Wow. I love Stephen King but his wife is a badass. ( )

This is my second outing with Tabitha King. The first book I read, Small World was a terrible story wrapped in lovely writing, with terrible pacing decisions.

This time around, the lovely writing is still there, but the story—at least, the last 150 pages of this 310-page book—are very good. It's the first 160-odd pages that, while engaging, take far far too long to set up the inevitable clash that is telegraphed in the opening pages.

King's a good writer, technically, and it's fun to watch her bring Nodd's Ridge into the Stephen KIng universe, through her mention of Shawshank, made famous only three years earlier in Different Seasons' Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, as well as mentioning the author protagonist J.C. Devereaux—better known as Bobbi Anderson—from the terrible novel The Tommyknockers that her husband would publish two years later.

I just wish she could get the pacing nailed down. Then she'd be a killer author in her own right (write?). I am looking forward to future Tabitha King novels, however, because the last half of this book shows she's got the goods. ( )

from BookCrossing: "I had seen them before. The Wild Release alerts for Alexandria. Within blocks of where I worked. But they were always released at a time when I was not able to go hunting.

Until last Friday.

I like to call them Five-Hour Fridays. Summer Hours at the Colorectal Cancer Coalition allow employees to leave early on Fridays; a wonderful perk!

So last Friday I was heading down Duke Street heading to 495 and there it was. Sitting on a bench. I admit, I was hunting, even without an alert. I knew full-well an active BookCrosser was in the area and I was hoping to stumble across his activity spontaneously. And I did! The yellow sticky on the front cover was all the proof I needed from a distance that my prey had been spotted!

I had to drive around the (very long) black because I couldn't pull over in time. But I succeeded!

I will read the book and release it later."

There's no denying Tabitha has talent. Her descriptions are very vivid and almost tactile. But this book didn't thrill me. I did not feel any reason why I should like the heroine. The husband ended up redeeming himself (not really a spoiler), but my real favorite was the next-door neighbor!

The title actually turned out to have several layers to it. The one that spoke to me the most was how our children are used to trap us. I would do anything someone wanted me to do if they threatened my child and I believed they would do it. Logically, I know that there is nothing to stopping a sicko from doing whatever he threatened anyway once I complied. A real trap.

And I did release the book at Wegmans in Fairfax. ( )