Hour of the Witch - Chris Bohjalian

 

This story is set in Boston in 1662 and follows a young Puritan woman - Mary - as she struggles to find a happy life.  Mary is the second wife to Thomas who owns the local mill.  He's an upstanding member of the community and their life together started off well enough.  However, Thomas is becoming increasingly violent toward Mary and as much as she would like to leave this situation, there are laws to be followed.  Mary is set on navigating the complex waters of being an independent woman in 1662 but whispers of witchcraft follow her.  Mary must fight to be free from Thomas, free from the gallows, and possibly free of Boston forever.

TW/CW: domestic violence

This was a really interesting genre mashup of a book - historical fiction / domestic thriller / courtroom drama.  Historical fiction isn't really a go-to genre for me so I was really drawn in by the thriller and courtroom aspects.  I think Bohjalian does a good job of balancing the different aspects of the story.  In the acknowledgements at the end of the book, Bohjalian gives a list of his research materials into 17th century America, law, and the court system.  I'm no historian, so I can't say if every single detail is accurate, but there wasn't anything out of place that stuck out to me as a reader.  The narration style was a little more modern than the dialogue, but not in a jarring way.  It seemed like Bohjalian (and/or his editor) did a good job making sure to leave out any modern phrases or names for things.  The dialogue uses a lot of 'thine', 'thee', 'thy', etc type of language that did take some getting used to.   Since historical fiction isn't my usual genre, I don't know if this is a normal language choice for books set this far back in time, but it certainly made for an atmospheric read. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about this dialogue choice at the beginning, but after a few chapters, I had gotten used to it and it didn't slow down my reading or lessen my enjoyment at all.  

I really enjoyed the characters in this story and thought they were pretty well developed.  It really felt like the reader was just dropped into the story one day and started following Mary around from there.  We don't get a whole lot of backstory about the character relationships upfront other than the literal connections (X person is married to Y or A is best friends with B, etc).  But as the story develops and Mary interacts with more people, the backstory slowly comes out in dialogue or Mary thinking back to how things used to be a few years ago.  I think this is especially well done considering the amount of small town gossip and rumors that were just a matter of life back then.  I really liked how Mary would be thinking about how things would come across to anyone who might be watching and then, later, uses that to her advantage. There were a number of times where someone who Mary considered as a friend would be in on the gossip and might even believe the gossip to be true over what Mary would say.  I wish there would have been more of this gossip revolving around less serious situations or accusations such as maybe someone buying something unusual at the market or something.   I found all the connections and interpersonal dynamics fascinating.  I loved the role that family played in the story - both for character development as well as plot.  There's a big emphasis on family dynamics and family lines in this story.  Mary, being Thomas's second wife, is much younger than him and actually around the same age as his daughter from his first marriage.  Mary remarks toward the beginning of the book how difficult she found that dynamic of basically having to 'mother' a peer.  We also have Mary's parents in town and her father owns a respected shipping business that brings all sorts of goods from Europe and the Caribbean. 

Where I felt the book fell flat for me was the romance element.  Mary meets a new person in town one day and they have a very lightly flirtatious and brief conversation in town.  Later, when Mary is working through the divorce process, she thinks about how her life could be with this other man.  This person becomes pretty integral to the plot later on and while Mary's feelings for him grow, I just didn't get enough of their interactions together to really believe she would fall that hard for this man.  Now, I do understand that this book being set amongst 1662 Puritans means I'm not going to get the very direct and explicit flirting I get when I read contemporary romance but I just wanted some more conversations, maybe a brief hand holding when he's helping her down some steps or something like that.  I also would have liked his character to be a bit more developed which could have also been done through more conversations together. 

