** spoiler alert ** this book was great! it had me not wanting to put it down. there were a couple things that bothered me, at times it got a bit too descriptive. about birds and the weather. things that i didn't care to read about. maybe they were metaphoric, and if i were to slow down and think about it, i could link what was happening in the book to these random descriptions of other things going on.

another thing that bugged me was billy's character. i wanted to believe he was a good person, and i think so did koontz. but some things were off to me- like the way he shot his parents, well actually his mom. but then later when the dr. wants to take barbara off of the feeding tube, billy doesn't think the doctor, or anyone really has the authority to judge her "quality of life" and make decisions whether she should die or live while in her coma. by that logic, he shouldn't have made that decision for his mother at age 14. i also didn't like how quickly & unemotional he acted when he had to deal with dead bodies and cleaning up evidence. it's as if he'd done this all before. i admit, it was impressive how smoothly he handled it all, but it seemed a bit suspicious to me. i almost thought at some point, billy himself might be the bad guy in some way...

other than that, i love dean koontz and his writing. any book that i CAN'T put down rates high on my list. definitely recommendable!