The 18th Abduction
James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
8.0
Rate It
Book
Detective Lindsay Boxer's investigation into the disappearance of three teachers quickly escalates...
Last Summer
7.0
Rate It
Book
Lifestyle journalist Ella Skye remembers every celebrity she interviewed, every politician she...
women's fiction marriage child loss love triangle
Death Rang the Bell (Blackwell and Watson Time-Travel Mysteries #3)
Book
21st-century journalist Olivia Watson thinks travelling back in time to 1934 to attend a Halloween...
Traditional Mystery Time Travel Police Procedural
The Rules of the Road
9.0
Rate It
Book
Do you ever wonder why it is you sometimes see a single shoe on the side of the road? What happens...
The Deception
6.0
Rate It
Book
Murders past and present will unite a couple against their enemies—or tear them apart forever—in...
Outback Sisters
Book
Cafe owner Frankie has been unlucky in love all her life. It's hard in a small town like Bunyip Bay...
The Truth Effect
Book
In the year 2030, the UK faces an extraordinary time where truth itself becomes a weapon in the...
ClareR (6054 KP) rated The Bones Beneath My Skin in Books
Oct 14, 2025
Art is 10 and a very quirky young lady. She’s written as an inquisitive, outspoken child with a penchant for bacon. Alex, her protector, is quiet, brooding and clearly troubled. Nate spends most of the book being justifiably terrified.
Of course, there is found family at the heart of this thoroughly lovely book. It’s a TJ Klune, after all! I thought the Sci-fi element was a bit of a departure, but all his other themes are still there: found family, acceptance and love.
This is action packed and a fast, intense read - and you can’t knock a bit of sci-fi, can you?! (Well, I can’t anyway!).
Nothing But the Night (Basic Instincts #2)
10.0
Rate It
Book
Be careful what you look for in the night. Three months after the death of his brother, Marc...
Contemporary MM Romance Mystery Thriller Suspense
Lee (2222 KP) rated Venom (2018) in Movies
Oct 5, 2018 (Updated Oct 16, 2018)
A space probe is returning to Earth. We hear the astronauts communicating with a team back home. They're talking about some 'specimens' that they're bringing back, and then something goes wrong onboard and the rocket crashes to Earth, landing somewhere in Malaysia. The probe belongs to bio-engineering company Life Foundation, and the specimens they're carrying are symbiotic lifeforms. Life Foundation are all over the crash site, with only one of the astronauts surviving, barely. Meanwhile, CEO Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) is very excited by the symbiotes and returns them to the lab, becoming obsessed with assimilating them into animals. Obviously he has plans to eventually (as quickly as possible) try this out on humans. Apparently, it's all for the good of the planet or some guff like that.
Meanwhile, we're introduced to investigative journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his girlfriend Anne (Michelle Williams). He's basically the most unconvincing journalist I've ever seen in a movie, but the montage of clips seems determined to tell us otherwise. He has his own TV show! It's great! He's helped to uncover injustice, righted wrongs, and is apparently a nice down to earth guy. When he secures an interview with Carlton Drake from Life Foundation, he's ready to uncover some dirt, but his boss warns him not to overstep the mark. Of course, he doesn't listen, stepping over the line and getting himself fired. He also manages to lose girlfriend Anne in the process.
The next chunk of the movie is just Tom Hardy moping around, and it's not that great. I don't know if it's the script, the acting, or both. It's interspersed occasionally with scenes involving Carlton Drake looking to expose the symbiotes to human subjects - the homeless, the poor or the just plain stupid - and you start wishing they'd just hurry up and bring Venom and Eddie together, in the hopes that things will pick up a bit. Luckily, once that does happen things do pick up considerably and Tom Hardy is so much better suited as the crazy man who's feeling a little bit unwell than the sad, boring journalist. There's a good level of humour from that point on too, along with some fairly decent action.
Unfortunately though, Venom suffers from some of the same dreadful editing that The Predator did. Scenes that seem to just prematurely end suddenly and successions of rapid cuts during some of the action, making it difficult to see just what the hell is going on. Overall it's a bit rough around the edges, and definitely not as slick as your standard Marvel movie (this one is just 'in association with Marvel'). That being said, this was in no way the car crash movie that many of the reviews had lead me to believe, and on the whole I actually really enjoyed it.
A decent mid credits scene sets up some exciting potential for a further movie, but I feel they really need to tighten things up a bit in order to make another one worth seeing.