Tag: 2 Star Reviews

All 2 Star Reviews In One Place

“Later” By Stephen King Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , , Leave a comment

The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine – as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.

Yet again we are talking about a Stephen King book which didn’t do a lot for me, but I presume that it is just my issue with the newer Stephen King books which I end up not liking after finishing reading them.

I had a few expectations for this book because a ton of people on Goodreads gives this book 5 stars reviews. And oh boy let me tell you that this book doesn’t give a damn about the expectations I had for it. Because this book is very very bad.

I found this book to be uninteresting, boring, very predictable and very repetitive. It just wasn’t a good book or even close to being a good book. And after I finished this book I was left with a feeling that it was incomplete and that Stephen King didn’t even try to give us a good book.

The characters here wasn’t what I expected from a Stephen King book. Because all of the characters were very flat and annoying. But my main problem is the main character who was the worst out of all the characters in this book. 

Because the main characters was very very annoying and repetitive. Every few minutes he would remind us that “its a horror story” but it wasn’t horror story it was a fiction story. There wasn’t anything even close to classify as “horror” in this book.

The beginning of this book was okay, because it was intriguing but as you went on with this book the more and more it was becoming a torture to read.

The entire plot about this book was about a boy who can see ghosts and he shits his pants every other page because he can see ghosts. And we follow his journey from being a kid and growing up to be adult.

I gotta say that the plot wasn’t that unique because I feel like there are a tone of movies I watch about people being able to see ghosts. And I want to a new take on it and the repeat and repeat formula on this topic.

To be honest this book isn’t that long but you are reading this book, it seems very very long. It is for sure much longer than it needed to be. This book could easily be a short story rather than a book, because there is a lot of moments where they dont go anywhere whatsoever. 

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“The Rebel Files: Collected Intelligence of the Alliance” By Daniel Wallace Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

Branded as rebels and traitors, the members of the Alliance worked from the shadows, gathering information and support from across the galaxy to bring an end to the Empire’s tyranny. Concealed within a secure case, their most vital and sensitive information was collected by one of Mon Mothma’s most trusted aides and kept hidden until now. Discovered in the ruins of an abandoned rebel base, these files have been passed among members of the Resistance, who have added notes, updates, and new insights to the documents. A repository of Alliance intelligence, The Rebel Files weaves together classified documents, intercepted transmissions, and gathered communications to trace the formation of the Rebel Alliance. Within the case, an imbedded projection unit — activated by the push of a button — displays the Death Star plans plus a reconnaissance image of Death Star II. Unlock the secrets of the Rebel Alliance!

This book is the third book I’ve read from the series of “Secrets of the Galaxy Guidebooks Series”. And I gotta say that this book was less impressive and less interesting than the previous 2 books I’ve read from the series.

I found this book less enjoyable but being more of a university lecture type of book about the Rebels in the star wars universe. 

I think that the main reason why I didn’t like this book as much as I wanted to do was because I never were a big fan of the rebel aspect of the star wars. In fact the rebel aspect in star wars are one of the less interesting aspects for me of the star wars universe.

I dont know if it is just me but this book seems disjointed. And the characters notes in the margins of this book are not done so well as in the previous books in this series. Which really didn’t make it easier for me to like this book. 

But at the same time the character notes in the margins of this book seems like the characters talking with each other rather than one character making a note and then another character making a note commenting on the previous characters note which was done in the previous book. In my opinion that aspect of the character notes worked in the previous books in this series but just didn’t work for this book because it was made so differently.

The thing which also bothered me with this book was that, all the rebel interruptions weren’t descried but rather talked about in the retrospect on why they worked or didn’t work. Which really annoyed me because I wanted to see more of the prep work before the interruptions rather than having notes from characters talking about why they didnt work or work.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“The Iliad” By Homer Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer’s Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode of the Trojan War. At its center is Achilles, the greatest warrior-champion of the Greeks, and his conflict with his leader Agamemnon. Interwoven in the tragic sequence of events are powerfully moving descriptions of the ebb and flow of battle, the besieged city of Ilium, the feud between the gods, and the fate of mortals.

To be very honest here I didn’t have a lot of expectations for this book even thou a lot of people on the internet claims that this book is very good, I learned my lesson to not trust people on the internet with books.

Again to be honest here I don’t have any strong feelings about this book, I didn’t dislike it and I didn’t like it either. 

I personally struggled a lot to finish this book because I found it uninteresting and I just didn’t have enough will power to finish it but in the end I did finish it. 

I’m glad that I read this book but after reading this book I became very neutral to this book. I didn’t like it nor dislike it. And to be honest here, if I didn’t listen to the audiobook of this book I wouldn’t be able to finish it because its very heavy and I just count focus on it for longer portions of time.

For me personally this book was a very slow read, because all the things happening in this book were not so interesting to me but also the way this book was written in had made all the action slow so that it could describe it better in a way. 

One of the things about this book is that it keeps building up to the point where the Trojan horse will show up at one point in this book, but it never does show up and it really annoyed me here because whats the point building the plot to a moment and then the moment never comes ?

