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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65113.The_Complete_Wreck?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Complete Wreck (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Books 1-13)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170626907m/65113.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65113.The_Complete_Wreck?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Complete Wreck</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/36746.Lemony_Snicket">Lemony Snicket</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21373129?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> "A Series of Unfortunate Events" is brilliantly written, and though disturbing, you will not be able to stop reading the next in the series and the next and the next. You somehow feel driven to know what happens to the poor Baudelaire orphans. Every time something finally starts working out for them, the bottom falls out and they find themselves in even more dire circumstances than previously. After the mysterious death of their parents in a fire, the three children are shuffled form relative to relative, few of which have any business having custody of them. Fortunately, all three children are outrageously brilliant and even though the first several books in the series appear to just be stories of their being shuffled about, you eventually get to the books where the mystery of their parents' pasts and backgrounds begin to emerge. Then the children begin to uncover clue after clue as to what their own purpose is in life as the stories count down to book #13. <br/><br/>I started reading these books when they first came out, but couldn't make myself go on after about #5. AS a mother of a small baby, I just couldn't stand to read anymore about what the youngest Baudelaire (a baby of about one year of age) was going through with her siblings. I know it's all fiction, but the imagery was just too disturbing for me at the time. A few years later I decided to finish the series and started getting the books-on-CD from the library so we could listen in the car as we ran errands. My 6-yr old got totally hooked and begged to listen to what she called "Violet & Klaus" every time we got in the car. She was disappointed one day when she found out we had finished listening to them all. She was very excited for their victories and very saddened by their failures or unfortunate bad luck. She's so funny. If you're going to get the books-on-CD/tape, make sure you only get the ones with Tim Curry doing the narration. No one else can compare to the master himself.<br/><br/>A riveting set of books, but be prepared for feeling a bit disturbed in the end, and feeling bad that you couldn't do more to help the Baudelaires out of their predicament. I have to keep reminding myself that it's just fiction.... <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1107924?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>