Odd Hours by Dean Koontz

Synopsis: 

Now Koontz follows Odd as he is irresistibly drawn onward, to a destiny he cannot imagine. The legend began in the obscure little town of Pico Mundo. A fry cook named Odd was rumored to have the extraordinary ability to communicate with the dead. Through tragedy and triumph, exhilaration and heartbreak, word of Odd Thomas' gifts filtered far beyond Pico Mundo, attracting unforgettable new friends - and enemies of implacable evil. With great gifts comes the responsibility to meet great challenges. But no mere human being was ever meant to face the darkness that now stalks the world - not even one as oddly special as Odd Thomas. 

After grappling with the very essence of reality itself, after finding the veil separating him from his soul mate, Stormy Llewellyn, tantalizingly thin yet impenetrable, Odd longed only to return to a life of quiet anonymity with his two otherworldly sidekicks - his dog, Boo, and a new companion, one of the few who might rival his old pal Elvis. But a true hero, however humble, must persevere.
Haunted by dreams of an all-encompassing red tide, Odd is pulled inexorably to the sea, to a small California coastal town where nothing is as it seems. Now the forces arrayed against him have both official sanction and an infinitely more sinister authority...and in this dark night of the soul, dawn will come only after the most shattering revelations of all.

Chalk this up to another book that I had started during my reading slump and took me awhile to finish.

I think my slump was partially due to not being motivated to read and also being the middle of a few books that I didn’t get immediately sucked into/needed breaks from.

This was the first Odd Thomas book that didn’t pull me in and refuse to spit me out until it was over. There was just something about the storyline that I didn’t really care about. Once I was determined to finish it and actually sat down with the intent to do so, I did enjoy it. But, I was not hooked on the storyline in this one.

Odd Thomas sets out to stop a nuclear disaster. With a little help from psychic magnetism and Frank Sinatra – yes, THAT Frank Sinatra, he gets put into some sticky situations but comes out of it as only Odd can.

The story got deeper towards the end. Odd was in moral conflict with himself which was interesting to read. I hope the next storyline grips me more than this one. I really enjoy this series, but it’s hard when it’s a book that isn’t a “cant put this down” read.

3/5 Stars

Memorable Quotes: “Bad men wound and destroy one another, although as targets they prefer those who are innocent and as pure as this world allows anyone to be. They feed on violence, but they feast on the despoiling of what is good.”

“Sometimes I am a mystery to myself.”

“In fact, people were not in the habit of asking if I would die for them. And I was not accustomed to answering in the positive, without hesitation.”

“No one can genuinely love the world, which is too large to love entire. To love all the world at once is pretense or dangerous self-delusion. Loving the world is like loving the idea of love, which is perilous because, feeling virtuous about this grand affection, you are freed from the struggles and the duties that come with loving people as individuals, with loving one place — home — above all others.”

“Loss is the hardest thing. But it’s also the teacher that’s the most difficult to ignore.”

“Grief can destroy you — or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. Or you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn’t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it’s over and you’re alone, you begin to see it wasn’t just a movie and dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can’t get off your knees for a long time, you’re driven to your knees not by the weight of loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.”

“Of all the things I am, a killer is one of them. Not a murderer, but still a killer. And a fool. The only child of a mad mother and a narcissistic father. A failed hero. A confused boy. A troubled man. A guy who makes his life up as he goes along. A seeker who cannot find his way.”

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Q is for Quarry by Sue Grafton

Synopsis:

She was a "Jane Doe," an unidentified white female whose decomposed body was discovered near a quarry off California's Highway 1. The case fell to the Santa Teresa County Sheriff's Department, but the detectives had little to go on. The woman was young, her hands were bound with a length of wire, there were multiple stab wounds, and her throat had been slashed. After months of investigation, the murder remained unsolved.

That was eighteen years ago. Now the two men who found the body, both nearing the end of long careers in law enforcement, want one last shot at the case. Old and ill, they need someone to help with their legwork and they turn to Kinsey Millhone. They will, they tell her, find closure if they can just identify the victim. Kinsey is intrigued and agrees to the job.

But revisiting the past can be a dangerous business, and what begins with the pursuit of Jane Doe's real identity ends in a high-risk hunt for her killer.

