NEW MOON (Stephenie Meyer) - January 30/09

The Twilight saga continues with New Moon, which I probably enjoyed even more than the first - despite the fact that Edward is absent throughout the entirety of its midsection. I'm just so caught up in this tale it's almost embarrassing. **** out of ****

CORALINE (Neil Gaiman) - January 23/09

Cute but forgettable childrens' fantasy. *** out of ****

YOUR HEART BELONGS TO ME (Dean Koontz) - January 19/09

WTF? Dean Koontz has clearly lost it, as Your Heart Belongs to Me comes off as an interminable 300+ page tale that feels as though it should've topped out at about 15 pages. Koontz has infused the book with so many red herrings that go absolutely nowhere that it eventually becomes infuriating, and although some answers do come at the end, the author's new-age spirituality transforms the finale into a laughable mess. The end result is a book that feels as though it exists only to serve its twist ending. What a waste. ** out of ****

THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED (Wally Lamb) - January 14/09

Alternately maddening and entertaining, The Hour I First Believed is ridiculously overlong and undeniably self-indulgent - as Lamb starts out with a compelling story about the Columbine shootings and transforms it into a dull tale about a man attempting to unravel his mysterious heritage. The author packs the book with long, extraordinarily pointless segments (ie diary entries from a forebearer, excerpts from a scholarly work revolving around his family, etc) that ensure that the book often feels more like work than recreation (and my eyes were seriously glazing over some of this stuff). The characters are incredibly vivid (ie Caelum, Velvet, Maureen, Alphonse, etc), however, and the ending nicely wraps up the various stories. But still, there's just no denying that this book should've been half its length. **1/2 out of ****

JUST AFTER SUNSET (Stephen King) - January 5/09

An uneven collection of short stories, Just After Sunset seems to work about half the time - as King offers up several tales that simply aren't as enthralling as he clearly believes them to be (ie the one about the OCD guy who finds a supernatural garden, the one about the guy who becomes some kind of a miracle worker, etc). Yet it's hard to deny the effectiveness of a few of these tales, with the final one - about a dude trapped inside a port-o-potty - certainly ranking right up there with King's best writing. *** out of ****

TWILIGHT (Stephenie Meyer) - January 2/09

I'm actually pretty surprised by how much I eventually wound up enjoying Twilight, as the book's first half - though basically entertaining - did start to grow a little tedious with its relentless emphasis on Bella and Edward's eye-rollingly idealized romance. My pervading thought was that I could easily see why teenage girls have so thoroughly embraced these books, as Meyer certainly does an effective job of getting into the mind of a gawky and awkward teen. Yet there did reach a point at which I found myself really attached to the characters and the momentum of the story pretty much forced me to tear through the last 100 pages in one sitting. Can't wait to read the sequels... ***1/2 out of ****