Thursday, June 17, 2010

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.

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