Books revisited ...

As I drifted to sleep last night, I thought about what I'd said about the Koontz book.

And I realized that I was wrong.

The book itself was a disappointment. The Husband, that's the one I read. The jacket and the inside reviews promised normal Koontz fair. But it wasn't. It was basically a suspense type of novel - one in which you knew the ending would be happy before you even began it. I don't read Koontz for 'normal' stories. I read Koontz for the same reason I read King and Saul. Give me the weird! Give me the goose bumps!

This book did neither.

It gave me a story of a man from a dysfunctional family, whose wife was kidnapped as a way to tweak his brother.

Sure, there were a couple of surprises. Ok - one surprise. Just one. The brother. But that was all.

Otherwise, it was a run of the mill story about what a man was willing to do to save his wife. No, it wasn't shocking to me that a normally mild-mannered guy was willing to kill. It wasn't shocking that he lied to police and, at one point, even tasered a detective.

Add to that his typical sloppy ending and voila ... you have an underwhelming book that I can't recommend.

And that's what I was wrong about. It wasn't an overall good book - it was an ok read, but only if you've run out of things to read or you're just a loyal reader (like me) that'll read it simply because of who wrote it.

Speaking of books ...

I also read King's Lisey's Story this week. It wasn't typical King, but it was well written and contained a good bit of King-type elements. So even though I didn't get goose bumps or want to sleep with the lights on, it was still a page turner.

That one I can - and do - recommend. Long time King fans may be disappointed, as we were in a few others (Gerald's Game, anyone?), but there's enough of King's old style in it to keep your interest.