As some of you know, I was going to read A Game
of Thrones as my “book based on or turned into a TV series”. However, that book and I had to part
ways. I didn’t read through it fast
enough, it was racking up late fees at the library, and I was pretty sure the
same thing would happen if I checked it out again. Therefore, I decided to look again. That’s when I found this one. Dexter was always a series I was curious
about. I even had it saved on my Netflix
que, but was waiting till the right moment to start the series. What better way
to introduce myself to it than to read its book?
DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER by Jeff Lindsay
Book 1 in the Dexter Series
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Meet Dexter Morgan, a polite wolf in sheep's
clothing. He's handsome and charming, but something in his past has made him
abide by a different set of rules. He's a serial killer whose one golden rule
makes him immensely likeable: he only kills bad people. And his job as a blood
splatter expert for the Miami police department puts him in the perfect
position to identify his victims. But when a series of brutal murders bearing a
striking similarity to his own style start turning up, Dexter is caught between
being flattered and being frightened -- of himself or some other fiend.
MY REVIEW
4 out of 5 *Stars*
Dexter, Dexter, oh my Dexter!
I must say, this is a whole different experience
from the traditional murder mystery.
Never before have I rooted for a serial killer, until now. Dexter always claimed that he had no
emotions, resulting in giving him an airy persona. Well of course, that was until he killed
someone. Then, it was always about precision…
business. He knew who he was and what he
was, and didn’t care. Half the time that
made his thoughts more funny than scary.
Or even thoughts that with anybody else it would be nothing, such as
thoughts when his newspaper was late.
“Really now. If you can’t get me my paper in
time, how can you expect me to refrain from killing people?”
I had to laugh at that, because literally nothing
refrained him from killing people. And
in this weird and twisted way, it became funny.
Then a new killer comes to town, and Dexter
loves it. All he wanted to do was play,
but the rules of Harry (only kill people that deserve it) and his normal-person
disguise prevented him from doing so.
That was until Dexter started to have dreams that told him when another
murder would happen and how it was done.
That was where it got a little weird.
This is not a paranormal book, so how can he be telepathically linked to
someone else. So that begged the question,
could it really just be Dexter that was unknowingly killing all these people?
The story brought you in, and made you think one
thing, but then it threw something at you that made you think in a totally new
direction. It kept you guessing the
entire way, until the end. Ultimately,
that was why I read through it so quickly.
I HATE unanswered puzzles, and that’s what this was to me.
The issue that I had with the book was the
characters. It was as if the only
character with any type of personality was Dexter. Yes, being the main character, you have to
have a strong personality, but you also need sub-characters with something deeper
than what you find on the surface. With
that being said, it’s inevitable that the book would feel like a one-man
show. That would be true, except for the
fact that Dexter repeatedly hat conversations with himself in his head. Here’s just a couple…
“I stumbled and fell flat-faced onto the hard
rocky ground. I rose to my knees, mouth dry heart pounding, and paused to
finger a rip in my beautiful Dacron bowling shirt. I pushed my fingertip
through the hole and wiggled it at myself.
Hello, Dexter, where are you going? Hello, Mr. Finger, I don’t know.”
“I collapsed onto the seat, clutching Barbie in
my sweaty hands. I turned her over. I
bent her legs. I waved her arms. And what did you do last night, Dexter? Oh, I
played with my dolls while a friend chopped up my sister.”
Overall, like I said, it was different. I had heard great reviews of the Showtime
series, and thought, why the hell not try out the books? Am I glad I read it? Yes, because now I
know. Am I going to continue reading the
series? I doubt it. It’s not the genre that I normally read, and
it wasn’t addicting enough to suck me in.
This is where I normally do my comparison. The
show verses the book…
In a lot of the reviews that I saw, if the person watched
the show first, they didn’t care for the book.
The same went for the other way around.
Once I finished the book, I watched Season 1, Episode 1 of the series. The
first episode took you close to halfway through the first book, which was
surprising. The storyline stayed the
same, but what was off-putting to me was Dexter’s inner dialog was practically
verbatim with the book. I will be the
first to slam anything that goes too far away from their corresponding book,
but when it’s exactly the same, it feels as if I’m just reading the book
again for a second time. I liked the
book, but not enough to read it again. However,
I did only watched the first episode, so I can’t give an accurate opinion about
the entire series. There’s so many
people out there that really enjoy the show, so for all I know it could change,
but for me it was a little dull.
Anyway, that was my honest and forthright opinion. Do you agree, disagree, don’t really care but
still wanna say something sweet to me?
Comment below!
Till next time…
Happy Reading, Everyone!!
