lefttoread's reviews
532 reviews


I had been recommended Nineteen Minutes a few times and for me this book was the decider on if I would carry on reading Jodi Picoult’s books as I’ve never thoroughly enjoyed one.
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“Nobody wants to admit this, but bad things will keep on happening. Maybe that’s because it’s all a chain, and a long time ago someone did the first bad thing, and that led to someone else to do another bad thing, and so on. You know, like that game where you whisper a sentence into someone’s ear, and that person whispers it to someone else, and it all comes out wrong in the end. But then again, maybe bad things happen because it’s the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like.”
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Nineteen Minutes is about a boy named Peter who has been bullied most of his life, one day Peter can’t take it anymore and he goes to his school and starts to shoot.
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Right from the start you know who the school shooter is but as you go through the book it flicks between past and present, the reader then gets to see what lead Peter to make the decision he made.
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“If you give someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn’t be filled?”
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We then also see the court procedure and that’s when more details start to unfold. The story is a slow burner, which I don’t usually like, but, it worked in this book. It’s massively character driven, which again, I don’t usually like, but, worked in this book! I felt a lot of emotions and I really started to side with Peter!
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Then the end.. we have a PLOT TWIST! I was shocked, I felt tears spring to my eyes and honestly I was so happy and satisfied with that ending.. which I can’t say about a lot of books.

The Stranger inside gets 2 stars because I enjoyed Lisa Unger's writing style, it was easy to read and was sometimes a fun/enjoyable read but I had a few problem with this book..

Firstly there's a part in the book that refers to someone having an IQ of about 70 - not disabled but able to comprehend about as much as a 12 year old. - This didn't sit right with me and I found it quite offensive.

Secondly the whole plot is laid out for you, there's no guessing, there's no surprising or real thrills to get excited about.

Lastly the ending just fell flat, probably because the full book just gave you everything as I said previously there's no guessing so there was no big plot twist at the end or anything that was worthy put in there.

The concept was really good but it could have been executed a lot better.

Loved the characters and the storyline, 3 stars because it is the first of 3 short stories so there was a lot more to come.

Just like the first, enjoyed the characters and the plot. This one seemed to be better developed than the last short story.

This one fell flat a bit for me. I loved all the characters and the story line over all through the 3 books but I think it would have been better as a full novel rather than 3 short stories and we could have gotten more from it.

This was a bizzare but fun story.

WHAT WAS THAT ENDING?!