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Book Title: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Author: Suzanne Collins
Genre: Fantasy
Page Count: 517
Started/Ended Date: March 2 – March 5
Total Reading Time: 9 hours 48 minutes
It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.
The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined — every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute… and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.
I first read The Hunger Games when everyone else read them – right when they came out in 2008, 2009, and 2010. So between the ages of 12 and 14, I, like many other girls, was Hunger Games obsessed. I devoured the books, learned how to braid my hair, and tried my hand at archery (unsuccessful). I think that I would have enjoyed this book much more if I had read it back in my teens.
My love of reading has remained since my teenage years, but my taste has evolved. YA books just don’t do it for me now that I’m not a YA. But, despite it not being my usual taste, I didn’t hate it. We watched the movie the same night that I finished the book and I will say that the book was much better in my opinion.
The relationship between Lucy Gray and Coriolanus was interesting. It went from Coriolanus wanting her to survive in order for him to be the winning mentor, to falling for her and wanting her to survive so that they could be together. When she does win and is taken back to District 12 and Coriolanus is forced to become a Peace Keeper as punishment, he decides to follow her back to 12. To me, it feels like once they are more on an even playing field, where Coriolanus is not in charge of Lucy Gray, the appeal of the relationship kind of fizzles out and Coriolanus ends up trying to kill her in the end.
Another part that has stuck with me is when Coriolanus is reflecting on his relationship with Lucy Gray and he makes the decision that if he ever marries, he will marry someone who he doesn’t like, or preferably someone he hates, so that no one will ever have the access or the power to hurt him the way that Lucy Gray did. The theme of love versus power and how they interact was a strong one in this story and was deeper than I was expecting from a YA book.
Book Title: The Hunting Party
Author: Lucy Foley
Genre: Mystery
Page Count: 327
Started/Ended Date: March 6 – March 11
Total Reading Time: 5 hours 47 minutes
Everyone’s invited…everyone’s a suspect…
For fans of Ruth Ware and Tana French, a shivery, atmospheric, page-turning novel of psychological suspense in the tradition of Agatha Christie, in which a group of old college friends are snowed in at a hunting lodge . . . and murder and mayhem ensue.
All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.
During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.
They arrive on December 30th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.
Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.
The trip began innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.
Now one of them is dead . . . and another of them did it.
Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close?
Lucy Foley, I’m sorry, but you let me down here. I have read two other books by Lucy Foley. The first that I read, The Guest List, ended up being one of my favorite books. The second, The Paris Apartment, was a bit of a letdown and I was hoping that this would follow closer to The Guest List, but unfortunately, it didn’t.
The story leading up to the end was well-written and there were a few twists that I did not see coming. I also really loved the concept of people who were best friends at one point in their life really trying to hold on to that connection and seemingly force a friendship due to that past history. I can relate to the feelings of a lot of the characters who were frustrated by the fact that the friendship didn’t seem to grow with them. And I related to forcing yourself back into the role you held when that friendship was strong to try to feel that connection again.
I think if the book was a little longer, I would have liked it much more. The ending felt very rushed. The whole story, we are waiting to find out who murdered who, and it isn’t revealed until the last few pages. Then in the epilogue, we find out the prison time for the murderer and a few other updates on the other characters and that’s the end. I would have loved to read more about how the other characters went on with their lives afterward, or more about the random drug smuggling ring, or really anything other than “this person murdered this one, they got four years in prison. The end.”
I think a great way to have ended this book would be to have the characters accept that their old friendships no longer fit their lives and maybe have stories of their current friendships. I don’t know, but it felt unfinished.
Book Title: Mindhunter
Author: John E. Douglas
Genre: Nonfiction – True Crime
Page Count: 375
Started/Ended Date: March 12 – March 15
Total Reading Time: 9 hours 9 minutes
FBI Special Agent and expert in criminal profiling and behavioural science, John Douglas, is a man who has looked evil in the eye and made a vocation of understanding it. Now retired, Douglas can let us inside the FBI elite serial crime unit and into the disturbed minds of some of the most savage serial killers in the world.
