billyraymcevoy's reviews
98 reviews

Very engaging book. Simple writing makes it easy to read and with many short chapters which encourages you to keep reading.
The Netflix show is a very faithful adaptation, so if you enjoyed the series you will probably enjoy this book too. Although, book Joe is far more psychotic and delusional than his Netflix counterpart. Netflix Joe often seems a lot kinder as they added the child next door neighbour character and changed a few of the murder scenes to make it seem like Joe was defending himself (as a matter of fact, it was not self defense).
The book is much more intense, which I liked. However, constant mentions of social media threw me off. Being in Joe's head for a few days is a strange, psychotic trip that I don't plan on taking again too soon.

Pretty good, although, quite a slow start after the very intense previous installment.
Once again, the world building and characters really make this series. It is full of character you love or love to hate!
It's nice to finally see some Cersei chapters this time around as well.

A friend of mine recommended this book to me as I'd never heard of it and then she bought it for me as a present, I'm really glad she did!
This is technically a kids book but it is full of magic and imagination and best of all, it doesn't pander the kids in any condescending way. It's a interesting story with lots of characters and unexpected depth to its plot elements.
The book deals with monarchy, war and philosophy. The subjects are all written into the text naturally with a variety of characters and never feels forced or preachy.
Overall, really magical book, loved it, can't wait to read to my own children one day, big thanks to my friend for this gift.

I bought this because it was on offer and said one of the short stories was by Stephen King. I didn't realise until I bought it that these are scary stories for kids... but thought they might be good anyway, maybe get a nostalgia kick from reading books like Goosebumps when I was younger.
Some of the stories are decent, like the one in the haunted house with the old woman. A lot of them lack imagination though and don't have that charm that Goosebumps had (from what I remember).

This is the first collections of short works and novella's of Stephen King's I have read and I really enjoyed it. There are four different stories, each with their own strengths.

1. Mr. Carrigan's Phone
The first story is about a boy of ten who forms a relationship with an old man, Mr. Carrigan. It is well written, as one might expect from Stephen King, and just like other King stories has interesting characters. Once the plot of the story really begins it became a tad predictable, I knew almost exactly what was going to happen with the phone, the calls to Mr. Harrigan after his death, the outcome of the main characters enemies etc. This, however, is not a slight on the story at all, it remained interesting and mysterious, although, it was never "spooky".. at all. The ending was a bit bland and somewhat abrupt as well as I thought the main character lacked repercussions for his actions, he delved into a world he was unfamiliar with and just kind of closed that door when he wanted. I'd have thought from previous stories, many by Stephen King himself, that once you invite entities of the paranormal into your life and knowingly use them to do harm upon others that getting rid of said entities and closing off that doorway would not be so easy as it was in this story. Could have done with another few pages.
I did get that Stephen King has questions and concerns about technology in this story though and its not often that a mobile phone is the apparatus in which ghostly occurrences and summoning are channelled.

2. The Life of Chuck
This one is split into three parts, telling the story of a man named Chuck but in reverse order. Starting with his death, moving onto his adult years in act two and then his younger self in act three.
Act one was a little bizarre and I loved the concept of an actual world with lives and stars in Chuck's imagination dying in darkness when he died on his death bed. It hit me with many questions and was appropriately dark for Stephen King.
The second act was wholesome as Chuck dances with a woman to a buskers music very sporadically. It felt like a happy musical moment in a comedy film or something, loved it.
The third act is chuck when he is younger and thinks there is a haunted room in his grandparents house. He eventually visits this room and, upon leaving, experiences a ghostly apparition of his own death at thirty-nine. I thought this was a spooky moment and if I'd witnessed such an apparition I'd probably be thinking about it for the rest of my life. However, chuck handles it very well and has quite a positive attitude, ending the story with a sort of "death comes to all of us but we just have to get on with it and live" sort of mentality.
I liked how positive and somewhat uplifting this whole story was (as well as dark and a little spooky in places), and the underlined theme of the "multitudes" within all of us.

