BoneMan’s Daughters by Ted Dekker

Title:  BoneMan’s Daughters

Author:  Ted Dekker

Hardback:  401 pages

ISBN:  9781599951959

They call him BoneMan, a serial killer who’s abducted six young women.  He’s the perfect father looking for the perfect daughter, and when his victims fail to meet his lofty expectations, he kills them by breaking their bones and leaving them to die.

Intelligence officer Ryan Evans, on the other hand, has lost all hope of ever being the perfect father.  His daughter and wife have written him out of their lives.

Everything changes when BoneMan takes Ryan’s estranged daughter, Bethany, as his seventh victim.  Ryan goes after BoneMan on his own.

But the FBI sees it differently.  New evidence points to the suspicion that Ryan is BoneMan.  Now the hunter is the hunted, and in the end, only one father will stand.

-From the front flap of BoneMan’s Daughters by Ted Dekker

When I first heard of this book, I was excited to read it.  The interactive site has creepy music and graphic pictures, and it looked as if it was going to be a suspense/horror novel.  I was all geeked out when I won a copy from The Literate Housewife‘s giveaway.  Alas, it has not lived up to the hype.

It is possible that I am disappointed in it because of the genre confusion.  It is, as it turns out, more of a crime/detective novel… something like Coben, but not nearly as good.  There is nothing like wetting your whistle for a tall glass of icy sweet tea, only to guzzle down lukewarm pickle juice instead.  So the fact I was geared up for some Clive and got Coben-knock-off didn’t help.  But… that wasn’t all.

As I read along, there were ways that Dekker wrote than just annoyed me.  Choices in words and phrases, as well as the way he stretched credulity beyond its snapping point.  By the end of the novel, I honestly didn’t know if the bad guy was going to win, not because his snazzy and clever writing, but because “Hell, at this point, anything’s possible.”  Honestly.  The Iraqi boneman takes Ryan, then the Texas BoneMan takes his daughter… and then that final connection between the serial killer and Ryan’s daughter was too much.  It made my “willing suspension of disbelief” impossible to maintain.

Add to that the complete lack of character development, or believable motives, or any reason I’d feel any sympathy for any of them.  By the end of the book I was hoping BoneMan would kill Ryan, the detectives, the publisher, me… Dekker, even.  Just get it over with!  End my misery!  Kill me now so I don’t have to finish!

A positive thing to say about it… Dean Koontz can sleep well knowing he’s not my least favorite author anymore.  Also, Dekker does present a fascinating moral dilemma.  How far would you go to protect your child?  Would you be willing to let another die in your child’s place?  Would you be willing to kill innocent people to save them?  I’ve found myself returning to this concept long after putting the book down. 

I give BoneMan’s Daughters by Ted Dekker 2 out of 5 stars.

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BTT ~ Pop! Goes Dean Koontz

Which is worse?

Finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author, or

Reading a completely disappointing book by an author that you love?

.

Yesterday one of my facebook friends sent me an invite to take one of those quizzes to see how much alike we were.  It was the kind where you have 10 phrases to put in order, most to least, starting with what I hated the most.  “Disappoint me” was top of the chart, even above “lie to me”, “ignore me” or “talk behind my back”.

At least with reading a book I love, then hating everything else by that author, I had that book one that I  loved.  It’s easier to take the rest of his or her writing, and I can just shrug it all off as a fluke.  As much as I love The Book Thief, I’m slightly worried that nothing else by Markus Zusak will be any good.  However, if I should happen to give another of his books a try and hate it, It will not sully my memory of The Book Thief.

On the other hand, if I pick up a book by an author I love, and hate it, there’s a sense that the author has failed me personally.  We have a relationship, of sorts, and he or she did not hold up his end of the bargain.  He or she has FAILED ME, and with every book I read thereafter I will hold this little uncertainty, a distrust, and wonder if he or she is going to screw me over again.

