Girl, Stolen by April Henry

A fairly straight-forward premise leads to a great read, one of those ones that you find yourself needing to know what’s going to happen.

A girl is lying on the back seat of her Step-Mother’s car while she’s fulfilling a prescription for the girl’s pneumonia. Then, the car is stolen, girl and all. Oh yeah, and she’s blind.

This is a gripping thriller where we’re really taken along with Cheyenne and experience it as she would, unable to see, but far from helpless either.

I’m not really sure what to say about this book without giving too much away, other than I really enjoyed it and didn’t want to put it down till I was finished. There are some scenes that are very uncomfortable, as some of her kidnappers are mightily unpleasant men, but that only adds to the edge, the compulsiveness of it.

It’s a straight-up great, realistic, suspenseful read.

4 Silver Stars

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Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahms

(New cover April 2012)

Down The Rabbit Hole is the first of of the Echo Falls Mysteries by Peter Abrahams which were first published  in 2005. Abrahams writes adult crime thrillers, some of which have been adapted into movies. So he seems to know what he's doing when it comes to piecing a mystery together. So when he put his mind to a 13 year old girl who's into sport, obsessed with acting, a Sherlock fan and has an abundance of pluck, it's a great combination that really has you gripped! (Stephen King is quoted on all of the covers as being a huge fan, just in case that's the type of information that sways you).

One day, Ingrid attempts to walk to soccer practice from the dentist, thinking that her parents will be too late to pick her up, but she gets lost. This leads to a chance encounter that dramatically changes the course of her life. When a murder is discovered, Ingrid knows the police have the wrong suspects, but how to solve the mystery without getting her self into trouble or needing to answer some sticky questions?

I REALLY enjoyed the way this book unfolded. Each character is vivid and distinct; you can see them before you while you read. And Ingrid's apparent kinship with Sherlock, with her use of logical reasoning and attention to detail brings her to life and makes her the perfect person to solve the murder case.

These books (I'm guessing the next two will be the same and can't wait to read them) are really well written crime thrillers, staring a young teenager, which makes them perfect for readers 9 or 10 and up. By which I mean, teenagers and adults will enjoy these just as much as the target age group (even though I kind of feel that I'm target market for these too).

4.5 Gold Stars

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The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

The latest selection for Bookclub was Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives. The way our bookclub works is we talk about the book, until discussion is exhausted, then, if one is available, we watch a film adaptation of the book we've just finished talking about. This usually opens up further discussion in what has been kept or changed from book to film.

In the case of The Stepford Wives, there were two film versions made nearly 30 years apart, so we watched them both. I thought for this post, I'd talk about the book and then the movies.

I quite liked the book, it was plain, straightforward and built a nice sense of mystery. Levin seems to very much like to leave a lot out, to keep you guess, so that things are never confirmed. It can be refreshing, with all the writing these days that feels like they have to spell everything out, because heaven forbid there be any un-answered questions! With out giving the ending away, I'll warn those who don't like that sort of thing, that the book ends abruptly on a fairly dramatic cliffhanger and the coda of sorts explains nothing. This way, the reader can apply their own interpretation.

I do think that part of the 'horror'/'thriller' aspect of the book would have been magnified back in the 70's when the book was written. At the height of the second wave feminist movement, the very idea that men could be doing something to their wives to make them hotter and enthusiastically subservient would have been more abhorrent back when women were struggling so hard just to be seen as equals. That said, while the initial shock might not be what it was, the more I find myself thinking about it the more I find the idea appalling.

Anyway, it's a good read for a bit of vintage thriller.

On to the movies!

The original film was made in 1975 only a few years after the book was first published. All in all, it's a fairly good adaptation of the book, being pretty spot on as long as you don't count the whole climax where they've taken liberties to fill in some of the blanks left by Levin or just make it simply more dramatic. It's not too bad, but not entirely the most enthralling movie ever.

