Box of Terror contains four stories. The first one immediately drew me in. I liked the writing and the content was interesting - a man finds himself inside a supermarket that sells a different assortment of food than other supermarkets and it was too late to escape the second he entered the store but he will stop at nothing to return to his family. Then I found the story dragged on and I wasn't as invested as I was at the first, but overall this one was good.  The second story started off good, I liked the concept - a family has just moved to the middle of nowhere and they keep losing their power and the man stays and waits for the repairman while his wife and child go to stay with her mother before it gets dark. But then the author started to lose me with those made up words and I also found this one too long.  I did not like the third story - a man hides himself away from the world and is obsessed with numbers. In no way did this one interest me.  I did like the fourth ...

DNF @ 70%. I'm in a bad mood and I feel like shitting all over this book. Some books I request from Netgalley then wonder what I was thinking after I've been accepted and go back and read the blurb. A guy punches another guy out of a door who falls three storeys to his death. How is the author going to make a whole book out of this and not be boring? Well, he didn't. I'm not a fan of long chapters so when I got to chapter four and saw it was 19% of the book, things only went downhill from there. I got some boring voice on my phone to read this to me while I puttered around the house. Then I started aggressively skimming, skipping a chapter completely about the past. I don't care. I want to know what happened to Ryan. And then I read that their cat was decapitated. That was the end for me. I didn't read another word after that. I couldn't care less what happened to Ryan or anyone else. The writing wasn't that great. Boring, tedious, repetitious. I hated a...

On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High end up in detention together. None of them are friends and they're all completely different from one another. Bronwyn is the smart girl, over-achiever and she never breaks a rule. Addy is the pretty girl and homecoming princess, and she has the hottest boyfriend at Bayview. Cooper is the athlete and an all-star pitcher. Nate is the criminal who is on probation for dealing drugs. And Simon is the social outcast and creator of Bayview High's notorious gossip app. Simon has posted some very juicy stuff on that app and has hurt a lot of people in the process. He never makes it out of that classroom alive. According to investigators Simon had planned to reveal something major about each of the four people in that classroom the day after he died. So those four students are suspects in his murder. This was a compulsive read. It was well-written, suspenseful (who killed Simon?!) and had a diverse group of people who all had one thing i...

Camille Preaker is a reporter in Chicago. Her boss thinks it would be a good idea for her to return to her hometown in Missouri to cover the murder of two preteen girls before someone else gets hold of the story first. To say Camille does not get along with her mother is an understatement - she is a neurotic, hypochondriac who never showed her daughter any love. And she doesn't know her half-sister, Amma - a popular, mean girl who seems to run the town. But here she is back at her childhood home, staying in her old bedroom. And she uncovers one ugly truth after the other. Wow. What a messed up family. Something definitely was not right within the walls of the Crellin's old mansion, you could feel it. I really liked Camille, I felt sorry for her having to grow up like that and the actions she took to try to cope or punish herself. And I did like Amma. She felt very three-dimensional to me. The pace of the story was great. We get clues here and there. But I did not expect that ...

A suitcase has been found washed up on the shore of the river Thames. When Detective Erika Foster opens it she sees that it contains the dismembered body of a young man. This is identical to another suitcase that was found two weeks ago only that one held the body of a woman. Erika realizes she's looking for a serial killer but when she begins to dig into the case she is brutally attacked. She has no choice but to take time off but her mind is still on the case. When she learns that the twin daughters of her colleague have been kidnapped, she will stop at nothing to get those girls back home safe and sound. When I find out another Erika Foster book is coming out I feel like I have to read it. I know it's going to be the same as the ones before it - Erika goes through hell and then saves the day. I know the descriptions of people are going to drive me nuts again (horse-faced girl, jowly face with several chins), and there's going to be so many convenient things that will hap...

After the sudden death of her young son, Charlie Cates begins to have vivid dreams involving children. But she soon realizes that these are not dreams - they are messages sent to her so she can help those who need it. One of these children is a little boy in a boat. This takes her from Connecticut to Louisiana where she has an invitation to stay at Evangeline - the sprawling estate belonging to the Deveau's. Thirty years ago Gabriel Deveau went missing in the middle of the night never to be found. Charlie believes the boy in her vision is Gabriel and while trying to find him, she uncovers many long-buried secrets within the Deveau famiy. This book has been on my tbr list for years. I'm sorry I waited so long because this book was great! It was well-written, the whole story flowed smoothly and the characters were three-dimensional. I especially liked Keegan, Charlie's son who passed away. I enjoyed the mystery and secrets surrounding a family who has been in Louisiana for hu...

