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Nov 22, 2011

Lou rated it:

Imagine yourself a pilot of a passenger aircraft, a trip you have made hundreds of times something that you become so used to doing. On one occasion you are the captain of a particular plane and not far from landing to your destination, mid-air suddenly a flock of Geese hit your turbines and all driving power is lost of the aircraft. It nose dives and time is everything with no possibility of landing the plane safely on solid ground the only place to land is the stretch of sea beneath yo More...

8 comments like (15 people liked it)

Dec 12, 2011

Madeline rated it:

Imagine if someone set out to write a ghost story that was a combination of The Shining and The Haunting of Hill House, with some forgotten-in-ten-years current events tied in...and then the movies The Wicker Man and The Craft came along and vomited over everything. The result is Chris Bohjalian's The Night Strangers.

I can't even do a The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly-style review, because it's all bad. Instead, I will now present the follow list of reasons this book failed me, in asc More...

23 comments like (42 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2012

Txkimmers rated it:

I feel very ambivalent about Bohjalian's novel, and my feelings about it moved along a giant bell curve while I was reading it. Despite the excellent performances of the two narrators, I had a lot of trouble getting into it, feeling that it spent an inordinate amount of time re-hashing the minute details of the plane crash that traumatized the sad sack airline pilot. I really wanted to be more sympathetic to his situation, but he didn't become interesting to me until he started having homicidal More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2012

Jammies rated it:

Bleah. For a so-called "ghost story," this was terribly boring. The writing is technically proficient, but the characters are two-dimensional placeholders, which makes for absolutely no tension in the scary plot developments. Those plot developments are telegraphed loudly in advance, and there's no leavening humor or humanity to make a reader care enough to be scared on behalf of any of the cardboard figures populating the novel. Throughout the read I was irritated by the use of se More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2011

Susan rated it:

Never having read Bohjalian before, this was not what I'd expected! At first I found the Jodi Piccoult-meets-Stephen King vibe a little uneven, or queasy, although that didn't stop me from turning pages into the night. By the end, I had to know what was going to happen. The story, which involves a haunted & traumatized pilot who survives a dramatic crash landing, a creepy Victorian house with secrets of its own, a set of young twin sisters, a cohort of small town, New England herbalists, well More...

3 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2011

Becky rated it:

I received this from netgalley.com and it wasn't going to be my "next-read" book but by the chatter among a few of my online book buddies...I decided to give it a whirl.

I have not read a book like this for quite a while, probably a couple of years at least. The book started out slowly for me not picking up until about 1/2 way through. It seemed as if Bohjalian was taking his time to tell the story. It seemed that one day took many chapters.

The story centers on More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Oct 30, 2011

M rated it:

DISCLAIMERS: I paid full price for this novel (and heartily regret it.) I read this entire novel (and heartily regret that, too.) This is my first (and probably my last) Bohjalian read. In terms of technical quality and professionalism, the book boasts interesting construction, but I still dislike it.

In a nutshell, the beginning took forever for this story to get anywhere, the middle featured some genuine chills and disturbing moments and the conclusion punched me hard in the bell More...

14 comments like (15 people liked it)

Nov 10, 2011

Christine rated it:

From the book decription: “In a dusty corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire, a door has long been sealed shut with 39 six-inch-long carriage bolts. The home's new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin ten-year-old daughters. Together they hope to rebuild their lives there after Chip, an airline pilot, has to ditch his 70-seat regional jet in Lake Champlain due to double engine failure. The body count? Thirty-nine. What follow is a riveting ghos More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 22, 2012

Rene rated it:

Wow, Bohjalian used to be one of my favorite authors but with Night Strangers he seems to have failed me. His attempt at horror/suspense/thriller or whatever you want to call this is subpar at best. There are two themes to this story which shouldn't have been combined in my opinion.

Chip, a retired Pilot after a fatal plane crash in Lake Champlain seems to have taken on a bad case of depression, and or psychosis? He grapples with the fallout of the accident and moves his wife and More...

