Death Instinct by Bentley Little

Goodreads Summary: "Cathy was six when the man next door killed his wife and himself. She heard the screams. She saw the blood and the bodies. Now, 20 years later, the house is no longer vacant. Someone new has moved in. Something terrible is happening to the neighbors. And Cathy has a secret of her own."

I liked:

-The deaths were INSANE. If you've ever read Bentley Little, he's written some pretty messed up stuff. This book would have been straight up detective/thriller if he didn't throw in the gory murder scenes. They were definitely creative though.

-Very suspenseful in spite of the predictable killer reveal. It wasn't just about who was the killer. I wanted to know why those neighbors were so creepy (although when the full creepiness of them was revealed, it was a little too much) and why Cathy's dad was such a jerk. There were definitely lots of reasons to keep reading.


I didn't like:

-The killer was pretty predictable. I had it figured out pretty early on so I thought maybe they just threw in a red herring to throw us off...but nope. It was exactly who I thought.

-It kind of annoys me when books skip around between too many characters. Like when a chapter ends with a character in a compromising position, then the next chapter starts with a totally different character doing something normal. Then you have to wait a few chapters to find out what happened to the other character.

-I didn't feel like they fully associated the former killings in the neighborhood to the present killings. Why bother alluding to the neighborhood's past then not bother trying to connect it to the present?

All in all, I'd give it 4/5 stars, mainly for the awesomely creative murders.

Audition by Ryu Murakami

"In this gloriously over-the-top tale, Aoyama, a widower who has lived alone with his son ever since his wife died seven years before, finally decides it is time to remarry. Since Aoyama is a bit rusty when it comes to dating, a filmmaker friend proposes that, in order to attract the perfect wife, they do a casting call for a movie they don’t intend to produce. As the résumés pile up, only one of the applicants catches Aoyama’s attention—Yamasaki Asami—a striking young former ballerina with a mysterious past. Blinded by his instant and total infatuation, Aoyama is too late in discovering that she is a far cry from the innocent young woman he imagines her to be." -Goodreads.com

I liked:

-I read it all in one sitting. It was really fast paced and short.

-The book doesn't really get too crazy until the end, but you get JUST enough hints about this lady to realize that something really bad is coming. It had a great slow-building sense of dread to it.

I didn't like:

-This is a typical problem with Japanese books for me, but it's hard for me to tell characters apart because the Japanese names are so foreign to me. So if their names start with the same letter, (like Aoyama and Asami), I tend to get them mixed up.

-Since it was so short (about 200 pages), I didn't get quite the background that I would have liked on the characters. It was still quite good, but I would have liked to find out a little more about how Asami became such a monster.

-I thought it was really arrogant (and kind of stupid) to assume that any of these women he "auditioned" would agree to marry him. Most women I know would be totally creeped out by a guy who held an audition for a fake film just to find a wife. So he kinda got what was coming to him for that stupid idea.

I actually really liked this book though. I'd give it 4.5/5 stars.