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Loading... The Darkest Evening of the Yearby Dean Koontz
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I loved this book. It is a simple story of unconditional love and blind faith pitted against an evil that only authors like Koontz can conceive of. Dark, vile, psychologically sick individuals who the reader wants only the most painful of things to happen to. In other words... your typical Koontz. In this novel Dean brings to life his deep love and respect for the Golden Retriever. He writes about them with such eloquence and respect that I so want to own one myself. And as usual for a Koontz novel his big bad is dark, twisted and evil. The story itself isn't all that far removed from any of his other works. It's mostly just your atypical Koontz. But I found this one better than usual as I was endeared with his 4 footed heroes. (  )Lame | May 11, 2009 |   The author held my interest from the first paragraph. The story continued to give me jolts and shocks through out. I have two Goldens and I greatly appreciated the writers viewpoint. I will say the last two pages or so left me looking for something more as the ending. Yet the story was such a good read I could not lay the book aside for any period of time. ( )BONS | May 4, 2009 | It's probably been about ten years since I have read a novel by Dean Koontz. I remember that I decided I shouldn't read them any more because they just scared the living daylights out of me. Last week I went to the library to choose a couple of audiobooks for a road trip, keeping in mind that I would have to get something that my husband would also enjoy, and I thought...let's give Koontz a try. I am certainly glad that I did, because he is certainly a talented writer. I was amazed at how he could write a thriller genre novel that was still packed with such beautiful prose. He even tugged at my emotions at such a level that I was in tears at one point of this novel. I will start off by saying that if you are a dog lover, especially of golden retrievers, you will most likely enjoy this novel. The dogs are a pretty important part of this book, and that is brought to your attention in the very beginning. At the start of the novel it appears that Amy is just an empty-headed dingbat, when in reality she is actually a very intelligent, fun-loving woman that created a dog rescue organization. So when Amy is introduced to us she is actually dragging her boyfriend Brian on a mission to rescue a golden retriever from an abusive home. Amy sees something very special in this golden retriever and knows that she cannot leave this home without it. There are a couple of parallel story lines that have to do with the pasts of both Brian and Amy's lives. I don't want to go into much detail, as that would take away much from a thriller novel, but both of them were involved with individuals that appeared to be nothing less than psychotic lunatics. Throughout the novel, the actions of these murderous characters will have you sitting on the end of your seat waiting to see what they will do next. One of the first things that drew me to Koontz's novels was the eerie, unexplainable element that he usually included in his books. Although, I must admit that this same element is probably what scared me away from his novels for so long. But how he wove this part of the story into this book was not scary in any way, it was actually a bit soothing and reassuring and left me with a feeling of happiness. I am confident that if you are a Dean Koontz fan you will enjoy this book. If you feel like reading a thriller and not having the life scared out of you, this book would probably fit the bill, as I was not really scared while I was listening to it or after I completed it. I think that this book was very well written and I know I will not wait so long before I read, or listen to another of Koontz's novels. ( )jo-jo | Apr 30, 2009 | Amy Redwing, former victim of an abusive relationship, devotes her life to running a rescue organization for golden retrievers, where she searches for the perfect forever home for the abandoned ones and seeks treatment and rehabilitation for the abused and neglected ones. When Amy and her boyfriend, architect Brian McCarthy attempt to rescue a golden named Nickie, they find themselves in the middle of a domestic dispute. Amy senses a connection to Nickie and decides to keep her, unknowing that a chain of events are occurring which will lead Amy and Brian back to traumatic events of their past lives and into extreme danger, and that Nickie may be the only one to save them. Koontz has been described as a master storyteller and this reviewer agrees. His love for dogs shines through with this book and enhances the story. The plot moves at a fast pace, with plenty of evil characters to entertain thrill-seekers, buffeted by Amy and Brian’s love for one another and for dogs. Excellent book. (  )ctfrench | Apr 5, 2009 | Amy is an animal lover who rescues abused Golden Retrievers from abusive homes. But Amy has a secret, a hidden past where she used to be someone else, and that past is creeping up. While she is away caring for Nicky, her newest Golden that she also decided to keep, a man carefully goes through her house-- searching everything, looking for clues that might tell him who she really is. Over the years Koontz has written more and more about dogs (specifically Golden Retrievers), and this book is perhaps the most dog-specific book of his I've read to date. This is part suspense, part dog-rescue manifesto. It's not the gripping suspense of earlier works. (  )TigerLMS | Mar 4, 2009 | 0.046 seconds to build listing
Amazon.com (ISBN 0553804820, Hardcover)Amazon.com Exclusive:The Darkest Ice Cream of the Year by Dean Koontz I once said writing a novel is sometimes like making love and sometimes like having a tooth pulled--and sometimes like making love while having a tooth pulled. I arrived at one of those joyful yet excruciating moments while working on The Darkest Evening of the Year. Because I am obsessive about the revision of each page--the word fussbudget is embarrassingly apt when I am brooding over whether to use a comma or a semicolon--I have more than once held on to a manuscript until the drop-dead date for delivery. When that date rolled around for this book, I had written everything, but I was unwilling to send all of it to my editor. I withheld the last fifty pages for another four days, causing a quiet panic in those at my publishing house who are responsible for meeting production deadlines. Although the book was done, I felt that something was wrong with Chapter 63. The action worked, the characters were in character, the mood was sustained...but something felt wrong with it, some fine point of the villain's motivation. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I worked 12-hour days, trying to identify the source of my doubt, but couldn't specify it to my satisfaction. Nothing like this had ever happened to me. Previously, my worst struggles with a story had come in the first two-thirds, and the final third had been, if not a sweet swift toboggan run, at least a sleigh ride. Sunday, I got up at 6:00 and set to work, revising, looking for the thorn I could feel but couldn't see--and ended up working 22 hours, eating at my desk, before tumbling to the problem at 4:00 a.m. Monday morning. "Eureka!" I cried, but I was so weary and my voice was so weak that my shout of jubilation came out as a squeak. The revisions required to Chapter 63 were minor, but after working 58 hours in four days, after having passed a night without sleep, I was unable to focus sharply enough to get them done in the little time that remained before the production schedule would be derailed. In desperation, I turned to that source of creative energy and literary enlightenment that is without equal: ice cream. I shuffled to the kitchen and snared a Dreyer's Slow-Churned Vanilla Almond Crunch bar from the freezer. I devoured this sweet-and-creamy muse, and felt the scales lift from my eyes; inspiration sparkled between my ears. I finished the revisions and e-mailed the final version of Chapter 63 to my editor with not a minute to spare. Although the American Heart Association will take issue with me, my advice to young writers stuck on a scene is to stop worrying about your arteries and give your wheel-spinning imagination what it needs to find traction: a tasty shot of fat and sugar. --Dean Koontz, October 2007 (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:05 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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