The man who was the inspiration for Special Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs and who lent the film’s makers his expertise explains how he invented and established the practice of criminal profiling; what it was like to submerge himself mentally in the world of serial killers to the point of ‘becoming’ both perpetrator and victim; and individual case histories including those of Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and the Atlanta child murders.
With the fierce page-turning power of a bestselling novel, yet terrifyingly true, Mindhunter is a true crime classic.
John Douglas knows more about serial killers than anybody in the world – Jonathan Demme, Director of The Silence of the Lambs
The first nonfiction review! Reviewing nonfiction is much different than reviewing fiction because I can’t say “Oh, I didn’t like this part, they should have changed that,” because this is real life, baby. So, my nonfiction reviews may be a little gentler seeing as there aren’t any themes or storylines to review. I guess we will see when I review others, because I have nothing but good things to say about Mindhunter and I’m not sure if that is due to it being nonfiction or just a really good nonfiction.
Besides the content of this book being extremely fascinating, there were a few other things that made this a great read for me. First, John Douglas’s writing style is perfect for storytelling, especially when the story is something as gruesome as serial murders. He’s blunt, to the point, and “just the facts, ma’am”, when he needs to be, like when describing a crime scene, and is lighthearted and funny where appropriate. It felt like he was telling me this story over a nine-hour dinner.
I also appreciated the stories of his own life and how this work affected him personally. He talked about how the work emotionally hardened him. This was great when he was analyzing gruesome crime scenes, but not so great when one of his children came to him with a scraped knee. He had a hard time showing concern because he knew life could be a lot harder than scrapes and a few stitches. I appreciated his honesty and vulnerability in admitting that his family life fell apart mainly because of him and how he approached his work.
Book Title: Mr. Mercedes
Author: Stephen King
Genre: Thriller
Page Count: 437
Started/Ended Date: March 16 – March 20
Total Reading Time: 8 hours 23 minutes
In the predawn hours, in a distressed American city, hundreds of unemployed men and women line up for the opening of a job fair. They are tired and cold and desperate. Emerging from the fog, invisible until it is too late, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.
Months later, an ex-cop named Bill Hodges, still haunted by the unsolved crime, contemplates suicide. When he gets a crazed letter from “the perk,” claiming credit for the murders, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, fearing another even more diabolical attack and hell-bent on preventing it.
Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of eccentric and mismatched allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady’s next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.
Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.
I have been a Stephen King fan for as long as I can remember. I’m not sure which King book was my first, but he wrote my favorite book of all time, 11/22/63. I really enjoyed this book. It was all set in real life with no supernatural aspects, which I appreciated. Not to say that I don’t love a supernatural Stephen King book, 11/22/63 is about time travel so I obviously enjoy those as well. But my issue with some of his supernatural stories is that he tries to explain the supernatural logically or scientifically and that just makes for a disappointing ending for me. (Case in point – Under the Dome‘s ending ruined it for me).
But this is not a review on all of Stephen King’s work, this is a review on Mr. Mercedes. I really have nothing bad to say about this book. The characters felt very real and well-rounded, the storyline was interesting, and the execution was great. I was concerned that I had read this series or maybe one of the books before, though, because the name Holly Gibney seemed so familiar to me. After some research, I realized that Holly is also the main character in The Outsider as well as in a short story in If It Bleeds. You almost had me, Stephen!
Book Title: Finders Keepers
Author: Stephen King
Genre: Thriller
Page Count: 525
Started/Ended Date: March 22 – March 24
Total Reading Time: 7 hours 37 minutes
Wake up, genius.
The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, yes, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel.
Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then he is locked away for another crime. Decades later, a boy named Pete Saubers finds the treasure, and now it is Pete and his family that Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson must rescue from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he’s released from prison after thirty-five years.
Not since Misery has King played with the notion of a reader whose obsession with a writer gets dangerous. Finders Keepers is spectacular, heart-pounding suspense, but it is also King writing about how literature shapes a life—for good, for bad, forever.
I did not realize that this was a series when I started Mr. Mercedes. My mom had gotten me the first book while thrifting because she knows I am a Stephen King fan and it has been sitting on my TBR shelf for probably 2 years now. I typically like knowing that I’m starting a series going into it so that I can emotionally prepare for a longer ride, but I was not mad about this bamboozlement.
