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Lead Me Home
Lead Me Home
7
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Lead Me Home by C.S. Savage instantly reminded me of The Blind by A.F. Brady, The Binding Song by Elodie Harper, and The Foster Child by Jenny Blackhurst all of which also feature an overworked NHS psychiatrist struggling to cope with their demanding roles, who end up going beyond the call of duty in order to protect the most vulnerable.

In this book, Dr Clancy Mclean has her suspicions about a couple of her psychotic patients. One of which, Beth, is convinced she is being stalked and her health is declining rapidly. Feeling forced to take it upon herself to protect Beth, Clancy irresponsibly brings Beth home to stay with her and her daughter, Rowan. Er, not allowed!

But teenager Rowan is having troubles of her own, in the form of an abusive ex-boyfriend who will not leave her alone. When she meets her new boyfriend, an older and more mature man, she is so smitten she decides to keep him a secret to prevent her mother interfering ~ at least until she gets to know him better. After all, she met him online. Her mother would never approve.

Would you?

The story is narrated by four characters. Clancy, her daughter Rowan, Beth who is one of Clancy’s patients and an unknown, deranged psycho, who shares his murderous plans in great (and very gruesome) detail.

Reading ‘Lead Me Home’ was like watching an episode of ‘The Wire in the Blood’, based on Val McDermid’s book of the same name ~ tense, gripping and oh, so horrific I could hardly breathe as I raced through to the end.

In fact, this is such a fast-paced, well-written, creepy read, it’s without a doubt one of my favourite psychological thriller’s this year. The psycho’s scenes totally freaked me out and I don’t think I’ve ever read a book quite as fast as this one!

When one person fell victim of the psycho, I felt absolutely, and emotionally, sucker-punched! Really, how could the author do that to me? Is this really C.S Savage’s debut novel, because I have to say I can hardly believe that is the case! I loved every minute of reading this. I’ll certainly be looking out for more by this author, and so should you!

Needless to say, I heartily recommend ‘Lead Me Home’, to other lovers of well-written crime fiction! Love creepy, psychological thrillers heavily steeped in horror? Then grab a copy of this book and prepare for a scare!
  
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Awix (3310 KP) rated Mother! (2017) in Movies

Feb 10, 2018 (Updated Feb 10, 2018)  
Mother! (2017)
Mother! (2017)
2017 | Drama, Horror, Mystery
Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em
Palpably insane fantasy psycho-horror from Darren Aronofsky that seems intentionally designed to alienate and repel mainstream audiences. The presence of Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem seems calculated to lure in innocent passersby for this unhinged tale of... of...

Well, look, Lawrence and Bardem live in a lovely house in the countryside; he is a noted poet, she is his wife, and to begin with all is well. Then mysterious strangers start appearing and dark events threaten to disrupt their idyll. Things get extreme. At points they get extremely extreme.

If this movie was your pet it would attack your furniture and howl at the moon, then fetch you your slippers with a 'who, me?' look on its face. If you're a stickler for things like naturalism and coherence, then it is probably not for you; but Aronofsky creates the fractured sense of living through an unfolding nightmare, with all the non-logic that suggests, rather well, and the stars are all on full power. It's still very nearly the proverbial movie with something to offend everyone, but you can't fault the technical expertise with which it has been made, or the director's success in realising his (highly peculiar) vision for the film.
  
Show all 6 comments.
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Joe Julians (221 KP) Feb 11, 2018

To be fair to them, it was a very difficult film to market. Not sure what else they could have done.

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Andy K (10821 KP) Feb 11, 2018

Yes, hard to say what it is about without giving it all away.

Angelfire (Angelfire, #1)
Angelfire (Angelfire, #1)
Courtney Allison Moulton | 2011 | Young Adult (YA)
8
5.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
3.5 stars

So Angelfire took me a bit to get into. I started it at the end of August and well... It didn’t draw me in for quite a few chapters and even then I wasn’t too fussed about reading it any chance I got. It was probably about a third of the way in (and it's pretty long) that I finally realised what the story was about that I started to gel with it.

The probable romance between Ellie and Will certainly helped things along. I knew there was something between them previously, or at least a friendly companionship. It was just in the way Will behaved around her.

As for the more normal aspect of the story: friends and parties, I have to admit that I wasn’t too interested in that. I also figured that Landon had feelings for Ellie early on, though she was entirely blind to that until it was pointed out to her by many of her friends.

Family wise, I would love to know what's going on with Ellie's dad. Why has he gone all psycho suddenly?

I guess I'm interested enough in the plot to continue the series at some point but not right now.
  
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Awix (3310 KP) rated Inception (2010) in Movies

Aug 17, 2020  
Inception (2010)
Inception (2010)
2010 | Crime, Sci-Fi, Thriller
It's possible that Inception isn't the best film of the 21st century so far, but I'm blowed if I can think of a better candidate. What starts off looking like a slick thriller with SF trimmings - expert psycho-thief takes on one last job, breaking into a businessman's subconscious mind to implant a suggestion - turns into a dizzyingly complex and astonishingly self-assured examination of memory, reality, and the medium itself, with the execution matching the strength and ambition of the concept.

Consider: the film is based around a whole series of concepts and rules created out of whole cloth, which have to be explained to the audience. Most movies would really struggle to do only this. But Christopher Nolan not only succeeds, he uses it simply as the basis for a story rich in other layers of metaphor and emotion, while also playing with the rules of cinematic grammar and genre - the dreamscapes are implicitly likened to film narratives, with the successive levels resembling increasingly outlandish thriller sub-genres (gritty urban action, Mission Impossible, Bond) the further removed from the real world they are. But what is cinema if not a chance for people to share a dream together? Dreams as good as this one are vanishingly rare, alas.