Smashbomb

Search

Search results

All (771)

Content

Healthy Food Recipes & Home Recipe For Christmas

Food & Drink and Health & Fitness

(0 Ratings) Rate It

App

*** Download the App and Win Gifts at NewYear **** **Best Smart Nutrition Food Recipes App...

Kristy H (1252 KP) rated Saint Anything in Books

Feb 13, 2018

Saint Anything

Sarah Dessen | 2015 | Young Adult (YA)

6.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Sydney is a high school kid with a seemingly average life - navigating homework and a new school and typical teen problems. Except that Sydney is at a new school because she's trying to escape the shadow of her older brother, Peyton, who has recently gone to jail for injuring a local kid while driving drunk. For her whole life, Sydney has felt like her parents have focused on Peyton and his antics - and even with him in jail, it seems like nothing has changed. At her new school, Sydney meets Layla Chatham, a member of the Chatham family. They run the local pizza parlor near her new school and soon Sydney feels comfortable and nearly adopted by her Layla and her parents, her older sister, Rosie, and her brother, Mac. They are everything her family is not.

This was a good book, with a typical Dessen teenage drama and love story plot, but it wasn't anything earth-shattering. Sydney is a good kid and I liked her character, and I very much liked Layla and Mac, as well. Sydney's back-story with her brother is a good one, but seems a little unbelievable at times, and her rigid mother is almost too uptight and clueless. Her father is totally spineless and frustrating. For much of the story, you're waiting for something to happen and then when it finally does, it all seems a bit anti-climatic and it all gets fixed up rather quickly to seem truly plausible.

Still, a fun little read, but I do prefer "Lock and Key" or "Someone Like You." (However, I feel like a sequel featuring the Chathams would somehow be awesome.)

Kudos

Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated Evil Genius in TV

Jun 26, 2018 (Updated Jun 27, 2018)

Evil Genius

2018 | Documentary

7.5

(24 Ratings)

TV Show Rating

Fascinating case (0 more)

Misses out some key information (0 more)

Evil? Most definitely. Genius? More questionable.

Evil Genius is a 4 part documentary series on Netflix created by Trey Borzillieri and Barbara Schroeder. It covers the 2003 Pizza Bomber Bank Heist that took place in Erie, Pennsylvania, a bizarre case that still has many unanswered questions years later.

The documentary opens very strongly, launching you right into the action and the entire first episode is full of WTF moments. Unfortunately after this, the doc slows right down, from the start of episode 2 right up until the last 15 minutes or so of ep4, which thankfully picks up for a decent revelation that round off the show. Due to the doc only being 4 episodes, it meant that it didn't drag on too much like Making A Murderer did, but it also meant that each episode felt a bit uneven, crammed in places and slow in others.

One major disappointment for me was the fact they never spoke to anyone that was actually working in the bank the day that Brian Wells walked in wearing a collar bomb and robbed it. I felt like this was a huge insight that could have answered lots of questions and was totally missed by the filmmakers.

I sort of felt that they instead spent too much time on Marjory Dhiel-Armstrong and her co-conspirators who were most likely the ones that put the collar on Brian and got him to rob the bank. Sure, their weird back stories are kinda interesting, but the most important part of this story is what happened in and outside of the PNC bank in Erie that day.