Rating:  Summary: Unforgettable characters Review: A gripping, facinating first novel. While it may not be the high point of literature (the content is 90% dialog), the characters are unforgettable. I badly wanted to meet the heroine -- in a public place, please -- and share a bottle of wine. Once started, This book will be hard to put down. Five stars for the characters and the clever manipulation of the storyline and reader, Three stars for the quality of the writing style.
Rating:  Summary: Rated triple T: Thin, Trite, and Totally not very good Review: Congratulations to Ms. Morgenroth for completing the novelization of that script USA network rejected. It looks exactly like the treatment I saw er, wait - was that the treatment I read? If so nice binding job. A little over the top. Like those kids in junior high that turned in their papers with the $4 report covers but hey, whatever it takes. Anyway, I expect Golan & Globus will be in touch and Mr. Norris is rumored to be interested. USA had no idea what they were rejecting obviously. I like the Kill Me First suggestion as a title - check it out.
Rating:  Summary: EXCELLENT!!! GET THIS ONE FAST!!! Review: finalllly!!! a mature intelligent heroine in a reallly fast paced non-stop thriller!!! morgenroth is a first time winner with this one and i just reallly hope that she continues cranking them out as fast as she can....she's got some great writing skills and original plots...and some verrrrrrrry interesting characters!!!!
Rating:  Summary: Unusual, powerful, somewhat flawed Review: I agreed with many of the other reviewers, both positive and negative. This is an unusual book, and it is hard to tell if some of its characteristics are flaws or good aspects, such as the author's tendency to provide almost no description of places or characters. In general, it is powerful and in many ways quite well written. I do agree that there are some plausibility problems. The worst involve the CIA. The CIA is forbidden by law to operate in the United States. Now, obviously there are some gray areas here. (I was always annoyed when I went to scientific conferences and saw people who I knew worked for the CIA with badges that would say, "John Smith, Department of Defense". I thought they shoulnl'dt misrepresent themselves this way. On the other hand, its not hard to figure out who they are.) But no agent shows his CIA credentials to the local cops and expects to get anything. The local cops know the law. They're likely to call up the FBI and report them. Similarly, nobody with a federal ID goes to CIA headquarters and is allowed to roam the halls causually looking for someone. I've been to CIA headquarters, in the company of federal employees, some with very high security clearances, and we were very carefully escorted to where we had to go. Aside from being generally paranoid, the CIA is very suspicious of other government agencies--I've been in meetings with CIA and NSA people, and they fight like cats and dogs.
Rating:  Summary: Unexpected and compelling. Review: I bought this book on the basis of the EW review, but found the story structure very different from what I expected based on that review. The prose is spare and terse to the point of emaciation, but the author still manages to communicate characters and scenarios in sufficient detail to keep the reader involved. My only complaint is that I, as the reader, was as fascinated with Sarah as Merec and Jeremy were and would have liked to have known so much more about her--who she had been, who she became, where she went--that I felt just the slightest bit of dissatisfaction with the book's lack of exposition. Other than that, though, I found the book remarkably unpredictable (well, except for the bit about Jeremy) and entertaining.
Rating:  Summary: What Ifs Stay In Your Mind After the Book Has Ended Review: I can't say I thoroughly enjoyed "Kill Me First," mostly because I think the author has some polishing to do on her character development skills, but the story certainly was gripping and interesting. After reading the first, horrific chapter, I put the book down for a week before forcing myself to continue. I'm glad I did, because the story held my interest without being gratuitously violent (as I had suspected from that first chapter).I enjoyed reading "Kill Me First," and my own vivid imagination will continue to fill in the blanks and misses that the author left behind.
