Review: Stranger Beside Me

Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Unlike other Ann Rule books I have listened to, I find this one harder to review. I knew prior to starting it that she had been a co-worker and friend to Ted Bundy at the time he started his path to being a notorious serial killer. And I was, of course, familiar with Ted Bundy but listening to this book made me realize just how little I actually knew about his killing spree.

I can't imagine what it would be like to discover the person whose criminal acts you have been commissioned to write a book about is your friend; as she said (paraphrased), that's not even something Hollywood scriptwriters come up with. I felt as though part of the book was her trying to process that shock - that in some respects she wrote this book not only because it was her job to do so but as a therapeutic tool, especially since there were a couple of places in which she still indicated an uncertainty he killed as many woman as he was accused and convicted of.

That being said, the audiobook version I listened to was abridged so I'm not sure how much was left out. The gist of it was there, enough so that I'm considering watching the Netflix series to see that perspective, but not enough to read the abridged version.

Overall, an interesting, first hand account of Bundy's reign of terror from someone who had a ringside seat into his life, but I've liked other books of hers better.

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Review: Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words

Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words by Michael Ausiello
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After my recent rash of murder mysteries, I decided I was in the mood for something non-fiction. So I started down my TBR list and after putting several books on hold, I came to this one which lo and behold was actually available to be checked out. I couldn't remember what it was about or how I heard of it (Book Bub "Deal of the Day" email) but the quirky title caught my attention and that was good enough for me to proceed.

Maybe I should have refreshed my memory before checking it out. But as I've mentioned before, the right book always seems to come to me at the right time and this was no exception as I recently sold the house I shared with my late love and our two now also deceased cocker spaniels and it's been a bit of a rough transition.

In this simultaneously hysterical and heartbreaking memoir, TV journalist Michael Ausiello recounts meeting the love of his life and their 13+ year romance that ended with Kit's untimely passing in his early 40's from a rare and aggressive form of neuro-endocrine cancer.

Being a long time soap opera fan in an earlier phase of life, as well as a fan of TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly, I am sure I read Ausiello's columns somewhere along the way. But the name didn't ring a bell with me - not a requirement I have for reading (or listening to) memoirs. By the end of the third chapter, as I listened to him tell about his first date with Kit and then backtrack to their initial meeting, I wanted to write to him and ask him to be my new friend - he is hysterical! (As the title says - he does use a lot of "other" four letter words!)

And then came the hard part: the diagnosis and subsequent 11 months that would be Kit's last. Alternating from what can best be called present day, for lack of a better word, and stories from along their relationship, their story managed to be funny, poignant and heartbreaking at the same time - I found their "crush" on Sloan Kettering to be amusing amidst my tears in hearing the heartbreak in Ausiello's voice as he recounted what they went through both before and after the diagnosis.

A lot of times after the death of a loved one, especially a young person, we tend to glorify them. Ausiello does not do this. Well, he does. But he balances out the good with the bad: he honestly tells his readers they were not perfect as people or as a couple. And he pretty much covers all the bases with sass and at times with what seemed to be a noticeable quiver in his voice.

I was close to the end of the book when I met a fellow member of the young widowed club for dinner and couldn't resist telling him about it, telling him I don't yet know how this book is helping me but I know it is. Who knows, it may never be obvious just what this book did for me or it may not even happen right away, but for whatever it turns out to be, I thank Ausiello for choosing to tell his story.

The very ending (epilogue, if you will) was hard to listen to and left me sitting in a parking lot sobbing my eyes out. I understand why he chose to end the book the way he did - with the happy ending cancer denied both he and Kit but it really did break my heart and once again had me wondering what would my future have looked like if it hadn't been for untimely and unexpected heart disease?

I'm sorry Ausiello is a fellow member of "The Club No One Wants to Belong to." It's a shitty club with a cost of admission that is way too high and hard to bear. (But also has some seriously awesome people among it's brothers and sisters). I wish I can tell him it doesn't necessarily get better - it just gets "different" and becomes more bearable over time. And I still wish that he and I could be friends because he seems like he would be an amazing one to have.

