Category: Book review

“From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival (Jewish Lives)” By Thomas Toivi Blatt Review

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Blatt’s account of his childhood in Izbica provides a fascinating glimpse of Jewish life in Poland after the German invasion and during the period of mass deportations of Jews to the camps. Blatt’s tale of escape, and of the five horrifying years spent eluding both the Nazis and later anti-Semitic Polish nationalists, is a firsthand account of one of the most terrifying and savage events of human history.

I had a lot of expectations for this book since I like a lot holocaust books especially  about people telling their tell of how it was surviving the holocaust but this book didn’t live up to my expectations.

I don’t know what it is about this book but I couldn’t finish it because it was so torturous for me to read it.

The writing style was very off-putting because it was like very very heavy even for a book about the holocaust. Even the school books have better writing style than this book. 

The plot here is all over the place in this book. Because first its talking about the main character being a jew and hiding the fact and working at a warehouse where German officers would store their motorcycles and then the next second the plot is talking about the person’s penis swelling up. Like were is the connection there ?

This book is very uninteresting and boring. And if you are looking fir a good holocaust book then this book isn’t for you.

Well I don’t want to be too harsh about this book because its a Memoir about someone’s experience under the holocaust. So this review will be very short 

I Give This Book 1 / 5

“Ted Bundy. Umysł mordercy” By Max Czornyj Review

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Ted Bundy. Najsłynniejszy współczesny seryjny morderca. Dokonywał masakr. Ukrywał ciała ofiar i pozował je niczym kukły. Odgrywał z nimi makabryczne sceny. A to tylko początek nieprawdopodobnej historii. Rzeczywistość przerosła najbardziej przerażającą fikcję. Nigdy nie obcowaliście z tak czystym złem. Niepowtarzalna narracja pierwszoosobowa przyprawia o dreszcze. Jestem całkowicie instynktem i popędem. Drapieżnikiem, myśliwym, łowcą. Jestem miłosierny. Wybieram kłamstwo.

At the time of writing this review, this book is only available in Polish so keep that in mind.

This book is about no other than Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial killer of all time. And he doesn’t need a lot of expiation since I’m sure that everyone knows who Ted Bundy is.

This book is really weird because it was written from Ted Bundy’s perspective even thou the author have never talked or even meet Ted Bundy. Its important to say that the author was born 8 months after Ted Bundy was executed, so the author had no possible way to talk or meet Ted Bundy.

This book doesn’t bring anything new to the Ted Bundy case, it rather repeats all the facts we already know about Ted Bundy’s killing, escapes from prisons and his lies. But this book does do it in very unique way since it does it from Ted Bundy’s perspective which I haven’t come across before this book.

This book is a very quick read. Because its very short, the chapters are very short and it uses the larger fonts.

Its important to say that this book wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be. And its not as enjoyable as I wanted it to be. But it is not boring which I take as a positive thing with this book.

The ending was dragging a lot and I think that the ending could have been much shorter and not involve Ted Bundy’s schemes he had before his execution to expand his life even for a few days with giving falls info about were he buried his victims.

The writing style in this book wasn’t great. The writing style felt like the author wanted to be done with this book as fast as possible without going into details so much as other books about Ted Bundy do.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“The Book Thief” By Markus Zusak Review

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It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still. By her brother’s graveside, Liesel’s life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found.

To be very honest here I had a lot of expectations for this book, because I’ve heard a lot of good about it. After reading this book, or I should say trying to read this book I just don’t understand the hype with this book because in my opinion this book isn’t as good as people claim it to be.

The plot is about Nazi Germany and I tend to love books set in that time period but this book is bad. Because the more you read the more boring and uninteresting this book becomes.

The narrator of this book is Death itself. Which might work for some books but it didn’t work fir this book. Having a narrator doesn’t work for this book because the entire book we follow the same character and we see everything from the main characters perspective. So you don’t think about the narrator telling the story unless the narrator makes a comment outside the main story which makes you remember that there is a narrator in this book which isn’t the main character. 

At the same time the narrator use very nonsensical language. Which really bugged me a lot because it would just paused me for a short time every once and a while.