I think Bohjalian does a really great job at slowly building up the atmosphere and tension throughout the book.  There isn't much by way of action in this story, but there's a lot of smaller events that all culminate at the end.  I think the tension works really great in the courtroom scenes, especially.  We get all this buildup of each party gathering their witnesses and accounts before the trial, the whispers of the townspeople as Mary tries to go about her normal business, and then everyone is in one building together and the trial begins.  I did find the trial preparation sections to be a bit slow, but the actual trial made up for that and it was nice to have the sort of background information from all those previous scenes.  Mary is the center of 2 trials in this book and I think the courtroom suspense parts of this book are the real highlight.  Since we are only following Mary's story, it is really easy to get emotionally invested in the trial outcome.  As much as we're rooting for her to come out on top, the reader knows that many of these types of trials did not work out in the woman's favor so we know the outcome could go either way.  I found the domestic thriller aspects to be pretty light so most of the drama and thrills for me came via the courtroom scenes.

Overall, a really well balanced genre mashup of a story. Engaging characters, interesting courtroom drama, and a good amount of ye old dialogue for atmosphere. 

Thanks to NetGalley and DoubleDay Books for the ARC in exchange for review

Expected publication date is May 4, 2021

Buried - Sue Rovens

 

This horror novel follows multiple characters in a small town and the events that surround the town's funeral home.  The events of the book kick off with Pris, a 50 year old single woman, who has developed overtime a hoarding tendency in her home.  Note: Pris is never formally diagnosed, but her friend does mention her home turning into a hoarder's house.  Pris's dog, Weenie, starts bringing home unexpected finds from the funeral home and cemetery next door. We also follow funeral director Gerald and his two employees as he tries to keep his unconventional business practices under wraps.  Small town domestic life gets a horrific spin in this story and everything connects back to Sommerville Funeral Home.

TW/CW: necrophilia, hoarding, gore, cheating 

This book was only 224 pages, but it sure managed to pack a lot into a relatively small space.  I think a lot of my issues with the book could have been alleviated if we had about 100 more pages, but I still liked this book a good amount.  The main issue I think could have been fixed with a longer page count is the telling vs showing.  During the beginning 20% or so, when we are being introduced to all the different characters, there is a lot of telling in the narrative.  This makes sense from an outside perspective because we have a lot of information we need to know about these characters and very few pages in which to get that information to the reader.  However, I think the overall narrative would have been greatly improved if the book was longer and we were able to get some more showing to find out aspects of these characters.  Even if the page count were to remain the same, I still think we could have traded off some of the telling portions for more showing.  For example, we know from the get-go that Pris has a hoarding problem because we are told a description of her home and how cluttered and, in places, dirty it is.  However, I think it would have been a lot more impactful if we were to have a quick few lines showing maybe Pris coming home from work and accidentally knocking over a few piles as she tries to squeeze down the path in the living room.  

I really liked the characters in this story - I thought they were all interesting and complex.  I really liked how the characters were older which I think is just a perspective that we don't get a whole lot at least in the books I usually pick up.  Pris is described in the book's summary as being middle-aged and I was really expecting her to be like 35ish so I was pleasantly surprised when she was 50.  I also loved her friendship with Wanda and Kelly and how supportive the women were of each other.  Especially how Wanda kept trying to help Pris even with Pris didn't want to be friends anymore.  The men of the book - Gerald the funeral director, Ethan who is Kelly's husband, and Bruce the necrophiliac funeral home worker - are unique in their own ways.  I do wish we would have gotten more of all the characters interacting more before the main events of the book kicked off especially since it is a small town.  I think that could have been a good way to get some extra characterization in, especially if there were tensions already there for other reasons.  I thought Pris was a very sympathetic character and her hoarding was handled pretty sensitively.  I can't speak to the representation of a hoarder or living in a hoarding situation, but from what I've seen and read in other books this was right along the same lines.  Later in the story, we do get a bit of detail into Pris and the way her mind works to somewhat explain how her home got to this state.  I think the most powerful part was how helpful and accepting her friends were when she was struggling.