The second movie came out in 2004 and is a (much) less accurate translation from book to film, BUT, it is by far more enjoyable! This movie had me laughing all the way through it's so well done! I don't even like Nicole Kidman, but this movie is good despite her. Bette Midler plays a fantastic Bobbie and her book titles are great fun. This movie is just plain fun. and has a much more satisfying resolution for those that need that sort of thing. Glen Close does a great job too, the Model Stepford Wife!

3.5 Silver Stars

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I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

This was a selection for bookclub that I found myself thinking, ok, I’d never have picked it up myself, but I’ll give it a go. Generally speaking, vampire books don’t excite me and I’d seen the most recent movie so I wasn’t over enthusiastic about reading the book.

However, I’ve now learned that whoever made the movie must have read the blurb on the back of the book, thought ‘Great premise, I’m going to make a movie now’ and gone and written something completely different and called it the same title as the book. Unfair to the book if you ask me. As far as adaptations go, the film is appalling. Sure, it’s watchable if you’re in the mood for putting up with Will Smith basking in his ‘Will Smith-ness’ for much of it, but the book is an entirely different experience.

Robert Neville lives alone, trying to survive the nightly attacks from a seemingly endless supply of vampires. Could he be the last living human on the planet? Routine stifles despair, but loneliness is unceasing.

For a book that in effect has one character, I Am Legend is mightily engaging. It knows when to use an action sequence to draw you in, or develop the emotional story to make you feel more. It knows when to skip forward or back in time so weeks, months, years, don’t feel at all tedious. And the ending (which I will not spoil for you) is fascinating and makes you think about all you’ve read and what you would feel in the same situation. Don’t believe the movie version; it’s ridiculous Hollywood slop compared to what (I think) Matheson was trying to say with his book.

If you like anything vaguely apocalyptical then you'll like this one. It’s an enjoyable read that might make you think too. Nice choice for bookclub, particularly if like us, you watch the film adaptations afterwards to discuss further. 

Hanna

Hanna appeared to be an interesting movie for its Genre, and I do like me some Cate Blanchette.

So, what did I think now that I’ve seen it?

Well, it’s an over the top action movie with some rather odd quiet moments in between. In other words, it was good fun!

One thing that I found a bit off putting was the bizarre trance music that was thrust upon us suddenly at the beginning of the first real action sequence. It didn’t seem to fit in with what the movie was going for, and kept distracting me and making me laugh at the ridiculousness of how every action movie seems to need either dance/trance or heavy metal music when people are beating each other up and shooting at each other. When the credits rolled, I saw that the music had been done by the Chemical Brothers, and then it all seemed to make sense. I still think there was a major disjunct between the tone of the movie and the music, but at least I understood how the producers could have let the music get so self involved.

Oh, one other thing that was distractingly ‘arty’ and over-done was the lighting design. I didn’t realise that secret military bases had a ‘disco’ setting. Nor that the same setting would also be applied in an abandoned theme park, only with coloured globes… Let’s just say it’s a good thing that none of these characters were epileptic, as the fights might have been over much sooner if they ended up convulsing on the ground.

But, overall, it’s entertaining. As we learned years ago with Serenity, movies about teenage girls who can kick butt just seem to work. (Please note: Serenity is infinitely better than Hanna)

Flip by Martyn Bedford

Flip by Martyn Bedford has a very simple, yet very appealing premise: What would you do if you woke up in the body of someone else?

The (fantastic) jacket says it even punchier: “Ever wake up in someone else’s body?”

But just because the premise is simple, doesn’t mean that any of the solutions are. When Alex wakes up in a strange bedroom, a strange house (complete with another mother, someone else’s sister) he thinks he is being punked. Wouldn’t you? After all, Alex has never heard of Phillip. But then he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and realises that things are much more like the Twilight Zone.

This is a gripping read that teens would love. It was one of those books where I kept loosing track of time while I was reading it, looking up every now and then to find an hour or more had disappeared.