When the Wind Blows (original 1998; edition 1998)

Definitely different for Patterson but I really liked it. One little mistake though, he mentioned fireflies in the mountains of Colorado. We don't have them here. I know, picky, picky....

Loved the kids and Kit and Frannie. A quick and interesting read. Now, tt read the Lake House. ( )

An emotional roller-coaster ride, When the Wind Blows is a story about resilience in the face of overwhelming odds and love in the wake of devastating hopelessness. When I read this book over twenty years ago, I loved it. And now, after rereading it, it still has the power to warm my heart. Patterson skillfully combines a children's fairy tale with terrifying violence as he spins a story of power-crazy scientists conducting biological experiments on children in a secret lab hidden in the wood of the Colorado Rockies. The vulnerability of the winged children, the cruelty of the scientist/doctors, and the bravery of Max, a unique, eleven-year-old miracle, brought tears to my eyes many times. I recommend this one to everyone who loves the supernational. ( )

I liked it, very different from his other stuff!
I loved the birds. ( )

I felt that the idea of this book was quite decent, but it was let down in the execution, Patterson's writing style just didn't really seem to fit the story. Instead, it came off as somewhere between a young adult book and a crime book, but sadly wasn't very good at either of those things.

Initially, I was very unimpressed with the book, which says something considering my expectations were already low being a Patterson book, and getting it from the free bin at the secondhand book shop. After about a quarter of the way through though things do start to improve and it does redeem itself, although that being said whilst it turns into a reasonable book, I didn't find it to be good per se.

Overall, you could certainly do worse for reading material, it was average, distinctly so. ( )

I really wanted to like this book. It was a very nice Idea, and some parts of the book really grabbed me and forced me to keep reading when I was planning on sleeping.

Some parts of the book seemed a bit strange to me, because the descriptions were formulated in a way that was just pulling me out of the book. I can't really describe what was wrong about those passages, and I read the german version of the book, so I attributed them to bad translation.

I can confirm some of the criticism that is written in the other reviews, the characters are sometimes pretty flat. Still, if you enjoy the genre of this book and don't know what to read next, just go to the library and loan the book. If you liked it: Great. If you didn't, at least you did not spend money on it ;-). ( )