The beginning of this book was actually interesting but the further you get into this book the more and more boring and uninteresting it becomes.

Its important to say that I DNF-ed this book after having read like 52% of this book. Because reading this book was a torture to me since it irritated me and bored me so much that I just couldn’t handle to finish this book. But at the same time I’m not a fan of historical fiction books especially if they are about nazi Germany and the holocaust because its a very dark time in human history.

This book was very anti-climatic because the narrator would tell us what would happen next before it actually happened. And I really hate it whenever this happen because I don’t like someone telling me what will happen next in a book / show / movie before I see it for myself.

During my time reading this book I started to think that the author was more interesting about marketing this book rather than actually giving us a good book.

The writing style of this book because it was 100% telling-without-showing anything to us. Which I find every single time to be very boring and so off-putting. But the same time the writing style in this book is very weak, and it was like the author didnt even care about giving us a good book but rather cared about the paycheck he would get after finishing and publishing this book.

Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to like this book so much because it had a very good premise but after trying to read it, I dislike it so much. 

One of the many reasons why I dislike this book as much as I do is that it is very repetitive. The book uses the same phrases, events etc all the time in this book and it like the author doesn’t know when enough is enough with being repetitive.

The characters in this book are so all over the place. The main character is a young girl, and really I don’t know what to think about here. Since at times she makes hard decisions like an adult but other times she just makes the stupidest decisions ever. The adoptive mother of the main character is a mean asshole for no reason to the little girl. And the adoptive father of the main character is a people pleaser, he just cant say no to his adoptive daughter nor to his wife so he ends up being the d-bag when the mother says something else.

I Give This Book 1 / 5

“Stalking Jack the Ripper” By Kerri Maniscalco Review

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Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord’s daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life. Against her stern father’s wishes and society’s expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle’s laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.

I gotta say that I didn’t know much about this book before reading this book and because of this I didn’t have any expectations for this book. Which I think was a good think when it came down to this book.

This book is played as the book about a girl who searches to find the identity of who Jack the Ripper was. But the investigation in this book is actually not the main topic of this book but rather the main character which is a 17 year old girl in the 1888 spends 50% of this book talking about how shitty it was to be a female in the 1888. I get it, it must have been shitty but still the reason why I picked up this book is to read about the investigation of who Jack the Ripper was not a commentary of 1888 England.

The beginning of this book was actually interesting but the deeper you can into this book the more down hill it began going. The beginning was very intriguing, interesting and enjoyable but it very quickly become boring and uninteresting.

From solely the beginning of this book I was ready to give this book a 5 star review but the further I got into this book the more tired of this book I got. Because there were a lot of moments where I was ready to DNF this book while reading this book. But in the end I read the whole book even thou I should have DNF-ed this book.

This book is a historical fiction book but the moment you start reading this book you can see that this book is heavily targeting young adults and teenagers. In the sense of how it is written, the plot and the characters.

The characters in this book are very weak, they aren’t the greatest. Each of the character in this book have barely a character, each of the character feel in the same character which some rare moments where their personalities begin to shine a little bit. 

I’m writing this review the next day after finishing this book and already now I can tell you that I don’t remember so well the character and I cant tell you much about them. I remember that the father and the uncle of the main character have beef with each other. The main character is very very emotional. The brother of the main character brushes his hair every 5 minutes. The guy the main character falls in love with is like the modern-day high school jock who tries to pretend that he is Sherlock Holmes. And the rest of the characters in this book I just completely forgot.

The plot here is very weak. The plot summary of the book on the back of this book tells us that it is a jack the ripper investigation but the majority of this book isn’t about the jack the ripper investigation. 

The writing style of this book, is very heavily targeting young adult and teenagers readers. Its very simple and easy so that teenagers would have fun with this book. The writing style wasn’t greatest to put it very simple way.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“Zaginięcie” By Remigiusz Mróz Review

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Trzyletnia dziewczynka znika bez śladu z domku letniskowego bogatych rodziców. Alarm przez całą noc był włączony, a okna i drzwi zamknięte. Śledczy nie odnajdują żadnych poszlak świadczących o porwaniu i podejrzewają, że dziecko nie żyje. Doświadczona prawniczka, Joanna Chyłka, i jej początkujący podopieczny, Kordian Oryński, podejmują się obrony małżeństwa, któremu prokuratura stawia zarzut zabójstwa. Proces ma charakter poszlakowy, mimo to wszystko zdaje się wskazywać na winę rodziców – wszak gdy wyeliminuje się to, co niemożliwe, cokolwiek pozostanie, musi być prawdą.