Plot wise, there was just a bit too much happening in such a short amount of pages for me to really feel satisfied with how things turned out.  It was almost like once we got started, the book was wrapping up.  I normally reach for books that are at least 300 pages but 400ish seems to be my personal sweet spot for thrillers, specifically.  Since I don't normally read shorter fiction, this might be 100% a me-issue, but I had an issue with the pacing.  This book felt like the first half of a really solid thriller.  We get a good amount of set up, some initial conflicts that build tension and throw other plot points into action, and then there's a big event that ends up as the catalyst for all the different plot threads to come together.  The 'big event' happened around the 75% mark in this book and the story wrapped up pretty quickly from that point. I was expecting to have to sit in the consequences of that event for longer, see how characters might initially try to deal with the fall out.  I think the general pacing out of the different events was good for most of the story but it just felt rushed and cleared up too quickly.  In my opinion, I think not having the characters sit in this reality more really put a bit of a damper on the potential character development and conflict that the story could have had.

Finally, let's talk about the horror aspects.  For me, this book was a pretty good level of gore but I was surprised there wasn't more.  I know everyone has their own limits to horror, especially gore, but I felt this was a pretty mainstream level of gore that I think most readers would be okay with.  The descriptions were short and to the point and almost clinical in nature which was interesting.  I think because of these descriptions of the more gore heavy elements, the part that actually grossed me out the most was the descriptions of Pris's living situation.  This could just be me, but reading about mice running around and Pris's dirty bathrooms grossed me out significantly more than partially decomposed bodies (but again, I think mileage may vary on that point).  Now onto the sort of elephant in the room - the necrophilia.  We aren't given any real sort of reason behind why Bruce does the things he does to the bodies - it almost comes across as just a thing he does.  The necrophilia is on-page and I believe there are about 4 very short scenes where, again, the description is very clinical. Obviously, necrophilia is a very taboo subject and I didn't feel like it was glorified or glamorized in any way.  I do wish we would have gotten some more explanation in to Bruce's feelings or maybe how this all started for him, but there just wasn't enough book to explore all that.  It almost felt like it was added in as a plot device simply to further the story (Bruce needed to have a reason to be alone with a body late at night for certain plot events to happen).  Because of this and because of the types of descriptions we get of these scenes, it would be pretty easy for a reader to skip over these mentions if they wanted to and it wouldn't cause them to lose out on any of the other plot points in the book.

Overall, a pretty good horror book for me.  I didn't find it any more horrifying or gory than a slasher movie or episode of a show like Criminal Minds.  I like the characters and thought the plot was really good at ramping up the tension.  However, I think the book was trying to do just a big too much in the low page count and I think it could have been much more successful with around another 100 pages added in. 

Thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for the ARC in exchange for review.

Publication date was April 21, 2019

The Serial Killer's Wife - Alice Hunter

 

This book follows Beth and Tom - a couple living in an idyllic small town with a young daughter.  They seem to have the perfect life until the police show up one night and bring Tom in for questioning about the disappearance and possible death of his previous girlfriend. We follow them through the investigation as truths are revealed and the small town gossip and judgement start up.  

I was initially very interested in the premise but the actual book didn't end up working for me.  It was okay in general, but there were just so many times were I thought we were going in a certain direction and then it ended up going another way which ended up being extremely disappointing.  It was almost like every time we could have either turned the tension up to an 11, the book instead decided to turn things down to a 4.  This might just be because I've read so many thrillers that I could see the possibilities of where I would have preferred it to go, so maybe newer thriller readers wouldn't have these same complaints.  I read this about a month before the publication date and it is currently sitting at a 3.80 out of 5 on Goodreads with 301 ratings so overall it seems readers are liking the book.  