Q is for Quarry is the first Kinsey Millhone book that didn’t completely hook me in. I don’t know what it was about this book. I did enjoy it and the story was interesting. But, it kept losing me and took me a few months to read. That could also be due to the reading slump I’ve been in lately. Maybe a bit of both.

What I didn’t know going into it was that it’s based on a true story. I wish I had known that from the start. I may have been more invested.  Sue Grafton added some details that weren’t from the real story because this is a work of fiction, but she kept the integrity of the case in tact. What’s even better is that she got involved in trying to help solve the case. All of this was added as a note at the end of the book.

You can pretty much get what the whole thing was about from the synopsis. So, I’m just going to include a link where you can read about the Jane Doe of Santa Barbara. Someone has to know who this woman is. We can only hope it’ll get solved and she will get the justice she deserves all these years later.

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/205ufca.html

https://www.independent.com/2011/07/21/who-was-jane-doe/

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Forever Odd by Dean Koontz

Synopsis:

Odd Thomas never asked for his special ability. He's just an ordinary guy trying to live a quiet life in the small desert town of Pico Mundo. Yet he feels an obligation to do right by his otherworldly confidants, and that's why he's won hearts on both sides of the divide between life and death. But when a childhood friend disappears, Odd discovers something worse than a dead body and embarks on a heart-stopping battle of will and wits with an enemy of exceptional cunning. In the hours to come there can be no innocent bystanders, and every sacrifice can tip the balance between despair and hope.

The second book in the Odd Thomas series and it was just as good as the first. It was mysterious, but there were parts of it that actually made me uncomfortable while reading. That’s pretty hard to do.

It was interesting because the whole book takes place within a few hours. You don’t see that very often. But, it was so action packed that if it was dragged out, it would have been super long.

You never really know what Odd is going to get into. This one started right from the first page. I was shocked by how quickly I was introduced to the main story line.

I was also curious how book 2 would be different without Stormy in it. I don’t think I have recovered from the end of Book 1 yet. But there were some nice callbacks to their relationship. Even with wanting Odd to progress and be able to move on, it would be nice to hear about her in the next books as well.

This is definitely one of my top series to read. Its horror but it’s also fun. You get a good mix. Plus, you get Dean Koontz’s writing. Can’t complain there.

4/5 Stars

Memorable Quotes: “The dead don’t talk. Perhaps they know things about death that the living are not permitted to learn from them.”

“The heart cannot flourish in logic alone. Unreason is an essential medicine as long as you do not overdose.”

“We sometimes take refuge in misery, a strange kind of comfort.”

“The correct question has three equal parts. What’s wrong with humanity? Then . . . What’s wrong with nature, with its poison plants, predatory animals, earthquakes, and floods? And last . . . What’s wrong with cosmic time, as we know it, which steals everything from us?”

“Loneliness comes in two basic varieties. When it results from a desire for solitude, loneliness is a door we close against the world. When the world instead rejects us, loneliness is an open door, unused.“

“The world has gone mad. You might have argued against that contention twenty years ago, but if you argue it in our time, you only prove that you, too, live in delusion.”

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The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Synopsis:

France, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another. 

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences.

My first impression was “wow, this book is long.” I abandoned that notion pretty quick because I almost wanted it to go on forever.

This book is H-E-A-V-Y. When I started it, it was just a sad book about WWII in France. The more I read, though, the more breaks I had to take. It was just gut wrenching to read. Yeah, these may be fictional characters, but this was reality for so many people.

You really become attached to every single character that you read about. Its really hard to express my feelings about this book because it’s almost pure sadness. But then there is the joy of having read it because it really is a great read.

I’m not huge on historical fiction but I do tend to enjoy books about WWII/Holocaust. It’s just so incomprehensible that these things happened to real people. It’s tough to digest but it makes these books that much more interesting.

If you are in the mood to feel every single feeling – pick this up. It is definitely worth the read. Even if it does leave you empty and hopelessly sad.

5/5 Stars

Memorable Quotes: “As I approach the end of my years, I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.”

“Everything looked exactly as it always had and that surprised her. War was coming, and she’d imagined it would leave a mark on the countryside somehow, changing the grass color or killing the trees or scaring away the birds, but now, as she sat on this train chugging into Paris, she saw that everything looked completely ordinary.”

“Some images, once seen, can never be forgotten.”

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