This book had a lot of heavy and hard moments to get through in this book, and some moments in this book were actually okay and I liked them. But the most of this book is hard and heavy to get through.

The writing style here was very heavy and I just count bring myself to like it. And I’m not sorry about it. I didn’t like the writing style because it felt very heavy and hard.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“Nightmares and Dreamscapes” By Stephen King Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

A solitary finger pokes out of a drain. Novelty teeth turn predatory. The Nevada desert swallows a Cadillac. Meanwhile, the legend of Castle Rock returns… and grows on you. What does it all mean? What else could it mean? Stephen King is back with a powerful new collection of stories – a vast, many-chambered cave of a volume.

Let me start this review by saying that this book is hell of a long book with a lot of short stories inside of it. And by the way I already reviewed every single short story in this book before actually writing the review about this book as a whole. 

My edition of this book has 836 pages which is a pretty decent length if you ask me. And for me this is very long when it comes to short stories written by Stephen King, because as you might know Stephen King’s short stories doesn’t work for me and I just end up very much disliking them.

For me Stephen King’s short stories just lack something which I cant really put a figure to, and because of this paradox I end up disliking them a lot.

Of course some of the short stories in this book were better than others but still I disliked them. But of course some I disliked more and some I disliked less. But still the dislike were present for all of the short stories in this book.

The majority of the short stories in this book just didn’t feel like they were written by Stephen King because the characters were bad, shallow, boring, uninteresting and flat but the plot and writing style didn’t feel neither like something created by the master of horror himself. 

To be honest I think I should take a break from Stephen King because me and him lately aren’t working out. Because all the books written by him I’ve read this year ended up on the lower raking side of things b because I didn’t like them as much as I wanted to. I think it is just me this year who end of being way too hard to books, because 60% of the books I’ve read until June this year (2024) ended up having a rating of one star. So its me either picking the wrong books for me or me being way too harsh to books this year.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“Paper Towns” By John Green Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew.

Ive heard a lot of good things about this book and well to put it simple, this books didn’t live up to all the good things I’ve heard about this book. 

The reason why I decided to read this book is because I love “the fault in our stars” which of course is by the same author, and the one of the workers at the bookstore I purchase my books told me that if I loved “the fault in our stars” I will love this book as well. And well I didn’t,  so thanks you to the person who have recommended this book to me (you know who you are.)

To put it very simple this book is all the things you dont want a book to be. And by this I mean boring, uninteresting, meh plot, and the characters are as bad as it they can be. 

Margo, which of course is the female main character is very very bad and very self absorbed which really really pissed me off because she was always acted like the damn world revolved all around her. 

And Quentin which is the male main character was a little bit better, but went Margo bolts from the town he immediately jumps to the conclusion that he is meant to find her and that margo is playing some kind of twisted version of hide and seek with him. 

Both of the main characters in this book really proves us from start to finish that they are typical, not thinking teenagers and well it didn’t help me to like them but instead helped me to hate them more and more with each chapter of this book. 

The plot here was okay for the most part, but I was very very far of being a fan of it. It had some good moments here and there but for the most part it was very boring and uninteresting and I just could not keep my focus during reading this book because I wanted more to look at the paint dry than reading this book. 

The writing style here was okay, but far from the best I’ve seen, I’ve read one book by this author before so I know that he can do better than what he did in this book. But I hated this book so much that I dont think I won’t be reading any more books from this author 

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“Gone Girl” By Gillian Flynn Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

Who are you? What have we done to each other? These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn’t true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren’t made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

I had very high expectations for this book because of all the good things I’ve heard about this book. But unfortunately this one didn’t live up to my expectations. After reading this book I think that this book is very over hyped because it isn’t as good as people claim it to be.

The plot in my opinion is very weak, is very boring and uninteresting and it is way too long. The entire plot could have been cut in half and do much better. The plot sidetracks a lot in this book in the way that it talks about the main plot and then suddenly it just switches to something else which happened few years ago which doesn’t have anything to do with the main plot which really annoyed me.

The characters in this book were very annoying, because all the female character and even police just seemed like they knew Nick had killed his wife especially in the beginning when she first went missing and where there were absolutely no evidence that Nick had killed his wife. Its very sexist if you ask me, because it was like everyone believed Nick had killed his wife just because he was the husband.

When it comes to the two main character which of course are Nick and Amy were very far from being the good main characters. Both Nick and Amy were very flat and uninteresting. 

But Amy especially was a character I truly hated because she is psychopath and not in a good way. She just does shit just because she wants to be the center of the universe, she just wants everything t revolve around her and if she doesn’t get the attention from you well some very bad shit will happen for you.

And Nick in my opinion is just bad character as well because he isn’t trying to do anything to stop his bad shit crazy wife and even try to leave. Like your wife tried to blame you for murdering her and make you get (in the best case scenario) life in prison or (in the worst case scenario) get a death sentence. And you still love her and stay with her and pretend like nothing happened ? Its not what I would have done in this case.