My expectation for this story was for it to be a dual POV between the police and Beth where they're investigating Tom/Beth and Beth is trying to either hide evidence or prove her innocence. That is not how the story played out. I was expecting much more of a police procedural element and for the suspicion on Beth to be pretty strong.  That was not the case. I found this to be a pretty standard domestic thriller which wasn't what I was expecting.  In fact, I sort of hesitate to use the word 'thriller' because it wasn't very thrilling or even suspenseful.  We do jump POVs between Beth, Tom, and some other characters in the past, but we are mostly in Beth's head as she tries to figure out what to do now that Tom has been arrested.  I do like how in the chapters in the past, we get very quickly changing POVs which I think worked really well especially because those chapters had a lot of tension and conflict.  I would have liked to have spent more time in this past timeline to get a better feel of Tom and Beth when they first met and in their early relationship stage.  It really comes down to my own expectations vs what ended up on the page and in the end I was pretty disappointed

The part of the book that worked for me the least was the characters.  I felt that pretty much all of the characters were really uneven in their characterization and because of this, it really read to me like a first draft where the author was trying to figure out how much suspicion/guilt/etc each character should have.  I also think there were a good number of side characters that could have had a much greater role in the plot but instead ended up being used only when needed.  For example, Beth has someone working for her at her cafe and that person ends up connected to the investigation in a way.  I initially thought that this would cause more tension in Beth's life or be a point where Beth realizes the scope of this investigation and how it could hurt her business.  However, it ends up that this person just keeps working at the cafe and basically starts running it on her own so Beth can deal with everything going on in her life.  It just felt like so much potential was there for deeper character relationships or an increase in tension and I was disappointed when nothing really came of it.  Another example of poor characterization was Beth.  Her father left her family when she was a child and it left a pretty big impact on Beth.  It is mentioned off hand a few times that Beth has abandonment issues, but we never really see how they impact her on the page.  In fact, most of the book is spent with Beth more or less being alone after Tom is arrested.  We find out why that is in the big twist at the end, but in the moment we don't see Beth struggling with being away from Tom very much at all so I kept being confused about her apparent 'abandonment issues'.  Even if she had worked through those issues via therapy or something earlier in life, I would think that a big event like this would bring those feelings back up again and she would end up manifesting those fears in some way.

So if I didn't like the tropes, the POV, or the characters, then why did I keep reading it?  Well, I asked myself the same question when I finished the book yesterday and the answer is - the police investigation.  I wanted to know if Tom was guilty and if so, how would he get caught.  The investigation isn't very active on the page, but the police do drop in pretty often to inform Beth of developments or we get case updates via Tom's lawyer. Thinking back over the plot points of the book, just when I was starting to get bored there would be a new development in the case.  We do get a little taste of a police procedural because we get details and discussions about things such as how long they're allowed to hold Tom without charging him, how the different court dates work, etc, but I think those elements are such as small part of the overall plot that even people who don't like police procedurals would still like this book.  Now, I was expecting this book to go full Criminal Minds - like bodies under the floorboards type of plot and we don't get anything close to that crazy (in my opinion).  I think having 'serial killer' in the title did make me think of a certain type of serial killer (Dahmer, Bundy, Gein, etc) which is 100% not the type of killer and not the type of investigation we get in the book.

The one thing I thought worked well was (surprisingly) the ending.  And I think the reason it worked so well is that it cleared up some of my issues with Beth's characterization as well as showing the reader behind the curtain a bit of what had been happening over the past year and a half.  We got a good amount of time after the big climax to see how all the dust settled which I always appreciate and the ending, while surprising, didn't pull any tricks or gotchas on the reader.  When the big final twist was revealed, it was like the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place and now we could see the whole picture of this story and I really like that sort of ending.  I didn't see the twist coming at the end partly, I think, because of my issues with the characterization but I could see this being the type of ending that could be guessed given the appropriate foreshadowing (and maybe some readers will be able to guess it).  I personally like when I can guess at least part of the twist correctly but it isn't a requirement for me to enjoy an ending.