Rating:  Summary: At last - a heroine my own age! Review: I finished this book almost at one sitting, and when I asked myself why I liked it, the first reason (perhaps not unexpectedly)was because Sarah is my age, still attractive and sexy (I try!) and reacts exactly as I hope I would should such an unlikely situation ever occur. So many of today's fiction heroines are feisty twenty somethings, but some of us out there older than that still have lives. It was interesting that the author's photo shows quite a young woman, and since this is her first novel, I wonder whether she had a role model in mind when she wrote this, or a hope for her own future. The plot is a little farfetched - it seems unlikely that even with the degree of ineptitude sometimes demonstrated by law enforcement agencies that someone with Merec's history would not have been apprehended by now. And also, given the way he treats his team, that anyone would want to join him. I agree with some reviewers that it has some elements of writing for a screenplay, but I didn't read it that way. More that it was fast paced, with good characterisation and a real need to turn the page.
Rating:  Summary: Unusual, powerful, somewhat flawed Review: I have to admit, I wasn't really expecting much from this book when I purchased it among others in a book store on a visit to Australia. Having recently read it, I was compelled to find out more about the author to see if there were any more books by her. Unfortunately, as of this writing there are none. The book itself grabs you by the throat with it's extreme accounts of numerous heinous acts by the main antagonist, Mercer. He is portrayed as an intelligent, cunning and quite disturbed man. When he runs across the other lead character, Sarah, he is caught offguard. She is not what he expected and the events that follow forever change him. The FBI agent advising the local police after one of the incidents in the story, Agent Tresler, leads a breathtaking chase after Mercer. Tresler gets well acquainted with Mercer and we discover that Tresler is quite good at what he does but the bureau was not his first aspiration. You will soon find out why he is able to fathom Mercer's actions and thoughts so accurately. He even predicts some of the events but without any hard evidence to back up his hunches, he doesn't get much backup. Mercer is unpredictable to a fault, but as the story unfolds you begin to understand him in subtle ways. The ending is a bit of a stunner, but you may find yourself cheering at the results or deeply disappointed, either way you will have difficulty putting this down once you start. I would emphasive, however, that this is not for the faint of heart as the unflinching portrayal of the events that transpire are quite jarring.
Rating:  Summary: Gripping thriller with twists and turns in exquisite detail Review: I have to admit, I wasn't really expecting much from this book when I purchased it among others in a book store on a visit to Australia. Having recently read it, I was compelled to find out more about the author to see if there were any more books by her. Unfortunately, as of this writing there are none. The book itself grabs you by the throat with it's extreme accounts of numerous heinous acts by the main antagonist, Mercer. He is portrayed as an intelligent, cunning and quite disturbed man. When he runs across the other lead character, Sarah, he is caught offguard. She is not what he expected and the events that follow forever change him. The FBI agent advising the local police after one of the incidents in the story, Agent Tresler, leads a breathtaking chase after Mercer. Tresler gets well acquainted with Mercer and we discover that Tresler is quite good at what he does but the bureau was not his first aspiration. You will soon find out why he is able to fathom Mercer's actions and thoughts so accurately. He even predicts some of the events but without any hard evidence to back up his hunches, he doesn't get much backup. Mercer is unpredictable to a fault, but as the story unfolds you begin to understand him in subtle ways. The ending is a bit of a stunner, but you may find yourself cheering at the results or deeply disappointed, either way you will have difficulty putting this down once you start. I would emphasive, however, that this is not for the faint of heart as the unflinching portrayal of the events that transpire are quite jarring.
Rating:  Summary: Featherweight and pointless Review: I just can't understand the stellar reviews this novel(la) is getting. I bought it on the basis of a glowing Entertainment Weekly review and found it to be thin and unrewarding. What other reviewers have described as "taut" and "fast-paced," I describe as shallow. The characters are poorly drawn caricatures, and I never really understoood what motivated them. There was a tiny plot twist at the end that was interesting but the fate of the main character was telegraphed like a falling anvil. The book was supposed to plumb the dark side of violence and gore but the author usually chickened out. Thank god B. Dalton has a guaranteed read policy, there is no way I'm paying 20$ for a hard cover book that I hated. Back it goes!
|