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Review: Cry for the Strangers

Cry for the Strangers by John Saul
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Generally speaking, if you've read one John Saul novel you've pretty much read all his early works as they pretty much follow the same theme: bad thing happens (usually involving the deaths of children), and then years later history repeats itself, with children dying in the same manner as before.

This book was slightly different: taking place in the fictional Clark's Harbor, Washington instead of the usual east coast, the victims in this one were adults instead of children - always "strangers" to the town, and usually "claimed" by the sea and it's frequent storms. Strangers, in this case, meaning they weren't born in Clark's Harbor; how long they lived there was irrelevant.

Written in 1979, I felt this book held up fairly well over time. There were a couple of instances in which details were dated: customers throwing "a couple of dollars" on the table to cover their bar tabs and a couple of homes without electricity most notably. However, in some of the smaller coastal towns, it does look and feel like time stopped so that was easy to overlook.

I wouldn't say this book was scary per se, but it definitely held my attention and did quicken my heartbeat in a couple of places but it didn't terrify me, probably because I read a lot of his books as a teenager and lived to tell about it. My biggest issue with the book was trying to determine where exactly Clark's Harbor was supposed to be that was three hours away from Seattle yet not Portland! (Accounting for speed limit laws in 1979 vs today did help in this respect).

Overall, the book does follow Saul's usual formula of bad thing, passage of time, repeat bad thing with the foreshadowing that bad thing will happen again. The characters are interchangeable with his other novels that follow this same formula but Saul did do a great job of distinguishing the small town mentality of who and who doesn't belong from that of the outsiders who were trying to make Clark's Harbor home but didn't fit in simply due to their family not having lived there for generations. Some have said it didn't hold up over time, I felt it did.

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Review: Predator

Predator by Faye Kellerman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After breaking my rule about not plowing through a series back-to-back-to-back with James Patterson's "Private" series, it was refreshing to come back to this series. Mitch Greenberg does such a fabulous job with his consistency in narrating the voices of the main characters, it's like visiting old friends.

In this, the 21st book of the series, several months have passed since the events that took place at the end of the previous book, and Gabriel is back in California from Julliard to testify in Dylan's trial. And of course, all he wants to do is see his girlfriend Yasmine, whose parents have not come around to their relationship.

After opening the book with that plot line, Peter's detectives are called to the scene when reclusive, 89 year old billionaire Hobart Penney is found dead, baffling them at first, because since when does homicide respond to old, dead guys? They do when it turns out the old guy has been murdered. Even more surprising than wondering who would want to murder a reclusive old dude is the fact that Hobart kept a tiger in his apartment as a pet.

Perhaps due to the frustrations I felt over aspects of the "Private" series, or perhaps because enough time passed since I last listened to one of these books that I forgot how much I enjoy this series, I found myself rather entertained with this one: from Gabriel and Yasmine's typical teenage lust and trying to find ways to be together without outright lying to their parents to the twists and turns of the murder case itself, this was probably one of my favorite books in this series.

The murder case had several twists in it with several open questions involving other potential victims who were also potential suspects. There was no shortage of suspects or motives for the detectives to work through! I love the relationship between Marge and Scott and some of their banter had me literally laughing out loud as I drove down the street.

The ending, while fully explained, was a bit disappointing, but I liked that Kellerman wrote it as "so here's what happened. But, wait, there's more!" deciding to have the case solved but with a loose end that the detectives just couldn't set aside without also tying up. As I've mentioned with previous books in both this series and her husband's, I also loved the crossover of characters as Peter consulted (Jonathan's) Alex Delaware to get better insight into Penney's predilections, but I also found it weird since Delaware is a noted child psychologist.

The only thing I didn't like was the foreshadowing of where the series may be heading. While it makes sense that character's lives, as with real life, would change over time, it was still a bit sad to listen to what Faye is setting up for the Deckers, though I am also curious as to what she has in store for them.

**I'm not really sure why the audiobook version is coming up as "Predator"; my copy from the library was "The Beast" with the same yellow cover as all the other editions.***

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