This book is available in polish, Russian and English, at the time of writing this review. Having out of the way we can start talking about this book.

This book is the second book in “Chyłka & Zordon” series. After reading and loving the first book in this series I was afraid that I wouldn’t like so much this second book and that it would be less impressive than the first book. But this book is just as interesting and enjoyable as the first book in this series. 

The plot in this book is a little bit less interesting than in the first book. But it is still very very interesting and it sucks you right into the plot. And I personally couldn’t put this book down because I was so sucked into this book, and even when I wasn’t reading this book I was thinking about this book all the time because I wanted to know what will happen next.

This book has more humor and joking from the main character than what we got in the first book, so under this aspect this book is a little bit better than the first book because the jokes the main characters make throughout this book it makes the whole book less tense.

I had some problems with the ending in this book, because the ending was very rushed and it felt like the author himself didn’t know what the ending should be liked so he just rushed through the last chapters of this book.

There is a big plot twists where of course the whole mystery gets solved and we see what truly happened to the little girl which vanished from the house in the middle of the night. And I loved the plot twists at the ending because you were like “of course that this must have happened, I should have thought about this but I didn’t”. The solution for the vanishing of the little girl is all over the book, but you just don’t think about it. 

The writing style in this book is very very incredible because its like the author knows what words to use to completely grab your attention with is. The writing style also plays very well with the plot, characters and setting.

The main characters in this book which of course are Joanna Chyłka and Kordian Oryński are even better than they were in the first book. And you can see the character development they had from book one. They are still the same characters they were in the first book, but in this book they seem smarter from what they went through in the first book.

In a way Joanna Chyłka and Kordian Oryński have more personality in this book than what they had in the first book. I liked them much more in this book than in the first book because both this second book and the first book are on the larger size so it means that you spend a lot of time with them which makes it easier for you to like them.

We also get new characters in this book, they were also very very good character. Not as good as the main characters but still they were good and I liked them a lot. They had their unique personalities which made me like them even more.

The edition I have of this book is 506 pages long, and I was so sucked into this book that I didn’t notice the length of this book and I read this book much faster than I expected.

I Give This Book 5 / 5

“Ghost Tracks: Case Files of Ed & Lorraine Warren” By Cheryl A. Wicks Review

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For more than fifty years, Lorraine Warren-a validated clairvoyant-and her husband Ed Warren-a respected demonologist-have been tracking paranormal phenomena around the world. Ghost Tracks pulls together five decades of field research experience, along with historic, scientific, and religious perspectives to reveal that even the paranormal have predictable patterns of behavior. These patterns enable the Warrens to discern what is happening and why. Lectures and selected case studies and letters demonstrate what it is like to live with, investigate, and resolve the mystery of ghosts, poltergeist, and evil infestations. Ghost Tracks has a refreshing style making it an easy read, entertaining as well as informative.

And yet again we are talking about another book coming from the Warrens. But its important to say this book wasn’t written by the Warren but its instead about the cases of the Warrens. It doesn’t talk about all of their cases instead it talks about 9 of the Warrens cases.

This book is on the short side and I’ve read it in 2 days. We get 9 different cases to read about in this book but we also get a introduced to the warrens and they answer questions like who are Ed and Lorraine Warren ? and  How they got into ghost busting ? 

Its important to say that I don’t believe in the things Warrens claims are real but I still like reading their books since I treat them like ghost stories you would see in Hollywood films. 

This book isn’t as much a book as it is a transcript of various Warren lectures they gave in their time. So of course the topics may jump around a lot and switch to different things. So it doesn’t feel as a proper book.

But we also get some short case studies the Warrens had in this book. One of which is the 112 Ocean Avenue which is the The Amityville Murder House which there are countless horror movies and books about but also which the Warrens investigated in their time.

