Jessica’s Comments (group member since Nov 09, 2013)

Jessica’s comments from the Cedar Falls Public Library group.

The Husband's Secret was kind of so-so for me until the epilogue. The very last couple pages make the whole thing work.

If you like psychological thrillers, I've read couple through OverDrive e-lending which were really good: S.J. Watson's Before I Go to Sleep, and Mother, Mother by Koren Zailckas. My recent reads have been mainly revisiting twentieth-century women writers of thriller/horror, like Shirley Jackson, Daphne DuMaurier, and Patricia Highsmith.

I'm a fan of magical realism, so this was right up my alley. I love the Golem, but I had a harder time with the djinn character, which could be a cultural thing.

I did love Hobie. It was upsetting when Theo did things to put Hobie's integrity in peril.

I love Donna Tartt, so I was looking forward to this book for a long time. I loved The Secret History and The Little Friend (which I know is difficult to get into, and the end disappoints those readers who do not understand that the book is not about solving a crime). I've read both several times over, and I devoured The Goldfinch. I will say that the middle seemed to go on forever! But I think that Tartt wanted to establish the blood-brothers type of bond between Theo and Boris; she spends a lot of time on character development, but I like that.

I started it last week, but it's so very grim. I'm sure it's not bleak the entire story, but I'm having a tough time getting into it. I'm only 12% in.

I actually really like Kubrick's treatment of The Shining; this adaptation taught me that film adaptations do not necessarily have to present the same vision as the texts they are based on. Once upon a time I fiercely believed that movies should be absolutely faithful to the book, but over time I have realized that film and print are different artforms, and the artists have their own interpretations of the same story, and that's okay. At least most of the time; I really cannot get behind that really awful adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein made in teh 1990s.