Niceville
By
Carsten Stroud
What it's mostly about...but there is so much more...
A young boy disappears on the way home from school...this seems to set the pace for about a million other odd and unexplainable things happening in the town of Niceville.
My thoughts...
This book contains a whole lot of crazy. Fabulous, fascinating, heart pounding crazy!!!
Seemingly...in the beginning...the chapters do not seem all that connected. But as I got deeper and deeper into the heart of this book...there were tons of amazing connections. The characters are all odd...some of them delightful...like Delia Cotton...lovely little bourbon sipping old lady. Others are just mean and despicable...like Tony Bock...mean and nasty wife abuser. The chapters have the most delightful names...like Merle Zane Meets The Woman In The Forest or Tony Bock Has An Epiphany. The writing is absolutely treasurable...filled with lovely words that sort of sing!
However...this is not a light fun filled book. Something dark and sinister is lurking in Niceville and has been there doing very bad things for a long long time.
I think that pretty much says tons. It seems also that anyone coming close to this sinister thing...this badness...puts themselves in the gravest of dangers. The central issue seems to have begun back in the time of the Civil War. It involves four connected old Southern families. It involves a young girl's honor...and of course it involves vengeance and perhaps even redemption. And it involves this bank robbery that has profound ramifications...dishonest cops, and the FBI, and computer geeks and pornography.
Oh my!!!
This book is scary and funny and mad all at the same time...
What I Loved...
I loved the sort of upstanding characters...especially Nick and Kate. I loved the badness of the bad guys. It was awesome! I loved the suspense and excitement of each chapter. I loved the scariness...because although it was scary...I could handle it and it sort of made sense. I loved Mildred Pierce the Maine Coone Cat and the fact that no animals were harmed in this book! I loved the horse...the huge majestic horse that added another realm of otherworldliness to this novel.
What I Did not Love...
I did not love the crows. Nor did I love the mirror. I didn't even like the weird sort of rock structure that looms over the town. I did not like any of the bad guys...especially the one who drove the yellow hummer. Scary stuff...
This was a big huge juicy scary fun novel. I can even see it as an amazing movie!
And I will never look at crows and mirrors in the same way ever again...ever...
just saying...
Sent from my iPad2 by Patty Magyar!!!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
OMG you crack me up!
ReplyDeletePlus, I just scheduled a review for Swamplandia! and I seriously used the exact same format you used here... but I think I said, What Worked, what didn't work or something like that. I had to break it down because I seriously was not sure how I felt about the book until I was writing about it.
"Nice" job with Niceville. LOL.
This might be too scary for me.
ReplyDeleteI heard about this one, but I think it might be a little too scary for me.
ReplyDeleteWhat you said about the crows...it reminds me of why I can't look at any kinds of birds the same way after the Hitchcock movie from way back called The Birds.
ReplyDeleteEven if they flap loudly, I freak out...lol
Sounds like a book I shouldn't read on a dark night during a storm.