Smashbomb

Search

Search results

All (2225)

Content

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2444 KP) rated Academic Curveball in Books

Oct 16, 2018

Kellan Faces One of Life's Curveballs – Murder

Kellan Ayrwick has returned home for a few days to attend a dinner in honor of his father's retirement from Braxton College. While Kellan's there, he is supposed to meet up with a woman who has done some research for the true crime TV show that he works on. However, Kellan gets distracted when, near the end of the dinner, he finds a dead body. The victim was a professor at Braxton. With everything swirling around the at college, Kellan is afraid that someone he loves will be arrested for the crime. Can he figure out the truth before that happens?

I wanted to like the book, but I felt it had some flaws to it. It was overly wordy, especially with some rehashing of things we already knew and theories we'd already considered. Additionally, there were several nitpicks, like this dinner several months before Kellan's father planned to fully retire. The mystery, overall, was strong, however. There were several believable suspects that kept me guessing until Kellan figured things out. Likewise, I really liked the potential series regulars, and the book introduced several threads that will make for great future books in the series.

Kudos

Hazel (2934 KP) rated A Beautiful Corpse (Harper McClain #2) in Books

Dec 14, 2019

An enjoyable and addictive read

This is book two in the series but I haven't read the first and, to be honest, I don't think it mattered that much however, there is likely to be additional background to the main characters which I have missed out on and which will likely add to this story but I feel this can easily be read as a standalone.

Harper is a great lead female character; strong, courageous and feisty but with a vulnerability that makes her more convincing but all the characters are well developed and believable ... even the cat, Zuzu!

The main story line of the murder and subsequent investigation is great but the side-stories are equally as good and with the writing flowing with ease, this makes this an enjoyable and addictive read that I devoured in just over a day.

Definitely recommended reading for you readers out there who love a strong, female character, a great mystery, engaging investigation and some scenes of peril.

I am very much looking forward to the next instalment and hope that Ms Daugherty is locked away somewhere feverishly writing!

Thank you to HarperCollins UK, Harperfiction via NetGalley for my copy in return for my honest and unbiased opinion.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Dracula in TV

Jan 4, 2020

Dracula

2020 | Drama, Horror

6.1

(14 Ratings)

TV Show Rating

Somewhat predictably, the Sherlock team's take on Dracula proves to be a studied piece of unfaithfulness - although, given just how well-known and iconic this particular story is, it's hard to see quite what else they could have done. It starts off looking deceptively faithful, turns into a bizarre inversion of an Agatha Christie-type murder mystery, and then really goes for broke with a third-act twist the likes of which have not been seen since AD 1972. Guaranteed to upset purists, but hey - at least they were still allowed to cast a man as Dracula.

Claes Bang is indisputably very good as the Count, mixing cool flippancy with genuine menace. The rest of it is a bit of a curate's egg, with brilliant moments mixed thoroughly with things that don't quite work. If you like Moffat and Gatiss' approach to scripting - sketch show and conjuring performance in equal measures, with big set pieces and reveals taking precedence over logic and cohesion - then you will obviously enjoy this. Otherwise, then the sound of Dracula is not so much the music of the children of the night, as that of the writers winking at the audience non-stop for four and a half hours.