0 comments like

Jan 15, 2012

Virginia rated it:

Man. I will never read this author's books again. He's a fine writer, but his endings are just horrific. This book was really frustrating b/c the suspense went on and on (as did his plane crash bits, the author was apparently inordinately pleased w/ his piloting knowledge)and then the ending was just upsetting. It's not that the suspense was a bad thing, nor was the length of the ending, it's just the epilogue REALLY makes me mad. Also:
- his conversations between the kids was awkward and More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 14, 2012

Danielle rated it:

Well, it looks like Bohjalian is batting 2 out of 4 with me. The first book I read, Before You Know Kindness was alright, but didn't leave me singing his praises. But then I read The Double Bind and it blew me away with it's mind-bending plot twist. Next was Secrets of Eden and while I did end up predicting the end, I couldn't put it down. So I thought we were on an upward trajectory. I was so excited to read The Night Strangers. Now that I've finished, I'm decidedly less excited.
More...

2 comments like

Jan 13, 2012

Jeanette rated it:

In my history, never before has a book been "going to get" 3 or 4 stars until the last, say, three pages or so. And then it gets 1. Seriously. I guess I am not the kind of person that should read these kind of books; Gothic horror stories as some people describe them. Yes the writing was fantastic. Yes, the 400 some pages I did like were addictive and wet your appetite for more on the subject. (Yes, I was planning out which book by this author to read next.) Yes, a great many people se More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 08, 2011

Leeswammes rated it:

A family moves to a small village in New Hampshire after the father, Chip Linton, an airline pilot, crashed his plane causing 39 people to die (and 9 to survive). As he will never be able to fly again, they want to make a new start and buy a big, old house, which he starts doing up.

His wife Emily is now the main provider for the family, who also include ten-year old twin daughters Hallie and Garnet. Chip gets obsessed with a small door in the basement that has been bolted down by 39 More...

0 comments like

Nov 27, 2011

Jill rated it:

I am a born sucker for stories about small town conspiracies and ghost stories. When I was in the sixth grade I got sucked into the pulp horror section of my rural, isolated, coastal hometown’s used bookstore like a Stephen King prepubescent character would get sucked into a pet cemetery. The video rental store was adjacent to the used bookstore, and every time my parents rented or returned a video, I begged to go along only so I could dash over to the bookstore to look for new arrivals of Steph More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 26, 2011

Jennifer added it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 23, 2011

Diane rated it:

This book makes me think of The Shining with flashes of The House of Leaves. After a pilot tries unsuccessfully to pull a Sullenburg and land his plane in a body of water after a flock of geese blow out the engines, he retreats to a home in a small town to escape the world. He is haunted by the fact that a mysterious door in the basement is closed with 39 bolts-- the same number as the passengers who died on his plane. The home was previously inhabited by a family who lost a son to "suic More...

0 comments like

Nov 14, 2011

Mary rated it:

I'm such a sucker for the whole haunted-house thing. Or the haunted person story.
This is both. Night strangers also borrows heavily from Rosemary's Baby and--I presume, never having read/seen-the-movie, The Witches of Eastwick.
The premise is great: a pilot must crash-land his jet on the water after a flock of geese commit hari-kari on his plane. Unlike the fairy-tale ending of Sully What's-his-name, though, 39--most of passengers and crew members--are killed.
Fast forward a More...

0 comments like

Nov 14, 2011

Majanka rated it:

Although The Night Strangers is the first book by Chris Bohjalian I’ve ever read, I did hear a lot about this author earlier on. Even after the first few chapters of this book, I understand why that’s no surprise. From all the authors I’ve read for the very first time this year, Chris Bohjalian is without a shadow of a doubt the most talented one. He has a writing style that is both gripping and enthralling, both mesmerizing and mysterious, and draws you in from page one. It’s a writing style I More...

0 comments like

Nov 09, 2011

Ciara rated it:

this book probably only merits two stars, as it is pretty much just a mash-up of roald dahl's the witches & "rosemary's baby" with a dash of sully sullenberger thrown in for the sake of modernity. it got an extra star because i read it alone in the house during a thunderstorm, & i'm a wuss when it comes to creepiness, & there were times i felt a little freaked out, thinking maybe there was a creepy murderous ghost hanging out in my pantry or something.

there are like one thous More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 08, 2011

Kristin rated it:

When I saw this book was nominated for a Goodreads award I got curious and got it from the local library. I'm very happy I didn't pay for this book, it was not worth it at all.

The book was way too detailed, I'm pretty sure I learned how to fly a plane from the prologue. Even my husband (who wants to be a pilot) thought it read way too much like a piloting manual. I'm shocked he didn't go into detail about the number of feathers these geese had.

