Customer Reviews

Final Destination: Looks Could Kill

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sherry's modeling career has finally taken off. She is now one of the most beautiful women in the world, sought after by many. But her life changes when she gets a vision of the near future. (To know how and why, you will have to read the book.) Sherry knows the ship everyone is boarding will never get out of the harbor. Everyone, including herself, will die. Sherry tells all her friends and co-workers exactly what is about to happen. Several are convinced enough to stay off the ship and the group watches as the ship they were about to board goes down to a watery grave. Sherry is the only one harmed on the dock, hit by flying debris.

When Sherry finally gets released from the Burns Center she is still horribly scarred. Her career is over. Those she saved are waiting in her apartment with a surprise party and a gift. Only one out of the group ever came to visit Sherry during her months of hospitalization. That was Cabernet, the pregnant one. Then the group gives Sherry an extremely thoughtless gift, a Venetian mask molded to her previous facial features so her scarred face would not scare those around her.

Then DEATH offers Sherry a deal. DEATH will give Sherry back her full beauty and spare her life, if she kills her so called friends. Sherry must kill them in the order they were due to die months ago. With each death, some of her beauty will return. However, all must die before the baby of Cabernet is born.

***** As the reader, all I could think was that if her friends/co-workers had not ignored her or humiliated her, Sherry would never have agreed to help DEATH. This is part of the "Final Destination" series. But you do not need to have read the previous books. (I have not.) Each book is a story in itself. And oh! What a story this one is! This takes the "What If" question to a whole new level. Highly Recommended! *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

Sherry, one of a group of supermodels all named after various wines, is suddenly visited with a vision as she and the other models and their boyfriends get ready to board a cruise ship to celebrate a successful season. The models all heed her advice and don't get on the ship. All except the head of the modeling agency, Merlot, who arranged the party and she ignores Sherry's warning. Sure enough, before the ship leaves the harbor it is hit by a cigarette boat and begins to sink. All the models are so grateful that they listened to Sherry, even though they still don't understand how she really knew. Sherry is hurt badly by flying debris and remains in the hospital for some time in a coma. She has severe burns and it looks as if her modeling career is over.

Eventually Sherry regains consciousness but she is so marred that none of the other models really wants to look at her or be around her. She becomes depressed. What will she do without her good looks? Then Death visits her in human form and tells her there is a solution and she can get her looks back. Does Sherry want to take it?

Nancy A. Collins has written a thrilling science fiction novel about conceited women with deep insecurity about their looks and their abilities. They are all about themselves and how they appear to others. She develops the characters so well you feel as if you know them. All the brand name dropping got a bit tedious but actually, since they were models, name brands are what they are all about. It was a very entertaining novel and if bizarre is your thing, this is the book for you.

Reviewed by Alice Holman
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Other books in this series have left me extremely disappointed, so I was rather plesantly surprised when I got to the end of this book and found I was extremely hooked to the story and found the plot actually not half-bad.

Very simply put, this is the high-stakes world of fashion, media and limelight, where looks are everything and 'friends' are not as they seem. Backstabbing happens so often and you will not know who to trust.

A young model saves her friends from a ship's disaster and results in her own face getting horribly disfigured. To save her skin (literally), she makes a deal with the Grim Reaper to exchange her beauty for her friends' lives, in other words, if she helped the Reaper get rid of them and right the obstruction of death, he would restore her former beauty and let her live.

Each of the characters is well-developed and there is already a pre-existing story for each of them, which Nancy cleverly uses to get the reader to sympathise or understand, and then gruesomely kills them off. End of story. The ending I liked especially because it was clever, witty and very well-written without being melodramatic or even, sappy.

However, I thought the final twist was not as surprising or 'twist-y' as it could have been. It left me a little sore, wanting for more, but at the same time thankful that the journey had been completed. A piece of writing that can invoke such oxymoronic feelings in me definitely deserves these 5 stars.

This installment was the first one I read and I didn't want to stop reading the series when I finished with it. I finished this in a night because I could not put it down. Some parts, I'll admit, confused me on where everybody was and all, but (if that happens to you) keep reading and it'll all make sense eventually. I love the way some of the people died! I know that sounds horrible, but some of the deaths are great. I love the characters and the stories that go along with them. Nancy A. Collins wrote it nicely in the way that she introduced and gave the stories of the characters right before they died. I liked that and how it kept things organized. With books like these it's extremely easy to get unorginized and confuse everything, but with this book that wasn't the case. Definately my favorite of the series.

I didn't know what to expect when reading this. I was a fan of the movies and needed something to tie me over until the third one was released and I found this book.

Following the same theme as the movies, the highest fashionable models of New York escape a cruise liner accident when Sherry, one of the youngest models recieves a premonition. Tragically she is injured and her career as a model was sacrificed to save her fellow models.

Now death has given Sherry the opportunity to be spared her life and her modeling career in exhange for the model's lives. Will she take his offer or will she slip past death and trick him at his own game?

This book was full of great plot twists and elaborate death scenes from the very first page. The character development is dispursed throughout the novel so the plot begins from the beginning chapter. I would recommend this book to any one interested in the Final Destination Series or just looking for a good horror/thriller novel.

What I enjoyed most was the intra-relationships referred to by Alex Browning who pulled himself and others off of Flight 180, and then again by Kimberly who predicted the route 23 smash-up. This novel continues to develope the plot and characters from the first two movies two help unravel the mystery behind the premonitions seen by the young adults.

This addition to the Final Destination franchise just didn't make the cut for me. The premise of the book is similar to the other Final Destination books, a premonition by one of the due-to-die people helps him/her and his/her friends to cheat Death for the first time. After which, Death stalks them one by one to finish what Death has started in order not to mess up the Grand Design.

The writing per se is good. I liked how Nancy Collins showed the characters, the nuances to the background of each and the reason for their personality. However, I did not just buy the fact that Death would need the help of one of its supposed victims in order to take the lives of the others in the catastrophe and reward this person with the old life she craves for.

In this story, Death sought the help of Sherry, the premonition person, to help kill her friends by means of being a medium for Death's design in exchange for her old life back. The problem I have with this is mainly, by giving Sherry her life, Death would need to restructure the Grand Design also since Sherry would now be alive and could affect the lives of the other people around her (the survivors of the original Final Destination unknowingly saved the lives of many individuals who Death tried to kill in the pile-up of Final Destination 2). So if Death would not want to mess with his Grand Design, Sherry should also be killed. In addition to this, the possibility of Sherry getting pregnant and therefore adding another wrench to Death's Design.

I just think that the plot was not well thought of since the initial premise of protecting the Design is defeated by the derived method of protecting it.

Logic is just not found in the book.