Might be the Last One for Me...and it was a good one!

I Don't Want to Have to Kill You is the third in the John Cleaver series, but it might be the last one I will read, or maybe at least for awhile.  I really did like this one!  I thought it added some special creepiness, but I started the fourth one and I just can't seem to get into it, at least for now.
Hmm..now that I went to add the links, I see that there is a 3.5 in the series...maybe I do need to read that one and try the fourth again because one of my problems with the fourth was that I felt it made too big of a jump.  It also was super sad and full of despair.  But that isn't necessarily a deal-breaker for me, I just think right now, it needed to be!  Okay so put a hold on the ebook!  I don't know how often it happens that a series gets better as we go along, but this one has for me!

The Same, but Different!

I remember when I read the first book in the John Cleaver series, I am Not a Serial Killer, I thought it was too Dexter-ish. And it is VERY Dexter-ish, but Mr. Monster was quiet good so that it was easy to overlook thatm, and while it does deal with a guy trying to use his psychopathy for good and not evil, like Dexter, it has a supernatural aspect to it that does make it different.  Plus it is from a teen POV. So I am now on the third because I liked Mr. Monster a lot!

Watch those Sharks

Usually I just put a picture of the book's cover on a review, but Variant is the perfect example of a book jumping the shark so I had to include a pic of The Fonz.

Variant is written by Robinson Wells, the brother of Dan Wells who wrote I am Not a Serial Killer. Despite my years of research, I have not been able to confirm or deny that the Wells Brothers are related to Dawn Wells. Or Wells Fargo, for that matter.

Variant is the story of Benson Fisher, a foster kid who applies to a private academy to escape the miserable foster homes he has been in before, which, if we believe a lot of what we hear about some foster parents, we know that this part of the book is probably realistic fiction. Benson arrives at Maxwell Academy to find that there are no teachers, no adults at all. There are just 77 kids, each of whom belong to one of three gangs. Benson wants to GET OUT, but most of the other kids seem content or defeated. No one is sure why they are there, perhaps it is a training camp, though all they do is play paintball sometimes, or maybe it is a psych experiment. One gang seems to be the "do-gooders" communicating with the Iceman, who visits via closed circuit tv and computers to tell the students what their daily schedule will be. This group, The Society is content to just take things as they are. Havoc, that's the "bad guys" gang. They wear chains and have ink tattoos and like to cause trouble. The third group, the Vs, are just kind of there. They try to keep the peace, but they want to get out, someday and so they don't kiss butt like the Society does.

One of the most bothersome things about the book is that it says "V's" when referring to this group. Doesn't that imply possession? The V's cat. The V's chair. Should it just be "Vs"? Like CDs and 80s music? Not "I have a lot of CD's." and "I liked the 80's."

Maybe I am wrong but I looked in a couple grammar books and they agree with me.

So it was so annoying to see "The V's were in the room." The V's WHAT was in the room??? No, just the V's. Oh, you mean just the Vs!

The other bothersome thing is that Benson is supposed to have come from Pittsburgh. He says that he lived in foster homes in Elliot, the Bluff and South Side and then says that these are not top Pittsburgh tourist destinations. I would suggest that the South Side is one of the more popular tourist destinations in Pittsburgh. The Bluff, which is better known as Uptown, is actually a very small area of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University and Mercy Hospital taking up quite a bit of it. There are law offices, and the Armstrong Tunnel. Not a lot of residential stuff going on there. It is 1.5 miles in size. Some of DU's frat houses are there though...and given what we know about some foster care businesses, I guess that they might put a foster kid under the care of a frat. Maybe that's where Benson was.

So I took a lot of time saying what bugged me about the books...but still I really did like it. I mean, did Happy Days stop being fun to watch after Fonz went out in his shorts and water skis? No!

The book kept me reading and I will be reading the sequel.

The professor and Mary Ann

here on Gilligan's Isle! If the song said Gilligan's Isle, why wasn't the show titled the same thing? I can can see why the song doesn't say island, that just doesn't seem to fit. But why not name the show Isle? As you know, the character Mary Ann was played by Dawn Wells. She was my favorite of the ladies. Ginger was just too sleazy for my young sensitivities. I always wanted Mary Ann to get the guy. Any of the guys on the island or isle as it were. Well oddly enough, I am Not a Serial Killer is written by Dan Wells whose name is awfully close to that of Dawn Wells. They are probably no relation at all. In fact, the idea that they would be is so preposterous that I didn't even investigate it, but I certainly thought it was interesting enough to share, and in doing so, it allowed me to bring up the question of the Gilligan's Island theme song lyrics. All of which, is, I am sure, of great interest to you, gentle reader.
Now on to the book. I think I would have have loved this book so much more had I not been such a huge fan of Jeff Lindsay's Dexter series. I remember when I stumbled upon Darkly Dreaming Dexter in the new fiction section of the Bethel Park Library in 2004. As many people know the Dexter series of books has become a series on television. I have never seen it though. At first I think it was on Showtime and I didn't have it and now I think its on network tv now, too.
This isn't a bad book, but its just too much like Dex. John is a high school sophomore having trouble with accepting himself. Pretty normal for a high school kid except the part that John can't accept about himself is the fact that he is a sociopath on his way to becoming a serial killer. Like Dexter, he decides that he will try to make his love of violence to do some good. A serial killer is terrorizing his small town and he wants to kill him- instead of anyone else.
John calls his dark side The Monster. Dexter calls his The Dark Passenger. John lives in a mortuary and gets to see dead bodies that way. Dexter works for the police department analyzing blood spatter and the like. I don't know...it was all too much like Dexter, Jr. Still I thought it was well written and good. It is supposed to be a trilogy and I definately will read the others.
SPOILERS!!!
The only other thing that kinda bothered me was the the serial killer that John goes after turns out to be a monster. Like a real monster, a supernatural kind of thing. It just seemed to come from out of nowhere and well, it seemed like a bit of a copout or something.