Its important to say that each case study isn’t super long, each case study is around 15 pages long. So we don’t get a lot of insight into them but we get some at the very least.

I found this book to be interesting and enjoyable at times which really made me give this book some extra points here and there. But for the most part this book wasn’t the interesting one. But it had some of those moments.

The writing style in this book aren’t as good as the writing style used by the Warrens in their own books, but its still okay in this book. Even thou I didnt like it was much.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“A Little Life” By Hanya Yanagihara Review

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When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity.

I didn’t know much about this book other than it being sort of under the LGBT category which I avoid because the book I read in this category I ended up hating in a way. And this book isn’t anything different from the other books in the category which I hated.

The only good thing about this book is the writing style which was pretty gorgeous and I loved it a lot. It really made me think that the author of this book is a really good author solely based on the writing style.

To be very honest in this review, this book was very melodramatic, stereotypical, repetitive, dull, self-indulgent and very unbelievable. And because of this I DNF-ed this book after having read 310 pages of this book.

The beginning of this book was actually interesting because it states with 4 classmates form a small Massachusetts town moving to the big apple (New York City) but then within 2-3 chapters it fast forwards a few decades to when one of those classmates are is well in his 40s I believe and we follow him. Which I found very boring, uninteresting and annoying. Because it went very quickly from being an actually interesting book to being a very boring book.

The characters in the beginning was actually okay characters but when the fast forwards thing happened, the characters become like the watered down versions of themselves which really didn’t have anything in common with their younger selves.

I personally liked the characters at the beginning but after the fast forward I began to hate all those characters I liked at the beginning because they we’re vert melodramatic, stereotypical gay but most importantly very very annoying.

As I’ve said before I read some books in the LGBT category but this one is the most full of the work bull shit I’ve come across so far. Which really helped me to DNF this book so fast. 

And this book had everything which you put under it being Brutal, and of course I am talking about sexual abuse, child abuse, physical abuse, drug addiction, rape, self mutilation, suicide, horrific violence, abduction and amputation. So be warned about those things if you want to read this book.

I Give This Book 1 / 5

“Satan’s Harvest” By Ed Warren & Lorraine Warren Review

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The shocking true case of demonic possession from the reporters who first covered it in the Boston Herald. The case was discussed and you can watch the real exorcism footage in the blockbuster horror film The Conjuring. When terrifying, bizarre things kept happening to a hard-working Massachusetts farmer, he did what anyone would do.

This book is the 6th book in the book series of Ed and Lorraine Warren paranormal cases. And I gotta say the more books I read about them and about their cases the more I think that their whole persona of being “ghost hunters” is baloney.

This book contains very few photos of the priest and bishop who worked with the Warrens at some point, Ed and Lorraine at their museum, of the two victims of the “demonic” possession which this book talks about and the house belonging to the victims. But what the photos in this book doesn’t shows are the “paranormal” events taking place according to the Warrens.

If you have watched the The Nun 1 and The Nun 2, then you will know the guy which this book is about. And this guy is of course Frenchie Theriault. And let me tell you that this book is very different than The Nuns movies, since there is no Nun / Valak in this book but rather a unnamed “entity” hunting the shit out of Frenchie Theriault and his close once.

There are a lots of moments while reading this book were I got the impression that Ed and Lorraine were huge jerks. Because the way they said things in this book which really gave me the feeling of them being jerks.

This book is a very short read, my edition of this book has only 301 pages and I read this book in one day. And the way this book is written makes it every easy to read in a day.

Of course the entire book is written from eyewitness personative, in this book we have the statements from the Warrens, the possession victims, neighbors, friends, family and police officers who supposedly saw shit going down hill. 

My main issue with the eyewitnesses presented in this book are that we only hear their stories in this book and there is no video interviews of them and we cant rally hear and see how they tell their stories. We need to relay on what the Warrens tell us in this book. Which really is the main reason why I don’t believe the Warrens cases in this book series 

The writing style is very fun and easy to read. I gotta say that Ed warren is a very good writer because he has the ability to use the correct words to make people the entire book in a very short time. And actually make them interested in finishing the book.

