In no particular order here are my “worst of 2014” reads aka my not-so-affectionately called, “Why Did I Read This?!?!?” list.  Like every book I read, I started these novels with high hopes.  Unfortunately, they took my hopes and expectations and blew them to smithereens; leaving me woefully disappointed. Read more

Fuck Dean Koontz. Fuck him with a rusty fish hook then dunk him in a kiddie pool filled with rubbing alcohol before lighting the whole thing on fire. 

Those were my first thoughts after finishing this cash grab. After reading the absolute shit that was Wilderness (the first purchase I ever requested a refund for on Amazon), I told myself I wouldn't be suckered into Koontz and Bantam's short story scams. But I thought, "It's Odd Thomas. They wouldn't purposely mislead me where one of Koontz's most cherished characters is concerned!" The hell I preached. 

I spent $0.99 for two pages. Two. Fucking. Pages. The first page and the last page. Everything in between is filler so that Bantam could charge us for this commercial disguised as a short story. All 30 pages in between is generic thriller crap. You can smell the triviality coming off it. It's the kind of stench you can see. 

I was hoping for a story about Odd and Stormy, you know, what the packaging promises:

Here, read the synopsis:

Amid the dizzying rides, tantalizing games of chance, and fanciful attractions of a state fair, two teenage sweethearts on the cusp of life and love’s pleasures find their way to a shadowy carnival tent brimming with curiosities. There, from the bizarre and enthralling Gypsy Mummy, a mechanized merchant of dreams and prognosticator of tomorrows, the young couple learns what fate promises for them. But fate, for Odd Thomas and Stormy Llewellyn, is something altogether different: full of dark corners, sharp edges, and things no seer or soothsayer could ever anticipate.
 
And for Odd Thomas, a gallant fry cook from a sleepy California desert town, the future beckons—to listen to unquiet spirits, pursue unsettling mysteries, and learn shocking truths . . . for a purpose far greater than himself.

Two pages of carnival, folks. All the rest is Stormy and Odd running around after a ghost with cleaver in his neck. They find the guy's house. Unshackle some women. Call in the authorities. Then, and ONLY then, do they head to the carnival. I wanna break something. This is even worse than the misleading, broken synopsis for The City. 

This is how I think the meeting with Dean and Bantam went:

Dean: So I got about two pages of the story you requested. 

Bantam: The fuck? We can't sell two pages! Can't you give us something with, at the very least, a murder in it?

Dean: I'd be phoning it in, but yeah, I can do that. Are you sure people will want to read it?

Bantam: We'll disguise it as backstory; tell everyone that the short reveals the story of the day Odd and Stormy got that ticket that Odd carries with him throughout the series.

Dean: Okay, so two pages of story, and about, what? Thirty pages of filler? Sound about right?

Bantam: This is why you sell millions of books, Dean. You know how to bow to commands. 

END SCENE

In summation: I retract my previous statement. Fuck both Dean Koontz and his publisher. Even if it didn't go down like I stated above, Dean still wrote it, and Bantam still published it. And guess what? I'm returning it. This is only my third refund request ever. 

DNF - and I'm gonna tell you why.

I'm a pretty amiable motherfucker, so I thought I'd give this a try. After hearing that Simon Okill was the next big thing in literature, I just had to read this blockbuster. After all, the author himself reviewed his own book and gave it five stars (twice!), so it has to be good, right? Well, imagine my surprise when I jumped in, dick on hard, ready for an amazing literary romp in the hay, only to find repetition and poor word choice and stilted sentencing marring my experience. Fucking bummer, dude.

How is one supposed to enjoy the objectification of women (seriously, that cover with the big-boobied chick covered in diaharrea and red paint? AMAZEBALLS!) when the author can't be bothered to use "waste" instead of "waist" when talking about a trash bin. How am I supposed to get off on sentences like "It was too irresistible to resist." Simon Okill killed my boner in as little as one chapter. I did make it to chapter two, but when Maldini came back I had to put it down. I'm a huge fan of An American Werewolf in London, but I liked the whole "murder victims haunting the murderer" thing better in that movie. Here... well, it was poorly done. When Bianca asks the ghost to leave, he sticks his tongue out and says, "No, I won't bugger off... So there!" Mind you, she hacked dude's head open with an ax. 

Also (and this is a pretty big gripe from me), after killing this man with an ax to the head, she was able to clean her entire kitchen in ten minutes. Blood is notoriously hard to clean up, even with bleach. I know, I used to work in a hospital. Plenty of faulty central lines and loads of busted stitches made me quite the expert on the subject. That scene didn't ring true. So sorry.

Other readers have expressed how hilariously awesome this book is, and that's fine. That's their opinion. For me, this book could have used a content edit and another proofread. Oh, and an author with a better sense of humor and comedic delivery. That would have been nice as well. 

In summation: I'm giving it one star because, for the most part, it is readable, and another star because I'm an amiable motherfucker. I could have left this alone, but those five star reviews pulled me in. I expected Dickens and Shakespeare and ended up with Anne Rice's bastard love child. What's a boy gonna do?