Finders Keepers was my favorite book in this series. I loved this book because I can relate to most of the characters to some degree. Have I ever been outraged by a favorite character’s choices in a book and been pissed at the author? Yes. Have I been so outraged that I hatched a plan to murder the author over it? …Not seriously. Kidding. I have not. But, I get that feeling of “whhhhhhhy would you write that?!” And if I found out that there was a sixth ACOTAR book out there, with no plans for it to ever be published, I’m not saying I wouldn’t attempt a robbery. So, Morris, you’re extreme, but I kind of get it. And Pete is faced with such an impossible decision. A lot of times, I’ll read stories of crazy situations and be comforted by the thought of “I would never be so stupid as to do that.” But with Pete, he got himself into a crazy situation and I definitely would’ve done the exact same things that got him into that crazy situation. This book ended in a heartbreaking way but it ended well.
I will say that this book feels more like a spin-off of Mr. Mercedes rather than the sequel. The ties to the first book are obviously the characters, Bill, Holly, and Jerome, and that Pete’s dad was one of the victims who was seriously injured at the City Center massacre. Bill also goes to visit the seemingly brain-dead Brady Hartsfield in the hospital, but other than that it really has nothing to do with the first book.
Book Title: End of Watch
Author: Stephen King
Genre: Thriller
Page Count: 480
Started/Ended Date: March 25 – March 28
Total Reading Time: 8 hours 23 minutes
The spectacular finale to the New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with Mr. Mercedes (winner of the Edgar Award) and Finders Keepers—In End of Watch, the diabolical “Mercedes Killer” drives his enemies to suicide, and if Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney don’t figure out a way to stop him, they’ll be victims themselves.
In Room 217 of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, something has awakened. Something evil. Brady Hartsfield, perpetrator of the Mercedes Massacre, where eight people were killed and many more were badly injured, has been in the clinic for five years, in a vegetative state. According to his doctors, anything approaching a complete recovery is unlikely. But behind the drool and stare, Brady is awake, and in possession of deadly new powers that allow him to wreak unimaginable havoc without ever leaving his hospital room.
Retired police detective Bill Hodges, the unlikely hero of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers, now runs an investigation agency with his partner, Holly Gibney—the woman who delivered the blow to Hartsfield’s head that put him on the brain injury ward. When Bill and Holly are called to a suicide scene with ties to the Mercedes Massacre, they find themselves pulled into their most dangerous case yet, one that will put their lives at risk, as well as those of Bill’s heroic young friend Jerome Robinson and his teenage sister, Barbara. Brady Hartsfield is back, and planning revenge not just on Hodges and his friends, but on an entire city.
In End of Watch, Stephen King brings the Hodges trilogy to a sublimely terrifying conclusion, combining the detective fiction of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers with the heart-pounding, supernatural suspense that has been his bestselling trademark. The result is an unnerving look at human vulnerability and chilling suspense. No one does it better than King.
In the Mr. Mercedes review, I talked about how I loved it because it was not supernatural. Well, End of Watch brought that supernatural aspect to the series, but I’m not mad about it. Stephen does try to explain how the supernatural thing is happening logically, but it almost is realistic enough that it makes sense? I mean it’s still supernatural so by nature it’s not going to be super realistic but it was almost believable. The mind is a crazy thing!
I was a little disappointed that some of the characters that were introduced in Finders Keepers weren’t brought into this book. I think if they were, Finders Keepers would have felt less like a spin-off and more like the sequel. I think a way to remedy this situation would be to have more Bill Hodges stories. Stephen, I know you’re a very busy man, but I am not asking for much.
I cried at the end of this one. I definitely became attached to all of the characters and was sad to say goodbye to them, either because of their death or because the series was ending. So, again, Stephen, we need more!
And that’s all for March! What did you read in March? Let me know your recommendations in the comments! As previously noted, I have a long, long, TBR but I’m always looking for another book to add to it (read as: a trip to Barnes and Noble).
Making it Megan 
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