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    Battle Supremacy

    Battle Supremacy

    Games and Entertainment

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    Launched as EDITOR'S CHOICE on the AppStore! Unleash the full power of your iOS device in Battle...

    Candy Crush Jelly Saga

    Candy Crush Jelly Saga

    Games

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    There's a new player in town, the wiggling, jiggling Jelly Queen and she's here to challenge you to...

    Ship Finder

    Ship Finder

    Navigation and Travel

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    Ship Finder shows live moving ships on a worldwide map. The intuitive design combined with...

    Rush Rally 2

    Rush Rally 2

    Games and Sports

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    5 / 5 - Touch Arcade - "Easily one of the best racing games on mobile" 9 / 10 - Pocket Gamer - "You...

    Ship Finder Lite

    Ship Finder Lite

    Navigation and Travel

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    Ship Finder shows live moving ships on a worldwide map. You can even use Augmented Reality (AR) view...

    iTopoMaps

    iTopoMaps

    Navigation, Travel and Reference

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    Hikers and climbers can now access real full-resolution USGS topographic 1:24k quads with...

The Night She Disappeared
The Night She Disappeared
Lisa Jewell | 2021 | Mystery, Thriller
9
8.5 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
An intricate, twisty, page-turner of a thriller
Tallulah and her boyfriend, Zach, go out on a date, leaving their young son Noah behind with her mom, Kim. Kim waits up for Tallulah, but she never comes back. As Kim tries to find out what happened to her daughter, whom she knows would never leave Noah behind, she learns she was last seen at a party at house in the woods, called the Dark Place.

Two years later, Sophie moves to a boarding school where her boyfriend, Shaun, has just started to work as head teacher. As she explores the woods, she sees a note reading "Dig Here." A writer, Sophie starts investigating. Her sleuthing will take her into the world of the Dark Place and Tallulah's disappearance.

"With a racing heart and a sickening swirl in the pit of her stomach, she calls the police and she files a missing persons case."

This is an excellent thriller, hands-down. I read the second half in one sitting, because I was completely and totally sucked in. This is a mystery, but it has a ton of character to it--because the characters, ha, are real and vibrant people, with their own quirks, issues, and struggles that add an an extra element to the story. Tallulah, especially, is a nuanced character, a young mother struggling to find her place in the world, with her boyfriend, her friendships, and as a parent and student.

NIGHT is quite twisty--this read will keep you guessing. It's well-written, extremely dark (be prepared), and just well-done overall. It balances thrilling and characterization perfectly. I often hate when a "regular" character decides to be a sleuth, but Sophie, as a crime writer, was fine in the role. I loved Tallulah (extremely great, because she's missing, so Jewell gets us attached to a character who is gone and whose POV is told through the past). The book is complex, giving us insight into motherhood, relationships, friendship and more.

Overall, this was a winner for me. 4.5 stars.

I received a copy of this book from Atria Books and Netgalley in return for an unbiased review.
  
Ready Player One (2018)
Ready Player One (2018)
2018 | Sci-Fi
Visual effects (1 more)
action scenes
Script (2 more)
Exposition
Casting
Ready Player Bomb!
I understand certain decisions and changes have to be made when adapting a book for the screen but with this one i just didnt understand or agree with 90% of them. For the most part the changes underminds the actual story the book was telling.

However, trying to be objective the best i can and looking at it just as a movie - i still didnt like it. For me it felt like the structure of the whole move was fractured. Everyone was totally miscast for my liking, leaving all the characters un-charismatic and un-endearing, leaving the story without a heart or a soul. I felt like the exposition was clunky at best, leading to the relationships between characters to either feel forced or not given them enough time to grow naturally, especially the "love interest" story. Also I felt it glossed over some key elements of the plot at the beginning, mainly due to the aforementioned clunky exposition, but also with its eagerness to go straight for throat with high octane action, which although brilliantly staged and choreographed through the camera, left me feeling like it was pointless, due to lack of context or feeling of any real threat. I never really felt like it got any of this right until the final battle in the climax of the film, but by then id given up the films ability to win me back.

Add to that the changes/difference from the book that failed to make any sense to me, or understand why they choose that direction to take - my frustration only grows and grows. The only real big change that i liked was the car race at the beginning which does not feature at all in the book...because it would be visually more exciting than what was actually written in the book. Some of the changes i felt like they were taking the safe option and lacked the balls of the book, such as the film choosing to let some character(s) not die, and pretty much totally ignoring the social commentary the book was making about big corporations, media influences, economic status of the world etc..... all things that i felt made the book as popular as it is in the first place. Popular enough that Spielberg wanted to turn it into a major motion picture.