This turned out to be a good book. Saul did a great job maintaining suspense throughout the story. There was an small issue I had while reading; e.g repetitive situations and dialogue, but for the most part I enjoyed reading Guardian. I was leery of the werewolf subject matter but Saul added a little dimension to it. I was pleasantly surprised.

I liked the book a lot, but hated the ending because it didn't resolve everything. What happened to Joey? There is no sequel, so I'll never know.

I was a bit out of my comfort zone with this book as it is not my usual genre of choice. The story involves a remote ranch in winter where the main character has gone with her 2 children to look after her best friend's son after his parents are both killed. The family seems menaced by a strange being who is sometimes glimpsed around the property. The plot involves the family's attempts to keep themselves safe and the connection of the stranger to the orphaned boy is eventually explained.

Not quite what I expected, but enjoyable nonetheless. Wish it focused a little more on the horror wolfy aspect.

For me this book is one of the authors better books. A few thinks could have been in more detail, but the story flowed nicely.

The story line is of a broken family, parents on the verge of divorce do to affairs on the husbands part. Children choosing sides when the unthinkable happened. Maryann's best friend and her husband dies. she relocates the whole family west due to the fact she is the Godmother of Joey Wilkinson.

Joey had an OK upbringing, but with some dark secrets. His relationship with the man who he thought was his father is rocky at best, and distant with his mom.

As Maryann dives into the past of her best friend and Joey's true father her marriage disintegrates as Joey rebels for reasons that are unknown to him..........

For me it was a great read.

I always prefer to try to deduce what a book is about by the cover illustration rather than go to all the trouble of reading the jacket summary. So looking at this, I thought the guardian was somehow going to be this dog, and that he would be a kindly spirit to watch over the characters.

Apparently the guardian here is really the woman next to the dog, who has taken in the ominous looking child whose giant face is looking at her.

I still get confused and have to remember that when I look at the cover, even after I read it.

My rating: 3.8

A novel with a very promising premise - a mother along with her 2 kids moves to take care of her recently orphaned godchild, in "an isolated community bordering Idaho's scenic wilderness", where strange things are happening, with even the aforesaid godchild acting weird at times.

The setting is beautiful - the author does a wonderful job of describing the mountainous landscapes & wilderness of Idaho, the isolated community with its ranches, the adjoining town & the relationships between the people. Though I've never been to Idaho, I could easily picture the place.

Atmosphere: captivating - author sets up a bit of (not a lot) chilly & foreboding atmosphere. The house, being on a secluded ranch on the outskirts of town, with the nearest neighbor quite a distance away, seems to be a trouble-magnet. Sometimes, you feel the deceased parents might have had some secrets; clearly the godchild acts weird sometimes (as if he is hiding something); the townspeople & their kids seem to know him & his deceased parents well with some of them clearly having some prejudices against him/them; the gruff caretaker seems a bit mysterious, with some of his replies almost in riddles; and someone seems to be watching from the dark.

Characterization: adequate - author sufficiently builds up the characters (who are not without their own pros & cons); they could be described more, but then it wouldn't be a 350 page novel.

Length of novel: perfect - is around 350 pages, doesn't have to be any longer.

Fear/thrill/mystery factor: Not very scary. Some mystery, not a lot. You can make some speculations as to the antagonist. With ample evidences sprinkled here & there, you can see the ending from a mile away.

Plot furthering: occasionally weak - sometimes, characters make random & more than intelligent deductions to move the plot, other times, they act pretty dumb, not very consistent.

How engrossing: a definite page-turner up till 75%, after that tends to be a bit dragged, the last 5% though is good, especially the ending which reveals how the antagonist became who he was.

Gore/Kills: some gore (not less, not more, just the right amount for this kind of novel).
Kill count less than 10, not a lot of kills throughout the novel - the town isn't literally terrorized, with people being scared for their lives & guessing who would be next;

n  Cautionn: Possible child killing. One of the child kills was completely unnecessary. I would have easily given 0.5 rating more, if only the first child wasn't killed. You would argue that Hollywood has spoiled us & made us too soft-hearted. But then I would counter that the killing was random, it didn't move the plot any further, it didn't vindicate hating the antagonist any more, & to make matters worse, it was the killing of an innocent kid, not a jerk kid.

In short, I'd definitely recommend the novel, at least for a one-time read.

I am fairly impressed by the quality of writing for this thriller, as many genre novels are usually just focusing on building up the mystery/thriller while the literary aspect is overlooked completely. I believe John Saul is in the same league as Stephen King, at least taking into account this novel. He is a keen observer of various human types and manages to create at least some believable characters and situations.

As with the most novels in the genre, the book does not inherently have a message. It just proposes to entertain the reader via mystery/thriller and if it succeeds, we can consider it is a good novel. But in the spirit of my own rating criteria, I need to give it a separate rating for the premise. And since it is lacking one, I'll give it a 1 for premise.

Regarding the form, as I already said, I was pretty impressed by the quality of writing. This is something not too common in this literary genre. It is a crisp style, without too many metaphors, centered on the story. I'll give it a 4 for form.

In terms of originality, the one thing that differentiate this from other similar novels is that it deals with children. I heard that John Saul is specialized on children thriller, which is an interesting thing. Unfortunately, this is too little for my standard, so I will give it a 2 for the level of originality.

On the characters, I liked the fact that John Saul managed to create some credible characters, at least in the first part of the story. Even though they are stereotypes, he really managed to do them closer to real persons with their own contradictions and thoughts. In the second part he focused more on building up the intensity of the thriller, plus it is very hard to do a believable monster character. So I will give it a 3 for characters.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, the novel is fairly simple: it delivers the story while making sure there is enough thriller emotion building up. It is also not difficult to read as it contains few references and those are from pop culture. Thus I will rate it with a 2 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility, I would prefer not to spoil the lecture of people that have not read it, so I will just say that the kind of monster that provokes havoc in this novel is plain fantasy. Apart from that, which I ignored in order to enjoy the rest of the novel, the story is consistent with itself. So my rating for credibility is 2.

The last criteria is edition. My ebook had a good pagination but there were quite some misspelled words, spaces where it should not be or none where they should have been. Despite that, I could read it easily, so I'll give it a 2.

To summarize, I liked this thriller especially because the author is writing better than the majority of writers that tried this genre. All in all, my final rating for it is 2.29, which I will round it to 2 on Goodreads system.

+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 2.29 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+

For more details on how I rated and reviewed this novel, please read these guidelines.

I really John Saul, so I'm not sure why I couldn't get into this book. I gave it a good try, though, and got half-way through it. Most of the time when I can't finish a book, I'll get rid of it right away, but I think I'll put this back on my shelves for another time. It was very disappointing to not want to finish this book.

NO ERA NADA DE LO QUE ME ESPERABA Y ME ENCANTO
ME GUSTARIA UNA SEGUNDA PARTE

Het verhaal had wel iets, maar er scheelde veel aan de schrijfstijl. De laatste paar hoofdstukken hadden naar mijn gevoel ook iets vroeger in het boek moeten komen, dan hadden ze de spanning verder opgedreven terwijl ze nu meer als een verklarende epiloog overkomen. Ik heb het wel uitgelezen, voornamelijk omdat het niet extreem lang was. Een andere boek van dezelfde auteur ga ik echter niet meteen vastnemen.

Pretty crappy, really. Doesn't ever seem to go anywhere, even though a bunch of people die.