Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

"I'm going to write a review now," he typed. "A review of a book," he also typed. I also typed. My name is William, though almost everyone I know calls me Bill. I grew up in a household that was alternately agnostic, religious, and new age, depending on the decade and the family member. My own experiences have led me to believe that there is no god. And not in the sense that I simply don't believe that there is a god. I actively believe that there is not a god. But I do have faith in human creativity and ingenuity, and in authors, and in good books. I do believe in good books. I do, I do, I do believe in good books. And I have never stopped reading a book, or skimmed through 150 pages of it to see if the ending or any of the pages in the middle can remotely justify reading the book in its entirety. But I'm getting ahead of myself. What I need to do is go back to November of 2009, when I read a book written in the style of a disturbed woman's memoirs. But, also back to that other time, April of 2012, when I also read a book written in the style of a disturbed woman's memoirs, where both books may have been the same book, though they had different titles. One was called "The Red Tree" and the other was called "The Drowning Girl". And both were poor attempts to retell a story best told years before, in a book called "Threshold", though even that book could have been much better if the author hadn't decided to take the "and it was all just a dream" approach at the end. What I truly don't understand is why these books keep ending up in the fantasy / sci fi section at the book store. "Well, where else would you put them?" William types. Anywhere other than fantasy / sci fi. Literature? Delusional? Is there a delusional genre? If not, perhaps there should be. If for no other reason than to keep these books safely isolated away from idealistic readers. My wife loves me, but she laughs at me every time I buy one of this author's books. She knows how much I loved "Threshold", despite the fact that the ending makes me angry all four times I have read it. And she knows that I keep buying Caitlin R. Kiernan's books in the hopes that the author will take what she started to create in "Threshold" and improve on it, tell a riveting horror story, rather than retell it worse than before. I remember when I saw a new Kiernan book on the bookshelf. "Look," I gushed to my wife. She tells me nobody uses the word "gushed", but I do. And if I didn't gush, then I didn't say anything at all. But I'm stalling. "Look," I gushed to my wife. "A new Caitlin R. Kiernan book." "William, you know you will hate it. You've hated every one of her books that you have read more than the last one." "There's that. But that means that this may be the book where she does it. Where she breaks free of her own curse, and writes a book that captivates me like Threshold did," I said. "Only this time, the ending won't leave me cursing the name Caitlin R. Kiernan." Which I must have done at least once since I read that book. "I think I've been telling lies," William types. Not that I liked this book, or that I feel anyone should read it, or that it should actually be classified under fantasy, or that my wife didn't try to talk me out of buying it. But I have no idea what my wife and I actually said when she tried to talk me out of buying it. I have to stop stalling and say how my experience with this book ended. I skimmed through 150 pages of it to see if the ending or any of the pages in the middle could remotely justify reading the book in its entirety. They do not.