Kiss the Girls, Read the Books (Review and Other Thoughts)

In between ARCs and requests, I have fallen back on some older,”fluff” reads this month.  I don’t always blog about them but I have a few things to say about the community right now and this review is a good gateway to that.

Not that James Patterson’s early books are fluff – ten years ago they were way way WAY too graphic for me, but now I just freaking love the danger, edgy violence, crazy serial killers, and all the psychology that Patterson crammed into those early Cross books.

Before the review I just want to say that there are plenty of things that bar access to literature – money, poverty, education, geographical location, random sociopolitical issues, transportation, books that are banned and unavailable in some regions, out of print/rare books ….etc etc etc.

The one thing I firmly believe is that PEOPLE are not an acceptable barrier.  Guilt should not be a barrier.  Read what you want, whether it’s romance, liberal, lgbtq, conservative, religious, fantasy, wizards, or even James Patterson (who gets so much hate! Like why!).  Don’t let hate stop you! I had someone tell me I must be stupid for reading him and – I just laughed, scrolled on, and said “well they’re missing out but that’s their choice”.  This is what bookstagram has devolved into! Literary snobs and the woke mob mentality are both wildly unacceptable to me but I’ve long since learned to just. keep. scrolling.

Point is – read books and enjoy your short time on Earth because hate, guilt, ostracism in any form is not an acceptable barrier to literature. 

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Crap now that I typed all that I don’t care about the review anymore, but here it is:

Bookish Quick Facts:

• Title: Kiss The Girls
• Series: Alex Cross #2
• Publisher: originally Little, Brown and Company, 1995
• Length: 462
• Rating:  🌟🌟🌟🌟 not for the squeamish

Remember two years ago I was going to read the Cross books in order like I started to with the Prey books?  Yeah me neither, but I keep trying to make time for it anyway

I am an utterly shameless JP freak and I love these early books. This is easily one of the ones that would have made me cringe as a teenage or new adult reader but now … sign me up.  Casanova is a serial kidnapper/murderer/rapist hunting the Chapel Hill, NC area. The Gentleman Caller is another serial killer on the west coast and appears to be getting sloppy. Alex Cross’ niece goes missing and all of a sudden he is thrown into this insane jurisdictional kerfuffle to catch one or both of these men that appear to be either cooperating, competing, or worse

Action packed, graphic, truly scary, and you know that (once again) I totally picked the wrong bad guy, although I was closer than I usually am.  I love the constant feeling of danger, fast pace of the book, and how much Cross loves his family.  The psychology is interesting too, and there is plenty of it.  Cross got a little more vulnerable in this one too which was nice to see, a character progression from Along Came a Spider.

Docked one star for the creepy description of Casanova, Patterson got a little weird there describing the 🍆 and even for the 1990s, it seemed like poor taste to put that descriptive sequence into Cate’s point of view.  I damn know that poor women wasn’t thinking “oh my, what a large and bright 🍆 he has” …. … Bright? What, like a lightbulb? Flashlight? Rudolph the red nosed penis? 😳 l*rd almighty.

Cate was such a bad ass though, so tough, she got away and saved the others.  She’s one of my favorite Cross side characters out there.

It was even weirder listening to Michael Kramer say it because he narrates the Wheel of Time books and I just couldn’t stop laughing every time he said “tick cock”.  I think I was in actual tears when the “Hickory, dickory, cock” line happened.  Is that the most quoteable thing from this book? I really gave it a very strong four stars!

I do recommend both the Cross series for thriller, detective, psychological thriller fans, and Michael Kramer as a narrator if anyone is into audiobooks.  He can be a little hard to understand but I just keep him at 1.25 speed and

Heck I’m sorry this was the longest post ever, stay tuned for more ARC reviews and current reads this week!

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From the book blurb:

From the Back Cover

This time it’s personal for Cross. The most elusive of killers has abducted Cross’s niece, Naomi, a talented law student. Only such a devastating blow could bring the detective back – this time to the Deep South, where old slave prisons are buried in the forests, and houses of horror can disappear as in your worst nightmare. Naomi’s kidnapping rips Alex Cross away from his kids and his jazz piano and sends him south with several questions burning in his mind. Why did the police wait seventy-two hours before beginning their search? And what is the head of the FBI doing at the scene of a small-town crime? Meanwhile, somewhere out there Casanova is living a secret fantasy. In his private hideaway, the world’s greatest lover has assembled seven of the South’s most extraordinary young women for his personal use. It’s an accomplishment he can share with only one other soulmate – and that’s definitely not his wife back in suburbia. But Casanova doesn’t count on the exceptional abilities of one of his harem – or having Alex Cross as a nemesis.

Amazon