No Face Book Reviews

The Usurper King By Zeb Haradon https://www.amazon.com/Usurper-King-Zeb-Haradon-ebook/dp/B078BTHNGL/ The Usurper King takes place during the 2016 American presidential election in quite a strange world, like our own in most respects, but where Ted Bundy is running for president, where people can predict the future by inspecting the livers of dissected animals (and turned the practice into a game show!), and where people's bodies can become infected with computer viruses. Superficially, it sounds like a political thriller in bizarro world - a washed up loser and an uncouth hillbilly discover that the president elect Ted Bundy used to be a serial killer and set out to stop him, so they look for clues in animal guts on how to stop him. Somehow the author manages to stick all these crazy ideas together and make them work as a whole. What's missing from the plot description is that this book is hilarious. The zany foundation of this world is taken seriously and stretched...

A Reflection of Sophie Beaumont By L M Barrett https://www.amazon.com/Reflection-Sophie-Beaumont-L-Barrett-ebook/dp/B077QQ5RH4/ A Reflection of Sophie Beaumont begins with the title character's suicide and then proceeds in a Citizen Kane-like manner as we follow her husband, Richard, trying to figure out what led his seemingly perfect spouse to abandon her loving family and end her trouble free life. The point of view alternates between Sophie and Richard as we walk from her childhood to the day of her death. I enjoyed this book, and I was surprised because it isn't normally the kind of book I would choose to read. This is a good first novel and the author has a clear grasp of the genesis of a personality disorder. The characterizations are very strong, and it really plays with your sympathies for the main character, one minute feeling bad for her and one minute hating her, in awe of how shallow and manipulative she can be. I, not being British, particularly enjoyed...

Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson by Juan F. Thompson https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Tell-Myself-Growing-Thompson/dp/0307265358/ I first heard of Hunter S. Thompson sometime in 1993. I was a teenager at the time, home sick from high school and flipping through daytime talk shows, when I came across a woman by the name of E. Jean Carroll being interviewed about her new biography of Thompson, who apparently was some kind of legendary journalist. The part that caught my attention and the only part of the interview I remember was where she went through his daily consumption routine, which included dropping acid, smoking pot, cocaine throughout the day, and lots of drinking. I didn't know much about journalism or writing but I was impressed and encouraged, at that age, that an adult could survive with a routine like this, that he had no authority to answer to. I bought the E. Jean Carroll book, and it was awful (one of the worst five books I've ever...

I created this blog to fill a need for quality book reviews. I know there are thousands of book blogs and booktubers out there, but when I read their reviews, I really have trouble finding any quality reviews. I've seen some where reviewers will give a book a bad review because they don't like the cover (and they even say that's the reason), and I find the way books are classified today very odd (like YA - why would someone only like books where the protagonist is in a certain age bracket?), or something like there's "too much swearing". In addition, there seem to be a lot of writers out there looking for reviews, as most blogs say "closed for review". On this blog I'll be accepting any book for review that catches my interest. A few ground rules are, I probably won't like a book if it fits neatly into and is designed to appeal to readers of a certain limited genre. I probably will have trouble following a book if it's part of a series...