My Top 5 Stressful Books I Read in 2019



Hello, Fellow Book Worms and Book Dragons!

  From the depths of my bookshelf comes my Top 5 Stressful Books I Read in 2019. This includes books that I read that were stressful for various reasons, including bad plot choices and annoying characters. If you liked these books I am happy that you were able to. No one's opinion should ever dictate how you enjoy something. Many of these authors I have enjoyed in the past. 


  Without further ado, let's begin.....


5) The Night Before by Wendy Walker was a good novel. I enjoyed the story and some of the characters. What I was not a fan of was how soon the reveal came. In a flashback, we are told the truth. This made no sense to me due to the fact the reveal came again when the main character's sister found out the truth. I felt that the reader and the sister should have found out the killer's identity together.  


4) Never Smile at Strangers by Jennifer Jaynes was all over the place. I tried reading the book with the audiobook, however, both versions did not match. Released a few years apart, each format appeared to have been heavily edited and barely matched up. The story was better with the audiobook and I ended up just using that only. 


3) Dangerous Minds by Janet Evanovich was nowhere near as good as the first book in the series. I liked it, but several things pulled me out of the story. One character was almost an exact duplicate of a character from another series she writes. The sexual banter between the main characters came at the most inopportune times. This made me like the villains more than the protagonists. 


2) The Crooked Staircase by Dean Koontz was an excellent novel that was intense and had an epic final battle between the protagonist and antagonist. It only makes this list for killing off four characters that I had grown to love in the series. Avoiding spoilers, let's just say that I cannot see any reader not being upset by the demise of these characters. They were good people who did not deserve the grisly endings they faced. Regardless I highly recommend the Jane Hawk series for fans of suspense. It is an amazing journey to add to your reading list.



1) JAWS by Peter Benchley was a huge surprise to me. As a fan of the film for decades, I was excited to finally read this novel. What I did not know is the screenwriters for the film did a better job presenting the characters. Benchley's version was filled with narcissistic characters that only had their own interests at heart. Even Sheriff Brody, who is a hero in the film, was an abusive alcoholic. Ellen Brody has an affair with Matthew Hooper that turns this suspenseful novel into a cheesy romance novel for about thirty pages. Ironically the Mayor was the only interesting part of the character roster. His story was better fleshed out in the book. In the end, I was actually hoping the shark ate all of the characters. A huge disappointment. 

  Have fun reading this week. Let me know in the comments below what you are reading this week.

   Also please follow me on my social media platforms, and enjoy shopping with me at eBay and the Book Depository.

2020 Reading Challenge (coming December 27)
 



Because there is always time to read,
   Xepherus3 
 







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