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A girl’s trip is planned so the four friends can have time to reconnect. When Elise, Julie, Mae, and Molly are all together, insecurities often come out. Elise knows you’re not supposed to be jealous of your friends but sometimes she can’t help it. An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Callie’s life is a country song: rare disease, runaway, brother killed, dad lost his job, family fighting, house burned down, mom got skin cancer, sold the house.
As I mentioned earlier, this book was absolutely terrifying. Once again, I want to avoid spoilers but the graphic details and underlying suspense in this novel were so well done. Every time I started to feel a bit bored, the author would throw in a scare or twist and I couldn’t help but read on. I read the last fourth of this on the drive home and when I got home, I had no memory of the roads or how long the drive was because I was completely, wholeheartedly engrossed in this. There’s something to be said for reinventing the wheel, or so the publication of “The Returned,’’ the much-talked about first novel by North Carolina writer Jason Mott, would suggest. Without any sort of apocalyptic events to herald them, the dead begin to show up around the world and create an atmosphere that morphs from wonder to dismay and joy-tinged sorrow and sorrowful joy to amazement, causing disruption through many layers of society from political to military to religious as well as making for rifts in the fabric of family and personal relations.
The middle part of the book is about the Ramirez family and Spain's Civil War in the 1930s. There is a mother, Concha and father, Pablo. They run a cafe and for a while things are wonderful in their life. Their oldest son, Antonio is a teacher. Their middle son, Ignacio is a bull fighter. Their youngest son, Emilio is slowly taking over the cafe and has a passion for music. The daughter, Elise is told her best friend, Julie, went missing on a solo hiking trip. Two years go by, and Elise refuses to believe or accept that Julie's dead. She's sure Julie will turn up again, good as new.I did enjoy this story, but I wanted WAY more details about the romance and much less discussion about bees. I did however learn a lot about them and the different roles that they play in the hive, as well as things that their stings and honey can cure. And now you can’t possibly resist finding out what the frill is going on, and you won’t be disappointed. So come along with me and the gals on a little trip, and let’s all figure out together what exactly is going bump in the night. The stories also take a little longer to tell. The journey from Robert Campillo’s more bombastic 2004 film, on which the current series is based, was tortuous. At first, the TV show team “worked on the idea of a virus until it became a bad version of a good American show,” says Benjo, shaking her head. “Before Fabrice, we were in such trouble that we even mentioned doing it in English, like that would resolve all our problems!” THE RETURN was a generally enjoyable, quirky, small-town story with grief, illness, bees, romance and that signature lament. It was pretty wholesome and it left a good feeling on completion.
The Return] should be required reading for anyone going to Spain this year…the historical tale is powerful stuff”The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year. To be clear, I have been a Sparks fan since the beginning, but I threw this book across the room when I was finished. At least I learned about bees. I have no aspirations to ever write a novel, but if I did, it would probably be similar to this. Take from that what you will. If The Shining and Mean Girls had a baby, that baby would be The Return. Holy sh*t. You guys this book was truly one of the creepiest books I have read since Little Darlings. Nearly a week after reading this, I am still reeling. This book will forever leave a mark on my soul.
On the heels of his critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling debut novel, The Returned, Jason Mott delivers a spellbinding tale of love and sacrifice. Jules goes missing and stays missing for two years, but then she reappears one day with no memory of what has happened to her over the past few years. Her best friends are unsure as to how to handle this stroke of good fortune. They had a funeral for her. They mourned her. They accepted that she was going to be a missing piece for the rest of their lives. As Trevor tries to navigate his relationship with Natalie, he also tries to figure out what led his grandfather to leave town for the first time in a long time, only to fall ill in the midst of his journey. What did the garbled words that his grandfather said before his death mean? What were the man's secrets, and how do they connect with Callie? With a large cast of characters, ‘The Returned’ carefully unspools its growing tension, secrets and lies slowly rising to the surface. The complex web of each of the characters' stories unravels with each revelation, while the personal battles build to a war for the town itself. Sides are taken, leading to its inevitable climax. But another danger lurks and threatens to engulf the town in another tragedy.
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Die Stimmung im Buch ist sehr düster und schon ein bisschen gruselig. Zartbesaitete könnten hier "Probleme" bekommen. Für mich war es aber genau passend, denn das habe ich auch von dem Buch erwartet. Ich finde durch diese Stimmung ist eher ein Buch für Erwachsene als für Jugendliche. All over the world people's loved ones are returning from beyond. No one knows how or why this is happening, whether it's a miracle or a sign of the end. Not even Harold and Lucille can agree on whether the boy is real or a wondrous imitation, but one thing they know for sure: he's their son. As chaos erupts around the globe, the newly reunited Hargrave family finds itself at the center of a community on the brink of collapse, forced to navigate a mysterious new reality and a conflict that threatens to unravel the very meaning of what it is to be human. Julie has a stench, she’s way too thin, she doesn’t speak the same or even move the same; there’s something about those teeth, too.
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