3. If It Bleeds
The titular story is one that any Stephen King fan will look forward to and be very familiar with, for lack of a better term, the creature-feature. The story follows a private detective who investigates a news reporter and discovers that he is in fact a shape shifting creature, that feeds on the misery and anguish of people.
The story develops the main character very well, we see what her relationship with her mother is like and how this formed her as a person, her work colleagues and friends, and she has a distinct personality which is displayed through the writing. I liked the main character so much that when I got to the end of the whole book and saw that she is in four other Stephen King books I instantly added them to my wishlist!
The main character is likeable and the story is engaging, the pacing is good throughout as well, I couldn't stop reading this one. Everything about it felt finely tuned and polished. I can see why the book is titled after this particular story.

4. Rat
I can easily say I enjoyed this one the least. "Rat" is one of those stories about someone who makes a deal with the devil, the unique element of this one being that the devil being made a deal with is a rat - literally.
It's a short story of about fifty pages or a little more, so it's easy to read in a couple sittings, even one.
I just felt like this one built up to something and then finished on a flat note. You have this character who desperately wants to finish writing his novel (top Stephen King trope, thumbs up for that), so he makes this unethical life-and-death deal to successfully finish it and basically gets what he wanted; all-be-it with some technicalities in the outcome. But, nothing is really challenged or followed up on in a satisfying or unique way and so it feels unfinished. A disappointing way to finish this works as the other three stories are mostly strong and unique in THEIR own ways.

It's a semi-mixed bag if works. Mostly very strong with "The Life of Chuck" and "If It Bleeds" being vastly different in theme and structure but both very well written. "Mr. Carrigan's Phone" is decent, not amazing but easy to read and showing a sweet relationship building between two characters, and then finally "Rat" is also easy to read but with an underwhelming end and no real consequence for the main character (also like Mr. Carrigan's phone in terms of the lack of consequence).
It's definitely worth a read in spite of the flaws though as all of the stories, being Stephen King, are so well written and full of realised characters.

This is the first book I have ever read that is based on a videogame (Resident Evil 2, one of my favourite games of all time), and it is almost exactly what I'd expected.
The plot plays out very well, adapting a split story with two campaigns to make one story where both of the characters, and side characters, have their own pathway. I was, for the most part, pleased with how the story was adapted for this medium. The story focuses on two main characters, Leon and Claire, as well as a bunch of side characters.

Claire Redfield's story:
Claire's story is definitely the most exciting of all the characters, although, this is for a bizarre reason. The author, instead of splitting certain larger monsters evenly between Leon and Claire, seemed to give all of them to Claire. While Leon is off with Ada, dealing with your average zombie, Claire gets through the zombies, the lickers, is harassed by Mr X constantly, and occasionally comes across William Birkin in a few monster forms. It seemed odd that she had to deal with so many as opposed to making her deal with Birkin and lumping Mr X onto Leon's story, which I believe would have been more sensible. Claire definitely has a much harder time than anyone else. Her interactions with Sherry were great and also with chief Irons too.
Sherry's chapters are a very enjoyable, its nice to read her internal monologue and actually makes her running off in the games feel a lot less annoying.
Claire's run ins with Chief Irons were also very good to read. Reading Irons chapters and his delve into paranoid delusion was interesting and he was an all around creepy and antagonistic character.

Leon Kennedy:
Leon had a lot less chapters than expected. In fact, from the start of the book up until we finish with Ada, it feels like we only have three or four chapters with him and that it focuses more on Ada, bizarre! Leon comes across as a do-gooder who really wants to help and do a good job but doesn't come across as naive, he is authoritative when needed and his story with Ada is unexpected well developed. Again though, he doesn't deal with half as much of the madness and big bad monsters that Claire does.
Ada Wong takes up the majority of Leon's story in this book which is a really strange way to write it, considering that Leon is a strong fan favourite and this is his and Claire's story. Although, Ada's chapters are surprisingly interesting and mostly not too contrived. Surprisingly because you would expect chapters based on Ada to ruin the mystery behind her character, however, the added emotional depth to her character is actually done very well and makes her, and her "love story" esque subplot with Leon, a lot more believable than in the game.
Annette Birkin's chapters were okay, probably the least interesting of the bunch but not an unwelcome addition. She is almost like a figure who pulls some strings behind the scenes to set off the endings events and ties certain story elements together. A bit more concern for her daughter, Sherry, would have been nice though.