The randomly changing poin More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 04, 2011

Lisa rated it:

I was excited to pick up Bohjalian's latest novel, The Night Strangers. I have enjoyed his writing previously. The premise was a bit of a departure from his other work and I was skeptical but intrigued. The story reads like a mad cross between a Stephen King novel, the Stepford Wives, and the Witches of Eastwick. I have seen this comparison drawn in other reviews and I couldn't agree more. The story opens with Captain Linton piloting a doomed flight. Geese have flown into the flight path More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 01, 2011

Kathleen added it

The Night Strangers, by Chris Bohjalian, Narrated by Alison Fraser and Mark Branhall, Produced by Random House Audio, downloaded from audible.com.

There’s an interview with the author at the end of the audio book. Here’s a ghost story worthy of Halloween. Chip Linton is an airline pilot whose engines fail during flight and he has to land in Lake Champlain. But he doesn’t have the luck that the captain did who landed his airship in the Hudson River-most of the people on Linton’s fli More...

0 comments like

Nov 01, 2011

Kristin rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Nov 01, 2011

Renee rated it:

This book was even more disappointing to me as Chris Bohajalian is one of my all-time favorite authors.

What a great beginning to this story: a plane hits a flock of birds’ right after take-off and the captain, Chip Linton, unsuccessfully makes an emergency water landing where thirty-nine people die. Chip's entire family is deeply traumatized which prompts them to move to a sleepy northern New England town to begin a new life.

This book falls as fast as the plane from her More...

5 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 30, 2011

Judith rated it:

This book is a page turner in its spookiest form. I would have finished it sooner, but I really got too scared to read it at night time before bed, so I had to read it during the day when I should have been doing other things. This is a scary book, coincidentally perfect for Halloween!

Chip is an airline pilot who has to land his plane in a lake when a flock of geese fly into the engine. Most of the crew and passengers die, but Chip lives on to deal with the horrible survivor's guilt More...

0 comments like

Oct 26, 2011

Sheila rated it:

It's hard to believe now that in my early 20's horror/thrillers were my favorite genre. Then, I read everything that Stephen King and Dean Koontz put out there. As years went on, I went away from King, still enjoy a good Koontz, but have really moved on to a tamer, Harlan Coben for my fix. However, occasionally I have a craving (much like I do for 80's music), where I want to dab a bit into the spooky genre, hoping to bring back the old thrills I used to get reading them.

This fact, a More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Lynn rated it:

If you are a horror buff skip this review. I am not. I read this book because I have enjoyed Bohjalian's other works so much that I always look forward to the next, regardless of the subject he tackles, with great anticipation. This felt more like a Stephen King novel and, instead of dealing with a social or timely issue, we are grappling with a mix of horror, psychological suspense, witchcraft, and herbology, along with a dash of titillation, and a bizarre form of Stepford-Wife-ism. A pilot More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2011

Marna rated it:

Chris Bohjalian’s The Night Strangers

I just finished this book—and my mind is reeling. What a (in a good way!) horrible, horrible story, brilliant, a head-banger, creepier than anything I’ve ever seen from Chris. I’m still twitching, shaking off images from the last part of the book the way a horse twitches its skin to jettison a fly.

It’s a horrible story because of the human tragedy and trauma that comprise it. It’s creepy because you want—no, you need—to know that yo More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Oct 16, 2011

Cheryl rated it:

Just finished this one last night! I really liked the book, Midwives, by Chris Bohjalian, so when I spotted this one by the same author on the library shelf I picked it up right away. This book was a paranormal/psychological thriller. It starts off with the main character Chip, a retired airline pilot whose last flight ended up in the waters of Lake Champlain after engine failure. Most of the passengers on the flight drown, and as a result Chip suffers from nightmares, PTSD, and suicidal tho More...

0 comments like

Oct 16, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

Reading The Night Strangers reminded me that I haven't really liked a Chris Bohjalian book since Skeletons at the Feast and, long before that, the famous Midwives. I loved Midwives. Nearly every book since then has been a struggle for me to read because Bohjalian, in trying to explain his characters' current motivations, constantly interrupts an otherwise interesting plot to shoehorn every single detail of their back stories. Unfortunately, those details get horribly repetitive (How many time More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)