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The Forgotten Room
The Forgotten Room
Lincoln Child | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I am a big fan of both Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston, whether writing on their own or together as a team. I’m always excited when one of them has a new book published, so I was really looking forward to this one. I enjoyed the first three books in this series (LOVED #1 and #2), and I really wanted to love this book too. I have to admit that I was disappointed. It is still a good book, just not the great book that I was hoping for.


Dr. Jeremy Logan is an enigmologist called in to investigate the strange death of a scientist at Lux, a think-tank where Dr. Logan himself worked for a short time before being ousted for his non-traditional work. The scientists sudden strange behavior right before his death has the administration concerned enough to call in an expert, and due to the nature of the death, they decide that Jeremy is the perfect person to bring in to investigate.

He discovers a secret room in the west wing of the Lux complex, one that had just recently been discovered during some renovation work being done there. There is some strange equipment in this room, and evidence that someone else has been frequenting the room. Dr. Logan has to find out what research was being done in this forgotten room, and who might be trying to continue that work now.

It had an intriguing plot, and interesting characters, but some of Jeremy’s decisions and actions left me questioning his supposed intelligence in this one. It’s still a decent thriller though, and fans of the series won’t want to miss it.
  
Finding Dory (2016)
Finding Dory (2016)
2016 | Animation
Finding Dory taught me this - Pixar are a company who can sell you the same film twice, and then annoyingly get away with it by making said film pretty damn good.

There is no denying that during the first 15 minutes, all I could think about was how everything unfolding was strikingly similar to Finding Nemo, almost as if they were making little effort to hide the fact.
By the time the opening act is over, and the main plot is set in motion, I was successfully drawn in and had forgotten my initial reservations.

The main factor in this is the great cast of characters. This time around, Dory takes centre stage, on a journey to find her parents after years of being separated. The film flits between the main narrative, and (ridiculously adorable) flashbacks to when Dory was a child. We get to see a fair number of new characters, most notably Hank, a suitably grumpy octopus whose irritable personality works great alongside the oblivious nature of Dory. The two of them provide a steady stream of humour. Also Bailey, a beluga whale has a running gag that never once gets old. It's all very well crafted and genuinely funny.
Of course, Nemo and Marlin return from the first film, and although they have a big part to play, Finding Dory resists the urge to turn the narrative too much much towards them, something that would have been easy to do considering the success of Finding Nemo.
There's also a fantastic voice cast attached, including Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Ed O'Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, Idris Elba, Eugene Levy (absolute legend), Dominic West, Bill Hader - even Sigourney Weaver appears, in one of my favourite running jokes of the film.

The animation is predictably stunning, managing to appeal to both younger and older audiences, and the narrative easily weaves between witty humour, and emotional gut punches - this is Pixar after all.

Finding Dory is a sequel that can stand proudly by it's terrific predecessor.
  
Last Summer
Last Summer
Kerry Lonsdale | 2019 | Mystery, Romance, Thriller
5
7.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
I first heard about Last Summer by Kerry Lonsdale when I was browsing the giveaway section of Goodreads. I'm a stickler for books that deal with memory loss and trying to regain memories, so Last Summer definitely caught my eye. I was thrilled when I received an email from Goodreads saying I had won the eBook for Last Summer. After reading this novel, I'm glad I didn't pay for it. While it wasn't a great read, it was just lackluster.

Ella , a journalist, is in the hospital after a car accident that killed her unborn child. However, after being there for a few days, she suddenly loses her memory about being being pregnant and what happened right before she became pregnant and during her pregnancy. Desperate to remember her child, she does whatever she can to remember. When she is assigned to get an exclusive story about Nathan, a former celebrity whose son has just died, he lets her know that he knows some of things she forgot. However, some memories are best left forgotten.

The plot sounded for Last Summer like it would be promising. I felt like this book would be more about the mystery of Ella's memories. However, it seemed more like a romance novel than anything else which was a disappointment for me. It was more about Ella loving Nathan (not a spoiler, don't worry) but also loving her husband and her feeling guilty about it. At times, the plot seemed a bit muddled as well as predictable. There are a couple of plot twists I didn't see coming. The dialogue and writing seemed realistic as did the plot, so there's that. One thing that did bother me was how much sex was mentioned in the book. There were times I felt as if sex was mentioned just for the sake of mentioning it. I felt like sometimes it would have been implied or not mentioned at all.

The characters were just so so as well. I wanted to like them more, but I just had trouble. I don't think they were written poorly for the most part. I just couldn't feel a connection. There was something I didn't really like about Damien, Ella's husband, starting from the beginning of the book. He started off as being a bit mean and a bit smarmy at times. I kept wanting Ella to just run away from him because I did not like the guy! Ella sometimes felt a little too one dimensional for my liking. I felt like she was missing some depth to her, and there were many times she felt shallow. I did like Nathan, and I felt really bad for him. The hand he was given was a bad one. He was the only one character that felt the most sincere. I just wanted to hug him so many times.

The pacing for Last Summer was slow in some places, but it wasn't too bad. It did hold my attention throughout, and I found myself wanting to read more each time I had a spare minute. The story does flow well.

Trigger warnings for Last Summer include child loss, profanity, drinking, marital cheating, sex (although only slightly graphic), and lying.

All in all, Last Summer is a just an okay read. There's nothing that special about it where I would actually remember reading it a few months down the line. Saying that, I would recommend Last Summer by Kerry Lonsdale simply because I feel like it would make a good book to read while on vacation.
  
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Emma in the Night
Emma in the Night
Wendy Walker | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry, Mystery, Thriller
8
7.9 (8 Ratings)
Book Rating
Cass and Emma are sisters. And like most sisters, some days they are best friends and some days they just aren't. But one thing that keeps them tethered to each other is their shared love/hate relationship with their mother. She is a narcissist and only praise of the utmost will allow her to bring her children any joy. Then the girls disappear and three years later Cass shows up at her mother's doorstep, demanding that they find Emma. Cass describes the place they had been living for the past three years and hopes that the FBI and investigators are able to find this mysterious island and Emma.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book started off a little slow for me. Hearing the background information about what happened before the disappearance, intertwined with what was going on now to describe the place the girls were being held, took up the first half of the book. Told from the perspective of Cass, the youngest daughter and Dr. Winter the FBI Psychiatrist who did the initial investigation. After that, the reading went by much faster when the twists and turns started to take place.

Cass and Emma have a mother who constantly needs to be told how beautiful she is and how good of a mother she is. The only problem is that she's not. But hearing these things make her feel good about herself and keep her children on her good side. When things don't go the way she wants, she punishes the girls in unspeakable manners. Buying one a gift the other wanted, favoring one child and ignoring the other. This is a family that has a lot of issues going on inside of their home. They way things are handled are completely out of spite for another member of the family. Although this book had a slow start, it really had a great ending. So stick with it if you have to and it will be well worth it.

Wendy Walker also wrote, All is Not Forgotten which was also a great book released last year. I look forward to what else Ms. Walker has in store.