Reader, I loved it! Four stars. I enjoyed it so much that I decided the heck with my reading challenge... imma just read the rest of the books in the Nameless series (two series, six books each). I proceeded to devour all 12 stories and starred them between two and four depending on the story. I appreciated that each one was a standalone novella, but if you read them in order until the end (which I did, after I dived into the middle with Snakes), there is actually a progression and a satisfying conclusion at the end of book six and a dramatic conclusion in book twelve. The basic premise of each story is that we have a hero called Nameless (among other monikers) who receives assignments via anonymous texts to eliminate various terrible people who have escaped conventional justice. The ways in which the bad people get their just deserts is clever and satisfying. I gave only two stars to Preying Mantis because it didn't have a bad guy anywhere near as bad as the others. All 12 books were "free" with KU, and I guess they should go into the horror category.
One thing though: in several of the Nameless stories, Koontz has different characters drinking iced tea sweetened with peach nectar. It made me laugh. I didn't see any obsidian or chitinous however, so that was good. He again gets on his political soapbox, but what's interesting (and terrifying) is that the current party in power is now doing all the awful things they warned that the other party was going to do, so if you didn't already know Koontz was conservative, you might come away thinking he is very anti-Republican. Tee hee.
I also read Ten Things I Love About You, a Regency romance by Julia Quinn. It was spicier and funnier than the usual fare in that genre, but some of the characters were so cartoonishly ridiculous that I could not in good conscience award the book four stars. We learn at the beginning that the hero Sebastian is writing romance novels himself, under a female nom de plume. This makes for amusing situations, and I enjoyed that motif even though generally I am tired of writers turning their characters into writers. The heroine Annabella basically does absolutely nothing, which isn't unusual for the wealthy set in Regency novels, but it didn't endear her to me either. The love-fall was very well done with alternating POVs between the two main characters. Three stars.
This afternoon I wrapped up Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman, a psychological thriller that fulfilled my reading challenge requirement of having been reviewed by my favorite author. This is actually a lie because I couldn't find books that were reviewed by my favorite authors, but when I received SITW from a book club game, I saw on the back jacket that Riley Sager (Middle of the Night) said it was "thrilling and thought-provoking." Since I gave Riley's book MOTN four stars, I decided that SITW fit the challenge box. Ugh. I didn't find SITW either thrilling or thought-provoking. It was a slog, and pretty much on every page I wanted to scream at the MC: why are you doing this stupid thing?!? For a thriller, the plot and narration were very slow, repetitive, and tedious. Did I mention repetitive? It was yet another one of those British novels, narrated in present tense by an annoying woman in first person (at least it didn't keep breaking to other characters in first person like some stories do), and I am heartily tired of them.
Not only that, but there were massive plot/motivation holes throughout, and I had loads of unanswered questions at the end. I felt that was so unfair after I read the entire annoying novel. Geez, author, just tie things up already!
Hoppy Easter, my peeps!
I read a few of the Nameless series, I wonder if I read them all? I liked the Odd Thomas series as well tho I haven't read all of them -
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