Fiction | Book Chatter

The Bullet
By Mary Louise Kelly
(Gallery Books, Hardcover, 9781476769813, March 17, 2015, 368pp.)

The Short of It:

Interesting premise but the execution was a little heavy-handed and the outcome, predictable.

The Rest of It:

Caroline Cashion is a 37-year-old professor at a university. She’s got a slew of brothers and is very close to her parents so she’s rather surprised to find out that the pain in her wrist is due to a bullet that is lodged in her neck. An MRI and CT scan reveal what is absolutely impossible for her to believe. Shot? How could she have been shot? There’s no scar to indicate an entry point and yet, there it is, the bullet, clear as day.

The bulk of the story centers around how this bullet managed to find its way to her neck. This alone, makes for an interesting read. It started off slow for me but mid-way through, I was pretty curious to know the scoop and the writing, which started off a little forced, seemed to even out and become more fluid. I enjoyed this middle section quite a bit.

By the last third of the story, I was bothered by the romantic interest. It seemed a little out-of-place, given Caroline’s preoccupation with discovering the truth. As for the ending, it was predictable but given where the story was going, I feel that the author did the best she could with the ending. I think for it to have been any different, something should have happened much earlier on to change the outcome.

I wanted it to be more suspenseful than it was and maybe include more forensics than it did but overall, it wasn’t a bad way to spend an evening.

Source: Sent to me by the publisher via Edelweiss
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Pet Sematary
By Stephen King
(Pocket Books, Mass Market Paperback, 9780743412278, 2001, 576pp.)

The Short of It:

Probably one of King’s best.

The Rest of It:

In my late teens, early twenties, I somehow managed to read Pet Sematary twice. I think I read it a second time, right before the movie came out. I remember it being appropriately scary but not overly so. To compare, IT, to this day, is still his scariest book ever but anytime death is involved and you try to change things, you are really grabbing the bull by the horns and things just can’t go well when you try to do that with death. Trust me.

After Louis Creed accepts a position as a university doctor, he and his wife Rachel buy a house in the country and look forward to raising their two small children, Ellie and Gage, in the beauty of God’s kingdom. Except, there is a pesky road that is the main through-way for trucks getting from point A to point B. Across the way, are their elderly neighbors, the Crandalls and oh, let’s not forget the Pet Sematary, which is really the smaller part of an Indian burial ground and which just so happens to be on their property.

Indian burial ground. Yep.

As you can probably guess, that busy road becomes a very important part of the story, as does the Pet Sematary, which is spelled that way because that is how a child chose to spell it years and years ago. The story reads quickly, because once you get to a certain point, you really can’t stop reading as you must know how it all turns out.

As you may recall above, I didn’t think the book was overly scary when I read it in my twenties but that was before kids. Reading it recently, I couldn’t help but flashback to those times when my kids hurt themselves or how afraid I was of hurting them accidentally. Really, just recognizing how fragile they were. Well, the experience of parenthood adds some additional terror to the mix. For sure.

I read this for the #gangstercats read-along so I definitely had the support of others, which always makes reading a book like this a lot more fun. Plus, we got party favors too! There’s nothing like a good King discussion to bring people together. There was some interest in maybe watching the movie while live tweeting, so if that happens, you’ll hear about it soon.