Summer Entertainment: Part One in Thoughts On...

I must say this summer’s entertainment has been the season of suck. I have only watched three series on television, which I will breakdown.

World of Dance
I rather enjoyed this. There were no gimmicky sucky acts, they were all really good contestants. I am not surprised with the outcome after the semi. I liked that there was no audience component. They were judged based on their skill and not by popularity.

Animal Kingdom
I binged the first season early in the summer and then picked up with season two as it aired. The sophomore season has been, like most, a little lackluster. Season one was a bit more action packed, this season has definitely lacked in that department. Some characters have become more annoying. It is still better than almost anything else that has been on.

The Night Shift
This season has been so boring. I don’t enjoy the back and forth between SAM & whatever hellhole war zone TC has been in. The dynamics are just not there. And Cain? First he is a nurse, then he is a doctor, then a obstacle course/ninja warrior light master, a firefighter and now I surgeon? I do not like him at all. He is just too much. I will be surprised if there is a season five.

Now onto reading. My summer goal was to finish two series and I am only going to finish one. I decided to pick up the Jonathan Stride series by Brian Freeman again. I wish I had the foresight of hindsight. It is very apparent why I took a break from this author.

In the Dark
I started this a few years ago and quickly got bored. Same thing happened this time around. The thing about the Stride series is the constant retelling of stories and the nauseating presence of his long-dead wife Cindy. This particular book examined the death of Cindy’s sister Laura back when she and “Jonny” were just falling in love. I will say that there was an interesting twist, but that is all the book had going for it.

The Burying Place
The story picked up some months after the end of In The Dark and there was “lasting effects” from Stride’s fall, which seemed to rushed. I would have expected the depression, anxiety, panic to settle in over the course of this book and carry to the next, not have already been happening and then resolved in one book. The A story, if you will, was a child kidnapping, while the B story was a serial killer. I found the connecting element to be interesting, but some missing elements. The relationship shift between Stride/Serena/Maggie was beyond frustrating and a bad move, in my opinion.

Spitting Devil
This was a novella, the newest craze in the ebook world. Little stories that the author couldn’t make into a full-length novel is my guess. This story could have been an interesting novel, if Freeman had fleshed it out. The conclusion felt rushed, considering all the drivel it took to get there. I am not a huge fan of these in-between novellas.

Turn to Stone
Another novella. This one was a bit more interesting, at least it involved an actual story, instead of just some “idea” like Spitting Devil. There was a point in the story I became very frustrated and angry at the direction it was going, but in the end the “explanation” was very interesting and satisfying, that said, I am not a huge fan of these in-between novellas, especially when…

The Cold Nowhere
…the “in-between” moments involving the characters lives are rehashed over and over in subsequent books. Back to the Cindy Series. Of course there would be another case from the past that has resurfaced and hit close to home for Stride. This time a young girl survives a swim in the cold northern Minnesota waters and ends up in Stride’s closet for “safety”. The book explores Stride’s past relationship with the girl and places ties to some very out of nowhere characters. However, this was probably the best book in the series, at least it flowed quicker than the rest.

Goodbye to the Dead
I sure hope that title is referring to the Cindy Saga. This book was by far the most annoying. The first quarter of this book was the telling of the investigation of a doctor’s murdered husband. The doctor, was of course, a friend of Cindy’s. So Cindy played a very prominent role in this book. The second quarter of the book was the trial of said doctor for her husband’s murder, thus a rehashing of the first quarter. That is one half of the book nothing but the same thing TWICE. Redundancy at its finest. That seems to be a central theme of Freeman’s. Keep telling the same stuff over and over to pad your word count. Finally the story of today begins to unfold and of course there is the most random of connections to the past. It is like only a few people live in Duluth and everyone is connected in some way. I hate it! There is never a red-herring to throw the reader off. It is all conveniently wrapped up in the end. Perhaps one of the most annoying things in this book is the way Cindy regards her symptoms. She is a physical therapist, yet tells her doctor (who happens to be her husband’s bestie since childhood) that there is “sharp pain between my legs”. WTF? She is a licensed PT and she is explaining her symptoms this way? To a general practitioner who is her husband’s bestie? No. She would have gone to a gynecologist for any sort of physical exam. She may see Dr. Steve for a run of the mill cold, flu shot, etc, but not something that personal, that intimate. Gross.

And that is where I am. I have one more book in this series and I am going to finish it this month. I can maybe get two of the other series books done by the official start of Autumn.