The Cold One

There's no front cover/back cover taglines, so you can make up your own using these related keywords:

Double incest / fetus in a garbage disposal / near death experiences / mysterious phone calls / failed generator / monster evil / ripped limb from limb / preacher blow job / interracial dating / 5000 year old sexy blind Himalayan Yeti man.

Ok, number 1: This book has, like, 60 five-star reviews on Amazon. Which is far-fetched as hell. If you pick up this book as a regular person looking to read a normal thriller novel, you're gonna be like: "WTF?" when you get to page 139 and all the action moves to India and there's 40 pages of guru-kriya-chakra stuff that I only know about because of Remember Me 2, and you know that the rest of the book is gonna annoy you (and by you I mean me) because it's going to have to incorporate that shiz.

Number 2: Why all the guru stuff, man?

So, this is just going to be a QuickCap because I finished reading this days ago and I need to get it out of my memory so I can read something else... i.e. Whisper of Death. Or R.L. Stine's "adult" novel, Superstitious, which I currently have in my possession, and I think I'm really gonna like. Hahaha. (There's sex and cussin'... and I've only read the prologue!)

The Story, told through Selected Characters:

Penny Hampton - In Prologue I (yup, there's multiple prologues), Penny, a physical therapist at a long term care facility, is massaging Patient 111, who uses an oxygen machine to breathe, during a storm. The power goes out and the generator fails. Penny does the breathing part of CPR to keep the patient alive. She feels weird during and after, and feels connected to the patient forever after. She believes that if the patient ever dies, so will she.

Sandra Morray, aka Patient 111 - First wife of Dr. Lawrence Morray. She had a drowning experience 30 years ago and has been in a coma since. She gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, 9 months after going into the coma.

The Cold One, aka Leslie, aka Sara Morray, aka Ruth - The Cold One kills people and things, and can transform people with a kiss into some deranged killing machine monsters. Leslie is the name she uses as The Cold One's public persona. Sara Morray is the second wife of Dr. Lawrence Morray. She is 30 years old. Before coming to California and meeting Dr. Morray, she was known as Ruth. She was one of the twins born to Sandra Morray during her coma, and adopted by a family. She was a creepy child who caused her adopted brother to go insane, and who killed her adopted parents when she was sixteen. Yes, she is currently married to her birth father. She had miscarried their baby, and Dr. Morray saved the fetus and did experiments on it. It wouldn't die, so Sara put it down the garbage disposal. Peter Jacobs is infatuated with her, which is convenient, because he is the other twin and his seed is the only one that can survive inside her. Uh huh, believe it or not: more twincest.

Dr. Lawrence Morray - Used to do research into near death experiences, but has kept his research secret for many years. Julie Moore contacts him to ask if she can look through his notes.

Peter Jacobs - So, you think he's all nice and stuff. He grew up in an orphanage, and still takes care of his childhood friend, Matt, who is slow. He meets Julie and Sara on the same day. Sara is married, but he wants her anyway. This is his twin, remember. He dates Julie for sex, then avoids her, and that really sets her off.

Matthew Bill - Peter's slow friend/roommate. At the end, The Cold One/Sara kills him, but Peter gives his life to bring Matt back.

Julie Moore - A doctorate candidate studying near-death experiences. She dates Peter, and almost gets killed by The Cold One's minions. And it turns out she's pregnant by Peter's cold seed, which is supposed to set up the sequel, The Seedling, which is advertised twice at the back of the book, but was never published, and possibly never even written.

Govinda Sharma- So, this guy is a citizen of India who used to live in the US. He went to an American university and married an Indian woman who was also living in the US. She died while she was pregnant, and Govinda went back to India to recover. Some people ask him to track/follow Rak, a 5000 year old guy who had, like, fought with Buddha or something. (I'm so sorry, I have no idea what this guy's scoop is, or how he's attached to the American characters. I can't pay attention sometimes... I'm gonna blame it on me finishing the book last weekend and not thinking about it again until this weekend. And that I barely skimmed all the chanting/guru stuff...)

Rak - This guy is 5000 years old, blind, and a Yeti, but still sexy and good looking, and has control/power over people. For example, he left India and flew to Los Angeles wearing only a loin cloth and no one called him on it. No one seemed to notice, in fact. Govinda tails him on all his travels. Rak goes to meet Lawrence Morray and tells him a fairytale that is meant to make him realize his wife/daughter, Sara, is evil.

In the end, Sara kills Matt, then Peter dies to bring him back. Then Sara senses that she's about to die. Dr. Lawrence Morray went to the facility where his first wife is cared for and cuts her ventilator line. But - OMG - Sara, the evil twin daughter child, has been living off her mother's life force. And she does die. Ok, whatevs. There's an epilogue where Govinda and Julie are visiting, and Julie has a daughter, the child of Peter's cold seed. Then my misery (and this book) is over.

Bee-Tee-Dub (BTW) Bonus: In Remember Me 2, Peter Nichols is momentarily called Peter Jacobs. In Remember Me, Shari Cooper wears green pants and a yellow blouse to the party where she dies. In The Cold One, Julie wears green pants and yellow blouse to meet Peter for a date. What does it all mean??... Just kidding. I don't really care.

Has anyone else here read this one? Were you an Amazon-five-star fan? Or a WTF-er, like me?

This one will probably go down with the Christopher Pike books that annoy me the most. Seriously, I was irritable as hell while reading this. I needed to pig out on Cinnabon and ketchup chips to get me through it. It was worse than work. And worse than work is as bad as anything can ever be.


Whisper of Death. Thursday. Maybe Friday. See you then.