately, unless you can say how the day had been before the...

I am Pilgrim
Book
Can you commit the perfect crime? Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn't exist. The adopted...

Awix (3310 KP) rated Lake Placid (1999) in Movies
Jun 11, 2020
You get the sense this is a film everybody involved made on a week off as a kind of joke - the snappy dialogue between the characters is the only bit of the film which truly shines, and it's the gory bits - beheadings and dismemberments which feel out of place (even some of these are played for laughs). Sort of mildly amusing and the croc model is good, but not funny and certainly not scary enough to linger in the memory. I seem to recall the 1980 movie Alligator being a lot more fun.

I Know What You Bid Last Summer (Sarah Winston Garage Sale Mystery #5)
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Sherry Harris presents the fifth installment of this charming, bestselling cozy mystery series! One...

The Island (Hidden Iceland #2)
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THE EXPLOSIVE NEW NOVEL FROM THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR - IF YOU LIKED AND THEN THERE WERE...
Crime Mystery

Lyndsey Gollogly (2893 KP) rated The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside in Books
Mar 20, 2023
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The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside
By Jessica Ryn
⭐️⭐️⭐️
She’s not lost. She’s just waiting to be found…
‘Completely beguiling – a messy, loveable cast of characters with Dawn at the centre, bringing the light. A truly lovely read’
Beth Morrey, Sunday Times bestselling author of Saving Missy
Dawn Elisabeth Brightside has been running from her past for twenty-two years and two months, precisely.
So when she is offered a bed in St Jude’s Hostel for the Homeless, it means so much more than just a roof over her head.
But with St Jude’s threatened with closure, Dawn worries that everything is about to crumble around her all over again.
Perhaps, with a little help from her new friends, she can find a way to save this light in the darkness?
And maybe, just maybe, Dawn will finally have a place to call home….
It was good sad in places and makes you think that life’s events can change our lives. It was an easy read not something I usually pick up! Overall it was a 3 star as nothing really jump out and grabbed me.

Acanthea Grimscythe (300 KP) rated The Motion of Puppets in Books
May 16, 2018
Theo and Kay Harper are newlyweds with a ten year age difference between them. A teacher at a local college, Theo takes an summer vacation away from New York with his wife, Kay, as she performs with a cirque in Quebec City. While she works, he translates a book from French to English, and everything appears to be fine. That is, until Kay suddenly disappears one night after going out with her fellow actors for dinner and drinks. Woven with necromancy, animated puppets, and many references to the madness of Alice in Wonderland, Donohue's story could be considered riveting, and perhaps I would gladly label it so if I had not been so profoundly bored while reading it.
The book's plot is, in and of itself, highly intriguing. As a fan of horror and having proclaimed a love for anything necromantic in nature, the idea of people becoming puppets, or even dying and being reanimated in any fashion really, is something apt to catch my attention, and for that reason and my love of ancient mythology, I requested an advanced reader's copy of The Motion of Puppets. My frustration with it came mostly in the fact that I felt like the book progressed too slowly and there seemed to be a lot of extra "fluff" added in. For instance, the snippets regarding Theo's translation of Eadweard Muybridge's biography really felt a bit unnecessary. There was no real correlation between Muybridge and the book itself, save to provide Theo with something on which to focus. That, also, didn't feel necessary, as Theo seems to be a rather detached character, despite his very clear obsession with his wife. Even Kay's point of view seems to be a bit overly deluded, considering her time as a puppet is significantly shorter than that of the other puppets around her and yet she seems almost as aloof as they are by the conclusion of the book.
In addition to moving at a bit of a slow pace, The Motion of Puppets also seems to rely a bit more on Alice in Wonderland-like elements than it does mythos or current happenings. Everything seems weird and ridiculous, and little, if anything, makes any sense. If you try to make sense of it, chances are you'll find yourself lost, which I found myself giving up on halfway through the book. Magic is clearly alluded to as being the cause for the current state of the majority of the cast's existence; however, it is hardly mentioned and never really explained. Clearly there's enough oddness going on that the nearly-faceless bad guys worry about being found out, but even that isn't enough of a reason to delve into the why or how: it simply is.
There is no doubt in my mind that Keith Donohue is an excellent writer; he has a beautiful command of language that quite literally takes my breath away. Though The Motion of Puppets failed to satisfy me as a reader, I will likely read more of his work when I have the time. As for the genre of this book, horror probably isn't the right one. It'd be better suited in fantasy. There's nothing scary here.
Thank you to Macmillan-Picador, NetGalley, and the author for providing me with an advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.