It's a stormy night and Cass Anderson is taking an isolated shortcut back to her house. She finds it odd that there's another vehicle on the lane and while Cass does stop to see if they need help all kinds of bad scenarios come to mind and plus the driver never indicted they needed help, so off she goes. Only to learn the next day that the driver of that car has been murdered. And Cass knew her. She can't confide in her husband because he told her not to take the shortcut and she promised him she wouldn't. She's convinced the murderer knows who she is. Ever since the murder she's been getting calls from an unknown number, she feels as though she's being watched and that someone has been inside her home. And she's been very forgetful - she couldn't find her car, she doesn't remember ordering things from the shopping channel, she can't remember the code for the alarm, or how to work the washing machine. Something's going on and Cass wants t...

Fifteen-year-old Seda thought it was cool to spend the summer at the old mansion her mother inherited, but now it's starting to snow and she just wants to go back to Boston, back to school and her best friends and her crush, back to civilization. The mansion is in the middle of nowhere, it's falling apart, there's no cell service, no landline and it's just plain creepy especially since it was last used as a murder mystery hotel. And Seda's mother won't sell it unless the new owners will keep it as a murder mystery hotel. When a group of teenagers show up as a result of their car going in a ditch and nowhere else to go, Seda has no choice but to offer them shelter - even though she knows something bad is going to happen. I was at the halfway point when I crawled into bed, thought I'd read a chapter before I fell asleep. I was beyond tired. I ended up finishing the book before I could go to sleep that's how good it was. It was so well-written that everyt...

The Lycée is celebrating its 100th anniversary and not only has Kersti Kuusk been invited back to the elite boarding school in Switzerland where she spent four years of her life, she has been selected as one of their "One Hundred Women of the Lycée." But for Kersti this opens up an old wound. Almost twenty years ago Kersti's best friend, Cressida, fell from her fourth-floor balcony just before graduation. This was quickly deemed an accident and the whole thing was over and done with before any publicity. But Kersti can't help but dig around especially with the anniversary coming up and after receiving a letter from an old friend of theirs from Lycée. Kersti never forgot Cressida's obsession with a secret club that was banned years before their arrival, a secret club that had two of its members expelled from the school - something that had never happened before or since. Kersti is determined to get answers about the club and about what happened to her best friend t...

The Bodine ranch and resort in western Montana is a family owned business that is home to four generations. Sitting on over thirty thousand acres it's kept busy by lots of vacationers and kept running by a large staff which includes big boss Bodine Longbow. Although the family is very close, Bodine's aunt Alice ran away before she was even born and never came back. She hasn't been heard from in over twenty-five years and she's not often talked about. No one ever imagined that she'd been close by for so long, kept prisoner in a basement, having unimaginable things happen to her. When one of the bartenders from the resort is found dead, it's the first sign that danger is close by. This is a big book! It took me a long time to get into it. It's mostly all about the ranch and resort - what goes on during work days with the horses and who is going to work where on whatever day. There's lots of cooking. I was confused the whole time (and still am) about who ...

The time has come for young Mukta to fulfil her destiny of becoming a temple prostitute. It's what happens when you're from the lower caste of Yellamma cult of temple prostitutes. Mutka's mother wants desperately for her to have a better life. Eventually she ends up in a foster family in Bombay where she becomes friends with eight-year-old Tara, the tomboyish daughter of the family. Mukta treasures their friendship and when she is kidnapped one night in Tara's bedroom, she knows that Tara will find her. Eleven years after the kidnapping, Tara is still blaming herself for what happened. But she will not give up searching for her long-lost friend and she will uncover some interesting secrets along the way. I thought this was going to be a solid read filled with strong characters. But I was wrong. I feel bad because this covers a serious topic - human trafficking - but from cover to cover this was boring. I can't believe I read every page until 43% when the idea finall...