Reviews and Comments

The last two books didn't really make it for me but I found this one a pleasure to read - Cat and Bones personalities are back! A war between ghouls and vampires is brewing as Apollyon is using Cat's news abilities to turn his followers against the vampires. This story is filled with fights and the "dead" moments are pretty amusing. Such as Vlad knowing the lyrics to "Run this Town", references to "Galaxy Quest", the image of a vibrator duc-taped to Cat and Bones' funny line "Ask me if I sparkle and I’ll kill you where you stand". There's some of Vlad, Mencheres and Marie of New Orleans plays a big role here with her magic. It's a very entertaining book, there's lots of action, romance and funny lines.

The only thing I didn't like about this book was the Castilian. The sentence "¿Bones, mi amigo, cómo es usted?" doesn't ask how Bones is but actually what he looks like. I have to admit I don't like when this happens because I know these books are verified tons of times before being published and it seems nobody cares about verifying the foreign sentences - this is not the first time either as it previously happened in [b:First Drop of Crimson|6547187|First Drop of Crimson (Night Huntress World, #1)|Jeaniene Frost|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255471887s/6547187.jpg|6579128]. I wish someone would take the time to correct these.

Stephanie Plum is currently unemployed and already had to sell some of her furniture and kitchen appliances to get by. She desperately needs a job and ends up working as bounty hunter for her cousin Vinnie - a bail bondsman. Stephanie decides to go after Joe Morelli for the money - a guy she knew from her childhood - and ends up in a mess involving a heavyweight boxer, his manager, two prostitutes, street crime and her hilarious family. This book made me laugh out loud in several scenes (such as Grandma Mazur and the chicken, the dumpster, the pussymobile, ...). And while reading it, I learnt that people waiting for medical appointments are much nicer to people laughing out loud while reading than people on the bus. To conclude, I really enjoyed this book, it is fast paced and the storyline is interesting enough. It seems I'll have to read the rest of the series!

This is the story of a croatian hitman - Toxic - that we meet while working in New York. He is a well regarded hitman until he kills an FBI agent and is forced to flee. He takes another man's identity who turns out to be as a televangelist flying to Iceland to be part of a TV show. Toxic soon discovers that weapons are not allowed in Iceland. Once there, he is hilariously forced to rethink his life and his way of living. The first 2/3 of the book are really funny and you find yourself rooting for Toxic. The first Eurovision moment described in the book is really funny and it made me laugh a lot. However, the pace slows down a lot towards the end and I stopped caring about whether Toxic would have a happy ending or not. I wish the story was as interesting and funny in the end as it was in the beginning, but it's definitely a good read.

I was slightly afraid of reading this book since it's the third in a series and authors have a slight tendency to mess them up. Not Darynda though! Her new book is again funny and the reader is glued to the book while the action is split between Charley's two cases: the missing wife of a doctor who doesn't seem like a good person and the search for Earl Walker - dead or alive. While solving her cases, Charley is also attempting to break the Guiness World Record of sleepless nights by drinking lots and lots of coffee. All Charley's friends and enemies are there, along with some new characters and a very nice dog. We also get another insight at Charley's abilities and the impending doom of a big war that opens the door for the 4th book. And I can only hope it's as good as this one! Yet again: five stars.

I knew Tina Fey was a genius, but I just had no idea she was SO funny. I wouldn't say this witty book is exactly a biography, but it's more of a collection of carefully chosen stories of her life - probably the ones that marked her the most - mixed with some topics she wanted to discuss as Photoshop or her Sarah Palin impersonation. There's this bit where she decides to reply to some of her "fans" (as it is impolite not to do so) but what she actually does is replying to comments from websites like TMZ. Those replies are gloriously funny! They start as serious replies and then crash down in a horrible accident that ends up in something like "Now go to bed, you crazy night owl! You have to be at NASA early in the morning. So they can look for your penis with the Hubble telescope." I laughed out loud a lot while reading this book, which is just sad because it made my cough worse - though it was worth it. There are a lot of quotes from this book, but I'll just leave one my favourites: "Ah, babies! They’re more than just adorable little creatures on whom you can blame your farts".

Go ahead and read this book! It's a light read but it gives you an insight into female comedy and how it is to live with flat feet and thick eyebrows. Very well done!

So Mencheres is going through a rough patch and he decides it's time to end his very, very long life. But then an ordinary woman decides to step in and save him under her motto "save one life". Mencheres is taken by surprise as Kira comes to his aid and they eventually realise they have a lot in common - even though they're not exactly the same race. Nonetheless, this brewing romance is shadowed by a powerful Law Guardian that wants to kill Mencheres and steal his powers.

I enjoyed myself while reading this book. Kira is an adult character: she doesn't scream, isn't easily scared and doesn't run into obvious traps - she is a heroine in her own right. The book is packed with action and it's easy to read since it doesn't have dull moments, but it is not exactly enough to get 5 stars... 4,5 at most. I'd still recommend it to fans of the series but it seems that I've read better from this author. In other words, if you're starting here I think she has better books than this one.

Though I know I shouldn't compare since they are different characters, this book seems to lack some of the magic between Cat and Bones. Spade makes a good main character and thankfully Denise is smart(ish) and not just a damsel in distress. The story begins when some relatives of Denise start dying and she sees herself back into the world of vampires (and demons) when she has to ask Spade for help. I was about to give it 3 stars but then the last 100 pages gave it another star as the whole gang is back together and I even laughed loud at some funny moments. Definitely worth reading if you like the Night Huntress series.

However, the conversation in the NY cab in what supposedly is Portuguese is plain bad. Possa-o ir devagar guiar, por favor and Oh, fala portuguesa? Nenhum problema is not Portuguese in my country (yeah, I'm portuguese). It's just horrible and even Google Translate does a better job at translating those sentences (it really does because I tried). Just in case you're interested, the first should be something like Pode ir mais devagar, se faz favor? and the second is even worse because Portuguese is "Português", "portuguesa" is a portuguese woman so the sentence doesn't even make sense. How come nobody corrected this before it was published?!

I have to use Marisa Meltzer words on this one: "Delightfully bizarre... It's an animal kingdom more like us than we could ever know". Definitely bizarre, you'll probably find a situation you've been through in more than one of the animal stories in this book. Don't think this is a funny book with children stories because they are about our society and each of them is only funny if you appreciate dark humour. It's made of seventeen short stories and I felt some were quite on spot: "The Migrating Warblers", "The Toad, the Turtle and the Duck" and "The Sick Rat and the Healthy Rat". "The Grieving Owl" is the funniest story and starts with a great illustration. I'd give 3 stars to some stories and 4 to others, so I'll leave it in 4. Quite an interesting book to have by the computer while waiting for it to do something.

This book has the first two stories in the Chrestomanci series. The first is called "Charmed Life" and the second "The lives of Christopher Chant". Chrestomanci is an enchanter who supervises the use of magic and so is more powerful than most magic people. Chrestomanci also has the job of looking for his/her successor. The first story takes us through the lives of Eric Chant and his witch sister (quite literally) who is called Gwendolen. Full of magic and some interesting twists, it's a great treat to read and I give it 4 stars. Then comes along the second story, which happens at least 25 years before the first and follows the life of Christopher Chant who is the Chrestomanci of the first story. This story is amazing! It's full of adventures, people from different worlds and gives us a lesson on true friendship - not to mention weird cats. The whole book gets 5 stars because the second story is really compelling. I had to make myself stop reading it so that it could last a little longer. Diana Wynne Jones always at her best.