Book Review | Book Chatter

The Fireman
By Joe Hill
William Morrow & Company, Hardcover, 9780062200631, May 2016, 768pp.

The Short of It:

Find a cool, shady spot, grab a cold drink, and kick back because The Fireman is the hot read of the summer.

The Rest of It:

Draco Incendia Trychophyton is a plague which causes people to spontaneously combust. As people across the country become infected with “Dragonscale”, the hospitals in each big city try their best to contain it but there is no cure.

Harper Grayson, a nurse who took special care not to become infected, finds herself covered in “scale” and when her husband Jakob finds out, he doesn’t react the way she expects him to. Instead, she ends up with a group of people who have come together for survival. This group has figured out a way to live with the scale. Led by an unlikely hero in a bright yellow coat and fireman’s hat, they create a world where survival is possible.

I love read-alongs and this book was perfect to read as a group. It’s long (700+ pages) but I read it in under a week and never once felt its length. It’s got plenty of good storytelling, lots of action and some likable characters for you to cheer for. There is also one really bad seed. There’s one in every bunch.

What stood out:

Lots of name dropping and pop culture references
Hill is Stephen King’s son and I felt it in the writing (a plus!)
Reads like a movie and Fox has taken it on for development.
Definitely not horror even though it’s marketed that way.
We all felt that it should have been called, The Nurse.
Despicable characters are great fun to bash on Twitter.

I received a review copy of this book so imagine my surprise when another blogger pointed out material that was not in my review copy. Yes!! A slightly different ending given the additional material she provided. So if you have the review copy, seek out a finished copy so you can read that very last bit.

I was hoping for a good chunkster to read this summer and this was it. It’s a lot of fun and reading it with a group just made it that much better. I highly recommend it.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher via Edelweiss.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

The Long Goodbye
By Raymond Chandler
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, Paperback, 9780394757681, August 1988, 384pp.

The Short of It:

An amusing read.

The Rest of It:

Marlowe befriends a down on his luck war veteran with the scars to prove it. Then he finds out that Terry Lennox has a very wealthy nymphomaniac wife, who he’s divorced and re-married and who ends up dead. and now Lennox is on the lam and the cops and a crazy gangster are after Marlowe. ~ From Indiebound

The Long Goodbye is my book club’s selection for this month and it was a nice change of pace. We don’t read much crime fiction and I’ve never read anything by Chandler before so I was pretty excited to finally give him a go.

After just a few chapters, I could tell that it would be a book that I’d enjoy. It’s a good read full of wry humor and the story is not bad either. There are a few twists and although The Long Goodbye is one of many books in the Philip Marlowe series, I never felt as if I was missing any background on the character.

I enjoyed the Los Angeles setting and Marlowe’s sharp-witted humor. Plus, as far as crime-fiction goes, I appreciated the simple story line and the lack of red herrings. It still had me guessing, but without all the fanfare that you get in some other crime-fiction novels.

It was pure fun and I will not hesitate to pick up another book in the series.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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