As this is a book based on a PS1 survival-horror game it comes with an expected level of campiness and fun. If you like Resident Evil 2 then you will probably enjoy this book and how it does a rather good job of combining two stories into one cohesive narrative with just as an exciting ending as the source material (seriously, the ending with the countdown and multiple monster battles is quite exciting when you let yourself fall into the campy action and absurdity of it all, but that's Resident Evil in a nutshell really). Therefore, it is best enjoyed when you want something fun and easy to read inbetween anything more serious and are not expecting anything too serious.

This book is quite funny and full of dry humour, which I love. I'm shocked at how faithful the film is to this first installment, everything is almost exactly the same.
This story is bizarre and shifts its tone without warning. Theres teen drama, young adult drama and then there is a fight scene.
The drawings are simplistic and very charming and the dialogue is excellent. Everyone in the story is delightfully dry, except for Knives Chau, and I feel like Scott is a very well developed character. Everything about him and even the frames of the book are very indicative of the way life whizzes by without consideration for your own mentality once you get into your early twenties. Scott is a flawed character and it's his layers that make him a good and relatable character.
Can't wait to read the rest of the series and see how similar the film is to the rest of the series.

Very solid story with lots of intertwining stories from different characters as always. This one has a lot of meat in the story and a lot of the great characters that were left out of book four (A Feast For Crows) are back in this one, such as Daenerys and Tyrion.
Daenerys, Tyrion and Cersei have the most interesting chapters for me personally and they are certainly interesting in this book.

Although the events of Adam's story are interesting enough they don't lead anywhere exciting . Adam is a young gay guy who has a boyfriend but is still hung up on a closeted guy who cast him aside. His story follows him as he is sexually harassed by his boss, comes at odds with his religious family and figures out what and who he wants.
The second story plays alongside Adams and focuses on a spirit wandering the town in search of something, unsure of what, in hopes of finding her release. She is followed by a servant, a faun, joins souls with another woman and pursues the man who murdered her in life.
Unfortunately, the side story of the spirit lady is very uninteresting and feels like very random filler, and Adam's ending is very disappointing with unsatisfying chapters.



SPOILERS BELOW:
Although the spirit has a satisfying ending when she finds the man who kills her and learns to move on and find release, the whole story was disconnected from Adam's in an alienating way.
Adam's story does not have a satisfying end. There is a rose which is a metaphor for who Adam chooses to love in the end, the boy he is still hung up on who he loves but treated him poorly, or the current boyfriend who he desperately wants to love and is kind to him but doesn't feel the same spark. In the end he gives the rose to Linus, the kind boyfriend, and then says he wants to kiss him in front of everyone to prove it to him. It then goes to a spirit chapter and when we cut back to Adam's story he has already kissed Linus in front of everyone, proving his love. Such a moment in the story is one of those parts that the entire story builds towards, the RELEASE if you will, as this holds emotional significance AND IT HAPPENS IN BETWEEN CHAPTERS, WE DON'T EVEN SEE IT HAPPEN. UNSATISFYING (also, I kinda wanted Linus to say no to Adam and tell him that he needs time alone to find out what he wants and find his happiness, may have been bittersweet but would have been more sensible and appropriate and less cliche/predictable).
The ending where Adam and the spirit seem to actually meet eachother and seem to have interconnected paths was also very pointless and overall random. The spirit story could be an interesting book on it's own and not feel so disconnected with its mystical/fantasy elements. This would make Adam's story on it's own very short but then it could have been expanded anyway as we see no conclusion with the subplot of his boss sexually harassing him and no true ending (or release) with what happens when he returns to his religious family.

Overall, it was okay. I like the author and his simple writing style as well as the fact that he writes relatable main characters who are in the LGBT+ community (nice to have representation). But feels unfinished and the joining of the two stories seems rushed.

Absolutely love this story and all of the funny little bits and pieces in the scenery that they've drawn in there.
Even though its black and white the characters and drawings are so colourful you would actually think there was colour.
This second book follows on from the first with Scott plodding along in life. Dealing with the drama of dating two girls at once (gross Scott...), the second evil ex having to be defeated, and it also goes into some backstory of Scott's a little. It shows how he met Kim and some school stuff.
The transitions (I don't quite know how you would describe these in comic book form as I don't read them often or know much of the terminology - but, the way scenes change between frames) are all very cleverly done too, everything is very quick and scattered which is very fitting for Scott as a character and where he is in life right now, with everything being so fast paced and seemingly crazy when you're in your twenties. Very well done from an artistic standpoint.
Now just have to buy all the other ones.