Over my long 5-day holiday weekend, I unabashedly indulged in two of my favorite activities: napping and reading. I think I made it through 4 or 5 books and as many hours curled up on the couch or bed napping. Ahh…glorious staycation.

I had an interesting observation with two of the books I picked up over the weekend and that was the plots seemed to be combination of at least two plots from other books/movies. For instance, Twisted by Andrew Kaufman seemed to be a blend of “Silence of the Lambs” and “Shutter Island.” Take one psychologist working with a serial killer in the wing of a asylum reserved for the top level crazies (the description of some of the other patients instantly reminded me of SotL; the scene where Clarice first meets Dr. Lector….walking down a long hallway because of course the person of interest is located at the end…having to pass by the other “crazies” including the sex fiend jacking off…that chilling first look at the patient/inmate in the cell…key camera zoom in), said psychologist starts to have strange things happening to him at work and at home, starts to believe that the patient/co-workers are plotting against him, goes on destruction mode to prevent patient from accomplishing sinister plot and final twist of the book is the psychologist wakes up in a mental hospital to realize his mind had created an entire fantasy world for a year to avoid dealing with the death of his son and the crazy serial killer in his fantasy was a twisted projection of his own psychologist who was pushing him to come out of his shell and thus became the fantasy villain. AKA- Shutter Island- detective and his partner investigate a missing person on an island that houses a mental asylum, detective suspects there is some crazy, sinister plot afoot between the doctors at the hospital, that they are out to get him so he can’t expose the truth of what happens at the hospital, goes on the, you guessed it, destructive rampage, only for the plot twist to also be that he is a patient of the hospital, his partner is his therapist letting him act out the investigation in an attempt to help him come to terms with killing his wife who had drowned their children. (Side note- at the end of the move, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character ends up being lobotomized.)

I hate to use the word cliché as I feel that has some negative connotation to it but I also think it is fitting. Twisted was an enjoyable read and I wasn’t sure where exactly the storyline was going to go but overall, I was glad that it was one of the $3.99 or less deals for Kindle. Somewhat re-worked plot aside, I would be curious to give one of the author’s other novels a try. My biggest beef with Twisted was at the end when the main character wakes up out of the fantasy and is ready to start living in the real world again, his wife basically says ‘oh honey, it’s ok that you retreated into yourself for an entire year, leaving me alone to deal with my own grief and reality but I don’t have a single iota of resentment against you so now we can just go back to our puppies and sunshine life again.” Ugh. Now before anyone starts posting comments that I’m being insensitive to the effects grief can have a person and that people don’t necessarily consciously choose to retreat from life in such a fashion, I’m more irritated that the author wrote an entire novel dealing with some very serious, deep issues and then tied the book up with a pretty, pink bow at the end in about 3 pages. I’m an absolute hopeless romantic and, generally speaking, love a happy ending but something about this one just bothered me. Anyone else read this story and feel the same?

The other novel, the Einstein Prophecy, well, I think you could argue that it’s a mish-mash of several similar plots- Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Mummy, and Monument Men. If you have seen all three movies, then you can essentially weave together the plot of this book. If you haven’t, honestly, watching each movie will be more entertaining and feel more original than reading this book. Again…thank you Amazon for the $1.99 pre-lease kindle deals. I might have cried if I had paid more