Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

A song that kills. Can you imagine that? That would be really deadly in the hands of someone like me, pun intended. Oh man, Myles. Think of the wondrous things we could do? *wink wink*

Anyways, back during Christmas time, Misty and I were roaming through Barnes and Noble for books for my mom and Myles, and of course, I end up looking at books for myself. So I picked up some Chuck P. books and Misty scans the back and says, "That looks really good" and takes it up to buy it. A few days later, she walks into my work with a box of homemade cookies and that book on top. =P Needless to say, life has been hugely busy for me since then and I haven't had a chance to read for pleasure until recently. And first I wanted to finish all the books I had started but not finished, which I'm pretty sure I got done. =) So after Misty stole it from me and read it, I just finished reading it. And it was awesome, if you like that sort of thing, that is.

Now, for those of you who don't like to know anything about a book before you read it, don't continue to read further. Knowing me, there's bound to be some spoilers in here. =)

I was hooked by the Prologue that Misty actually read aloud to me while I was putting away my laundry. =P It basically talks about Helen Boyle, "the hero", who is a real estate agent. But no, she's not just any type of real estate agent. That would be way to ordinary and simple for Chuck P. She's a real estate agent who acquires haunted properties and then continues to sell them over and over and over. After the Prologue describes her, we learn about Carl Streator being a reporter/journalist and how much he pays attention to details. And here is when I started to go "Huh? What does this have to do with anything?" Then, it begins to come together.

His boss ends up having him do a peice on SIDS, interviewing families and so on and so forth. Since Mr. Streator is so freaking wonderful at paying attention to details, he happens to notice that the same book is at all of the scenes, and that page 27 is where they were are left at. So our wonderful reporter makes the connection and the deduction and fingers it all out. =) He assures that he's right by reciting the culling poem/song to his boss...and his boss dies. =P So there we have it. He connects up with "the hero", Helen/realtor, and together, along with a couple of tagalongs, they go on the road to destroy all the copies. This is how good old Mr. Streator finds out what Helen is doing with her knowledge of the poem. They're also searching for the grimoire to be able to reverse the culling song and blah blah blah.

Good story. I liked it. Of course, the editor I am found a couple of things that annoyed me or bothered me. The first was the way the main character described everything. "The details of the man are..." I understand this is because the guy was a reporter and we had this whole long diatribe about him paying attention to detail. But it felt very intrusive when every single character and location in the book was described that way. There was something off about it to me. Then again, good old Chuck might have done that on purpose for all I know. The other thing that bothered me was that I was confused about how Carl's wife and daughter died. Maybe it was me not paying attention, maybe it wasn't really said, but I was left wondering why. Or did Carl read the culling song to them from a book before he knew what it was a what it did.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one. A lot. I'll definitely be keeping it in my library. =) And I'll also be picking up some more of his works, too.