The worst of all, though, is that first experience reading an author and loving the whole book, every word is perfectly placed, his pace perfect, his story compelling, and you sit there and think “How on EARTH have I lived my life without reading this author!”  Then you get to the last three or four chapters, the last 10-15 pages, and he totally and completely bottoms out in epic-sized proportions.  And now, because of this, every book you touch by him you are leery to pick up, no matter how fascinating, intriguing or compelling the story line, because you wonder if he’s going to “screw you over” again.  AND he’s one of your bookfriend’s favorite authors, so she’s always sharing whatever one of his 147 just-out-in-paperback-because-he-has-a-new-release-ever-five-minutes-book she has just finished, and you look at every single one she thrusts at you to read, with the proclamation, “This is his best book yet!”, as if it were an adorable puppy you just watched get bitten by a foaming-at-the-mouth, crazy rabid squirrel and you know it’s only a matter of time until the big-eyed, heart-tugging pup turns on you.  But you finally relent and take her offering, however, no matter how good the writing is, you say to yourself, “Oh, sure it’s good now, but is he going to screw me over in the last few chapters like the other one?”  So you can’t enjoy it AT ALL because every page comes with that feeling you have as you turn the Jack-in-the-box crank as “the monkey though ’twas all in fun….” plunks out.  EVERY page you ever read by him again is saturated with the aftertaste of that massive  let down.

Dean Koontz, I’m talking to you. 

If you’d like to play along, or read other Booking Through Thursday answers, click the button above 🙂

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After reading The Darkest Evening of the Year and loving it, loving it, loving it… then having it all turn to crap in the last three or four chapters, I feel like Buddy in this vid clip while reading From the Corner of His Eye.

BTT ~ Kool-Aid Flavored Books

For something different, I’m borrowing a question from … here! One of the very first questions ever at Booking Through Thursday. Back from 2005 when Laura owned the blog but, because it was so new, it didn’t get as many responses as it does now … so, why not revisit?

Here’s the question:

Some people read one book at a time. Some people have a number of them on the go at any given time, perhaps a reading in bed book, a breakfast table book, a bathroom book, and so on, which leads me to…

1. Are you currently reading more than one book?
2. If so, how many books are you currently reading?
3. Is this normal for you?
4. Where do you keep your current reads?

Yes, I am currently reading more than one book, which is normal for me. I can’t stand to just read one book. Part of this is because I get bored with just one story, I suppose it’s the ADD, but another big part of why is sometimes my main book isn’t convenient to lug around with me when I have errands to run.

Right now I’m reading:

• Love Over Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith. This is my main book, but I’m about 10 pages from the end. My next main book is A Wrinkle in Timeby Madeline l’Engle, a book that I have tried and tried to read and finish all my life, but as yet remains unfinished (Chapter 4 is the farthest I’ve gotten in the book).  I keep my main book in my bedroom (either , on my dresser, on the desk, on the milk crate by my bed, and sometimes actually in my bed.)
• From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz is my tote-around book, though I’ve kind of been carrying around Mischief Makers Manual by Sir John Hargrave instead. I’m about 80 or so pages into Koontz book, and almost halfway through the M3.  I keep Koontz in my purse, and the M3 is in my coat pocket.
• How To Be a Villian by Neil Zawacki is my… erm… bathroom read. *cough* I’m about a third of the way through it.  I keep this one in the cubby behind the sink.
• I was straightening up and organizing all my ARCs and books for which I owe reviews into a manageable pile, and started reading The Forbidden Daughterby Shobhan Bantwal. The copy I have is an unbound galley, so it lives in the mailer that I received it in. When I first got it, I was a bit put off by the fact it’s just a pack of paper, and I figured it would be hard for me to take seriously as a book, a prejudice that has turned out to be completely unfounded 🙂 It’s an excellent book.   It’s laying on my chest-o-drawers where my Books-on-Deck are kept.
• I’m also reading Emma by Jane Austen as part of my Jane-a-thon (also kept on the chest-o-drawers), and I’ve started re-reading The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis, this time with the kids.  I keep this one in the kitchen on top the microwave, we read one chapter at a time after dinner.

So that’s seven books that I am currently, actively reading (though I don’t know if Emma can count as an “active” read, I’ve kind of stalled out in it). I keep track of my reading on my profile page at LibraryThing, as well as on my 75 and 50 book challenge posts.