Overall, this story just fell flat for me - uneven characters, very light tension, and lacking the tropes I expected from the description/title.  What did work was the investigation thread and the ending, which are pretty important to get right in a book like this.  I think newer thriller readers would have a good time with this (or maybe just readers who aren't as well versed in serial killer media as I am) because they won't come in with as many expectations as I did.

Thanks to NetGalley and Avon Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Expected publication date May 27, 2021.

Mirrorland - Carole Johnstone

 

Mirrorland is a psychological suspense/thriller following Cat returning to her home after her twin sister, El, disappears while sailing.  El and her husband, Ross, have bought and now live in El and Cat's childhood home.  The home where El and Cat would spend hours playing in Mirrorland - an imaginary world shaped by the books their mother would read to them.  Not long after Cat's arrival, she starts receiving clues to a treasure hunt like the ones El would send her on while they were growing up.  There are clues tucked away in almost every room of the house and they lead back to the world under the stairs - Mirrorland - and unlock the truth that Cat had long forgotten.  TW/CW: child abuse, on page physical abuse, off page incest, suicide 

This story was absolutely fantastic.  It did take me a bit to get into it (which I'll expand upon later), but once I was in, I was in all the way.  My absolute favorite part was the pacing - it was immaculate.  It was the kind of book that, when I was done, I put it down and just thought back over the whole story and how everything came together at just the right pace for me to be 100% completely enthralled.  The thriller beats are timed out perfectly for my taste and the pacing worked with the information we learn from the book in order to expertly ramp up the tension.  This is Johnstone's debut novel and, to me, it reads like a seasoned thriller writer.  The book opens up with Cat on her way from LA to Scotland so we are right in the middle of the action.  There's no sitting around getting comfy with Cat before she finds out the news about her sister going missing - we're just thrust right into the story from the very beginning.  From a quick skim of other reviews, it seems like most people put down the book because they couldn't get past the beginning.  I had a bit of a rough time with the first 10-15% but once I got past that part, the book just flew by.  It has been a while since I've had a book where it felt like I couldn't turn the pages fast enough and this one hit that exact target for me.  I think the scavenger hunt Cat goes on gives a natural cadence to the story and really helps push along the narrative.  At the same time, once Cat finds each clue, she often has a moment of reflection where she remembers something about her childhood and these quiet moments are really powerful in the context of the larger investigation.

My issue with the beginning wasn't the pacing - it was the writing style.  This story has a very fantastical, some might say flowery, narrative style.  The style is consistent through the book, but I  found it the heaviest at the beginning and it leaned a bit too much toward the literary fiction side of prose for my personal liking.  Very detailed descriptions, long paragraphs detailing Cat's feelings and thoughts and her surroundings.  I know some readers will really enjoy this writing style, but it just isn't for me.  However, once we got past that first 15% or so, the mystery side of the plot really picks up and it feels like the narrative has more to focus on rather than just feelings and setting. Besides the literary fiction type style, Johnstone also had a really interesting way of blending past and present.  We get flashbacks of Cat and El as children growing up in this house and the games they'd play, but they aren't always formatted like normal flashbacks.  It really felt like we were in Cat's brain as she sort of gets lost in her memories and then comes back to the present day. So there aren't always scene breaks or a new chapter to delineate what timeline we're in.  I really enjoyed this narrative choice, but it won't work for all readers.  Also, in these flashbacks, it is very obvious that Cat's childhood imagination was very robust.  The descriptions of her surroundings and the activities her and El would do leaned quite heavily into a fantastical almost magical realism sort of realm.  I think this choice was excellent and really helped ground the reader in the same world that Cat grew up in and in the mindset that she has in childhood. I'd say the writing style takes some time to get used to and sink into, but I really think it is a fantastic choice overall for the story and 100% worth the effort it might take getting through the first little bit of the book.