I was interested in what we would read about in this book even thou I don’t believe in the events which allegedly happened in this book or in the other books of the Warrens. 

I still enjoyed this book a little bit so thats why I gave this book some extra points for doing this.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“The Hobbit” By J.R.R. Tolkien Review

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In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

I finally got to read this book and I cant tell you how happy I am that I finally read it.

The plot in this book is very very good. And at the same time its very unique. The fact that it was written in the late 1930s and is still relevant in the 2020s really proves how good of writer J.R.R Tolkien really was.

The moment I started reading this book, I was clued to this book but at times I needed to take few days break from this book to process properly what had happened in this book so that I could enjoy this book better.

The plot in this book makes you feel like you are there in the plot and part of everything which is happening in this book. Which really surprised me because I wasn’t expecting this to happen.

There is a lot of action in this book, there are a lot of things going on which will make you sit at the edge of your sit because you get so interested in what is currently happening in this book. 

This book gives you like the huge feeling of connectedness, which I really loved about this book and give this book extra points for.

The characters in this book were very very good, and I loved each and all of the characters in this book. It was like every single character in this book was a really human being with his / hers own thoughts, feelings and opinions which really made me love this book even more.

Bilbo’s adventures in this book very very interesting, enjoyable, at times funny and very adventurous which really gave this book a place in my brain and heart to live forever rent free.

The writing style here is incredible, even thou there is a lot of old English in this book or at least in my copy of this book. But for me the old English makes this book even better and even more real.

As I was reading this book I felt like going back to childhood and reading “A Song Of Ice And Fire” for the first time. Where you didn’t care about anything else but to read the book. 

My only issue with this book is that it is too short, I really wish that this book would have been longer than it was. Because I desperately didn’t want this book to end in a way. 

If you want to get into fantasy then this book (and this series) is the best starting point you can get. Because its the OG fantasy, which really as times continues it gets more and more fans as it should do.

I Give This Book 4 / 5

“Under the Dome” By Stephen King Review

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Under the Dome is the story of the small town of Chester’s Mill, Maine which is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. No one can get in and no one can get out. When food, electricity and water run short, the normal rules of society are changed. A new and more sinister social order develops, Dale Barbara, a young Iraq veteran, teams up with a handful of intrepid citizens to fight against the corruption that is sweeping through the town and to try to discover the source of the Dome before it is too late.

I gotta say that I had quite a few expectations for this book since its a Stephen King book. But this book didn’t live up to my expectations.

The plot in this book isn’t as much “horror” as it is “fantasy”, of course there are some pretty violent moments like a female getting raped, murder, raids etc. But to me it feels more like a dark fantasy rather than horror.

The plot had a very interesting premise but the way it was presented as and written made me bored for almost the entire read of this book. But there were some good moments here and there in this book which I liked a lot, but for the most part I was just thinking when I will be done with this book.

The ending in this book wasn’t the greatest I’ve seen by Stephen King, at first the ending is okay but the more you think about it the more lame the ending seems. Or it just could be me who found the ending in this book to be lame. 

The beginning of this book was very good and it really quickly got me interested in the plot and what will happen next. But the more I read of this book the more and more disappointed I got and the more my dislike began to grow for this book.

There was a lot of action in this book, a lot of things happening and because of this I gave this book few extra points for this. But for the most part all action ending pretty quickly. And there were some things happening which really could be the whole chapter but Stephen King have forced it to be just couple of pages long. Which really annoyed me.

The characters here weren’t the greatest, I found them to be annoying and if I met them in real life and had a short conversation with them I would bit the shit out of them because there were so annoying. At the same time the characters in this book seemed to not be thinking but rather have 5 years old who would get angry if they weren’t allowed to do what they wanted to do.

To be very honest with you, this book was way too long than it needed to be. Because you could easily delete the half of this book and it would have been better than it is with the full 1000+ pages we get in this book.

There are some moments in this book which drag for far too long, and at times because of these moments I wanted to just DNF this book. 

The writing style here was very good, you could easily tell that it was written by the master of horror himself. The writing style was very interesting and enjoyable. And in a way it made this book so much better than it would have been if it had writing style Which really made me give this book some extra points.

I Give This Book 2 / 5