The writing style here was very boring and chaotic. I don’t know what it is but there was something about the writing style which really really annoyed me. Because it is a strange thing because I already read one book by this author before reading this one and I liked that previous this book but I absolutely hate this one.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“The Brothers Karamazov” By Fyodor Dostoevsky Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons―the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture.

To be honest this book have taken me awhile to finish, because I would take a really long breaks in between reading this book. And I’m gonna explain why I did so later on in the review. 

There is a lot of things going in this book, and all the things which was happening in this book were very intense and heavy topics. 

This book is a murder mystery from none other than Fyodor Dostoevsky so you know there will be some very intense and heavy topics in this book. And not solely a straight forward mystery of finding the killer and the reason why. 

My main problem with this book and well Fyodor Dostoevsky books, is that he stretched everything for far too long than it needed to be. So because of it I tend to lose focus and interest very fast with this book and with Fyodor Dostoevsky books in general. 

The characters here were okay to be honest, I didn’t care enough about them to sort of create any opinions about them. But they weren’t bad nor good. 

This book has some good moments, which really made my day while reading this book because I was ready to hate this book, which in the end didn’t happen.

The ending this book was interesting and enjoyable. Because it involved posting out the killer and the motive of why. Which really seeing that process in a Russian classic book was very enjoyable for me personally.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“A Little Princess” By Frances Hodgson Burnett Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

Sara Crewe, an exceptionally intelligent and imaginative student at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies, is devastated when her adored, indulgent father dies. Now penniless and banished to a room in the attic, Sara is demeaned, abused, and forced to work as a servant. How this resourceful girl’s fortunes change again is at the center of A Little Princess , one of the best-loved stories in all of children’s literature.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book, because on the one side it was sweet and I liked it but on the second side I didn’t like it so much as I wanted to.

The beginning of this book was very sweet and nice, because the main character Sarah, was a very sweet child which I loved but as the book continues to go further and further Sarah was becoming way too perfect, which really made me dislike here.

Its important to say that this book is meant for kids rather than adults. And because I read this book as an adult might explain the low rating I gave this book. Very fast Sarah became Boringly perfect, and I know how harsh it will sounds like, but I know why the adults at the school didn’t like Sarah, thats because she was way too perfect.

There were things I liked about this book which of course is that this book prompts  being nice to people no matter how pretty their are, how wealthy they are or whatever else there might be involved. 

The characters here well not the greatest, Sarah was a very bad character because as I’ve said before, she is way too damn perfect, which made me dislike her very very fast. To be honest I never went from liking a character to truly hating a character so fast as I’ve did with Sarah while reading this book.

As of the rest of the characters, they all were ignorant, shallow, and helpless which really didn’t help me liking this book. 

The writing style makes it very easy and you don’t have to be a genius to see solely from the writing style that this book was meant for children.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“Blockade Billy” By Stephen King Review

Posted in Other ReviewsTagged , , 2 Comments

Even the most die-hard baseball fans don’t know the true story of William “Blockade Billy” Blakely. He may have been the greatest player the game has ever seen, but today no one remembers his name. He was the first–and only–player to have his existence completely removed from the record books. Even his team is long forgotten, barely a footnote in the game’s history.

This short story is included in the “The Bazaar of Bad Dreams” which ive already reviewed not so long ago.

I need to give this short story some points. Because this one was the best short story written by Stephen King in my opinion. Even thou it was the best, it does out shine other short stories by Stephen King.

The plot as in the other short stories by Stephen King just don’t work for me, because in my opinion they are so shallow, boring and uninteresting that I cant fully get into them and actually enjoy them.

Again we are talking about a short story from Stephen King which didn’t work for me. I personally don’t like any short stories written by Stephen King.

The characters in this short story were very very boring, uninteresting, predictable, shallow and flat. Which is the absolute worse traits a character could have.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“The Library Policeman” By Stephen King Review

Posted in Other ReviewsTagged , , Leave a comment

This is the third gripping tale in the four-part audio series from Stephen King’s best-selling book Four Past Midnight. Set in Junction City, Iowa, “The Library Policeman” is the story of Sam Peebles, a middle-aged businessman who happens to have some overdue books. It seems a minor offense—but not to Junction City’s malevolent monster of a librarian. What follows is spine-tingling suspense as only Stephen King can deliver it.

This short story was one of 4 short stories in “Four Past Midnight” written by Stephen which I’ve reviewed already, but it was a review about the book as a whole rather than about each of those 4 short stories. So thats why we are here today to talk about this one.

Its important to say that short stories written by Stephen King doesn’t work for me for whatever reason which I cant really name for some reason.

The plot in this short story wasn’t the best to be fully honest here. It had some good and interesting moments here and there, but those moments were very rare. But overall the plot in this short story was uninteresting and even boring at times. 

But I need to give some points to this short story for having a good and unique premise, which isn’t used enough, in my opinion. 

However this short story had a very brutal and graphic scene in which a child got raped. And really it came out of nowhere and it really it didn’t sit well with me personally.

The ending in this was awful to be honest, it felt Stephen King didn’t even try to give us a good ending. Overall the ending felt very lazy, and it felt like even Stephen King didn’t even want to write it.

I Give This Book 2 / 5