So how’s your Number Game?  Join the fun at Booking Through Thursday!

The Sunday Salon ~ Survey SAYS!

As I’ve been struggling for the bulk of this past week with a stomach bug, I didn’t get much reading accomplished. However, I did pick up my emails and blogged a bit… very little bit, lol… and in Friday’s Shelf Awareness newsletter, there was a bookie-survey given to Robert Goolrick, author of A Reliable Wife. I love those kinds of things, so I snatched it, filled in my own answers, and made it my Sunday Salon post 🙂

BTW… those of you who’ve asked where us bloggers get out hands on ARCs, Shelf Awareness is one of my favorite sources 😀

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1. What book is on your nightstand now?

lol… I don’t actually have a night stand.  I have one of those high-class, bedside-furnishings found in college dorm rooms everywhere.

The Ubiquitous Milk Crate

But… at any rate… upon said “nightstand” is a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that Maggie borrowed from the library and has YET to read, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, and Great Jewish Short Stories.  They’re not there because I’m working on reading them, however.  Rather, they are there because I was sick and didn’t carry them the three feet around the corner to Mt. TBR shelving unit 2 (as, the original book shelf filled up long ago).

I think the meaning of this question is more, “What are you reading now?” And the answer to that is:   I am currently almost halfway through Brisingr by Christopher Paolini, Custard and Company by Ogden Nash, Neil Zawacki’s How to Be a Villain, and From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz.

From the ARC-alanche on deck pile, I’m also reading Something Wickedly Wierd: The Icy Hand by Chris Mould… OH! and, as I glance over my shoulder, I see this one is actually ON the milk crate, too.  I’m a little over 1/4 the way through it.

2. Favorite book when you were a child?

I was not a very prodigious reader as a child… I didn’t really start becoming a reader until I was about 15… but there are a couple books I read until they fell apart.

One was called Nothing At All by Wanda Fag

another was How Fletcher Was Hatched by Wende and Harry Devlin

and Never Tease a Weasel by Jean Conder Soule

There’s another that I read religiously, but I can’t find the name of it.  It had a girl chipmunk, I think her name was Suzy, and a toy soldier in it, but I can’t find it on the net.  It’s particularly enmeshed with Never Tease a Weasel, and I can only guess I read over and over together.

To this day, I unconsciously quote from Nothing At All when I feel like I’m running around in circles, “I’m busy getting dizzy!” is what Nothing At All, the main character of the book, says.

3. Who’s on your “top five authors” list?

Do I hafta limit it to five?!?! Waaaah! ‘kay, I’ll try:   Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, John Steinbeck, C. S. Lewis and…. Dr. Seuss.

4. What book have you faked reading?

LOL… I’m guessing this means What book did I pretend to read for a grade or book club?  Well, I didn’t exactly “fake” reading it because I admitted to my professor that I didn’t read it but it always sticks out there in my mind as a great “fake”.  In our 20th century American History class we were assigned Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life by J. William T. Youngs.  Try as I might, I was never able to get into the book… I’ve always hated biographies, like I want to know a person’s personal life! blech.

5. What book are you an evangelist for?

okay… those of you who’ve been to Mt. TBR before, say it with me:  The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

6. What book have you bought for the cover?

Erm… None that I can think of, not for the cover art.  I have grabbed a few for the titles, though.  It’s fun to tell people, “What am I reading? Talk to the Hand!”  Actual book title by Lynn Truss, and very funny in that dry brit-wit kind of way.

7. What book has changed your life?

Any book worth the paper it’s printed on cannot fail to leave its mark on the reader’s life, however I’d have to say the book that has had the most effect on who I am would have to be The Bible.  Second to that… I read a book that greatly helped me to stop cutting called Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation by Steven Levenkron.

8. What’s a favorite line from a book?

I just came across a line from Brisingr that every book lover will agree with:

Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don’t you agree?

erm… *glances at her shelves full of hoarded books and gulps* yeah… sure! I swear I’m gonna get to them all!! 😀

9. What book would you most want to read again for the first time?

easy, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak