Ashley Bell // Dean Koontz

• released: 12/8/2015 // 560 pages
• ISBN-10: 0345545966 // ISBN-13: 978-0345545961
• read from: 12/11/15 to 1/11/16
• 
  

*drum roll!* 

i tried to type it out but i couldn't so...yea. 

GUYS! 2016's first book! and its Dean Koontz. i LOVE that man. 

are you weird like me? 

do you have a favorite author who, whenever they release a book, you HAVE to buy it on THE release day? 

no? just me? yea. 

ever since i can remember, i have always purchased his books on release date whether i read them right away or not (case in point: i have yet still to read the final Odd Thomas book and that was released 2 years ago maybe and Frankenstein from like forever ago.) so there was no difference with this book. except that B&N didn't have a single copy to their name! -______- so i had to hunt it down at target. 

aaaanyways! lets get to it. 

as amazon states: 

the girl who said no to death.
Bibi Blair is a fierce, funny, dauntless young woman—whose doctor says she has one year to live.
She replies, “We’ll see.”
Her sudden recovery astonishes medical science.
An enigmatic woman convinces Bibi that she escaped death so that she can save someone else. Someone named Ashley Bell.
But save her from what, from whom? And who is Ashley Bell? Where is she?
Bibi’s obsession with finding Ashley sends her on the run from threats both mystical and worldly, including a rich and charismatic cult leader with terrifying ambitions.

as always, from here on out, spoilers because!!!!!!!!!!

sooo.....Bibi is this young uber talented writer. 

nothing is wrong with her until one day, there is.

she has brain cancer (fancy shmancy name), gets seriously diagnosed at the hospital and then BOOM! she's cured. 

she leaves the hospital and her parents treat her to a masseuse at her home who is a little bit more than just that. 

ya know how people read cards and speak to the dead? well she finds answers through scrabble. turns out Bibi was spared to save the life of Ashley Bell from a Hitler wanna be. 

I'm going to make this as short as possible. (like that's possible) so bear with me. or skip to the end if ya don't wanna know not even a single tiny detail.

turns out when bibi was a little girl, she had read a book named Cookie (or something like that) and she fell in love with the main character, Cookie, a gingerbread man. she fell in love with how different he was but still very positive that she somehow made him come alive. turns out, he wasn't that great in real life. he was kind of evil (reminded me of his first book that i ever read, Tick Tock. which i also got at target. full circle guys.) with enough wishing and fear, she sent him back but of course she was afraid of what she had done. 

months pass by before she tells anyone until she tells her grandfather who moved upstairs and he helps her bury any memory of it. then with the trick her grandfather taught her, she buries other memories. 

so, here i am reading this damn book thinking that whats going on is whats going on...turns out she was always in a coma!!!!! since the very beginning. since her first trip to the hospital she was never "per se" cured. she went in to a weird active coma so while she was asleep in a coma to this world, she's alive, kicking ass and taking names in another. but whatever happens to her in her own world affects her in her real life world coma be damned. so she has to survive or otherwise, she's really dead. 

with the trick her grandfather showed her, she buried the  whole cookie thing, the meaning behind her dogs collar and meeting up with an author that she admired which is kind of cause to all the drama in her *fake* life. 

so now the whole purpose of her kicking ass, taking names and saving AB is all about her realizing her past and her buried secrets and accepting them!

she ends up surviving of course but after going through some crazy crap.

and honestly it kinda has to do with her growing the eff up and (wo)manning up. 

.....also with the fact that she heard the tape her grandpa left her explaining why he did what he did. so ya know....she kinda had to face it. 

basically, she made all this shit up in her mind. 

but then the last chapter of the book! oooh girl. 

whatever your name is dude, yer screwed.  

spoilers over!

huh? whatayaknow? i guess i could make it as short as possible. 

there is a lot i left out.  

but that's cause i want ya to read it and then discuss it with me. 

i do have one question though, i mean, St. Croix did she really have to be that conniving? i guess it fits in to the story but i mean her explanation to Pax and Pogo, while it makes sense, it doesn't really makes sense. how did Bibi come up with that? 

also whats up with her other teacher? 

why would she bury the meeting her fave author thing? ooooh. hhhmm...

it could be that i missed out on that because i was reading fast through it. 

im a firm believer that you pick up a book when it calls you too, which could be why this one took me so long because i generally read his book sorta fast. but once i got towards the end, things starting clicking and i couldn't get enough of it!

so i guess i can say it wasn't bad at all. 

i liked it. 

kept me on my toes and that damn twist had me going like aahh!!! and i even honestly thought that Pax might have been the bad guy for a bit. and so maybe she made..because of what he was doing out there. hhhmm.....inneresting. 

ahhh! i love ya dean koontz!

you da man!

thanks for reading.