I really enjoyed the characters in this story and the way we slowly peel back the layers of characterization.  Cat hasn't talked to her sister in 12 years so, in a way, we're discovering who El is right along side Cat as she tries to figure out what happened. Also, since this is the first time Cat has been back to Scotland in 12 years, she is sort of rediscovering parts of herself the longer she stays in town. I really liked how the scavenger hunt clues slowly revealed more and more information about their relationship and their upbringing in a very logical and methodical way.  There are times where Cat will remember events one way and then find out some information that re-frames or causes her to re-examine her memories and what she thought was true.  The clues to the hunt lead Cat to pages of El's diary that she kept while they were growing up so we slowly see how different the two sisters grow to be.  These diary entries I think worked very effectively as lenses into the past and gave the narrative a lot of jumping off points for more flashbacks into their childhood.  Cat and El knew Ross growing up as well so we also get views of him as a child and slowly find out the circumstances behind how he and El came to be married.  I did wish the other characters in the story were a little more fleshed out and a bit more integrated into Cat's investigation but that didn't bother me too much. 

Finally, let's talk about the ending in as general terms as possible.  The majority of this book is Cat following the clues in the scavenger hunt and working through her memories of the past along with reconnecting with Ross (who was her friend growing up as well). But once we get to the last third of the book, all the strings start to get pulled and it feels like the story starts to unravel in the best way possible.  Cat is finding gaps in her memories and the scavenger hunt is helping her fill them in which leads Cat to re-examine what she thought was true.  How childhood trauma affects memories is a big theme in the last third of the book and it was fascinating for the reader to also have to change what we thought was true based on the information Cat is finding.  It was heartbreaking to watch Cat grapple with finding out these hard truths and realize that her memories aren't whole but I thought it was well done and not over the top.  In the acknowledgements at the end of the book, Johnstone does note the doctor she spoke with who studies childhood trauma while conducting her research for this book.  And while I can't speak on the representation from a personal standpoint, to me as a reader it didn't come across as gimmicky or played up for drama, it felt realistic and a logical explanation given the events that happened.  I did appreciate how we get a lot of explanation and resolution after the final conflict so we can really see how Cat is doing after finding out all this information.  By the end, I did find myself slightly more interested in finding out the truth about what happened in their childhood more than what happened to El but the two plot threads are connected in the end so it was satisfying on both counts.  The one last twist was interesting but did feel a tad bit too convenient for my liking but I don't think it cheapened the overall narrative at all and I do think most readers will like it.  I found the ending 10% to mirror the beginning 10% in that we are back in Cat's head and while she is physically going a lot of places and doing a lot of things, we get more of that literary fiction type of description as she works through the last few activities of the book. It felt like a very much needed long cool down after a very high stakes and high emotion third act. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this story.  The narrative style was unique and really fit the overall plot and mood of the story, the characters were complex and evolved during the course of the book, and the ending was incredibly well paced and plotted.  I do think the narrative style can be hard to get into at first, but I think it is worth pushing through if possible to get to the body of the story because the payoff is 100% worth it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Publication date is April 20, 2021.

Romance Wrap-up 3/16/21 - 4/15/21

 A Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Christina C Jones

This is the first book in the Serendipitous Love series and follows florist shop owner Simone and coffee shop owner Roman.  The two own businesses on the same street, but meet by chance when Roman comes into Simone's shop to help his friend buy flowers for his wife.  The two have instant chemistry but also some personal baggage that threatens their relationship before it really can begin.  I liked all the pieces of this book, but needed the pacing to slow way down.  I thought the conflict was interesting and handled well, I loved the side characters, Simone and Roman had a great amount of chemistry.  But I just needed an extra 100 pages where the reader can have some breathing room.  The relationship gets physical really quickly and then a reveal has Simone pushing Roman away.  He then, over the course of a month, shows Simone what kind of guy he is and is proving to her that she can trust him.  I wanted to see more of that month!  We get a few little tidbits about how he would walk her home every night and they slowly got to know each other more, but we only get those tidbits over the course of a page or two.  I wanted chapters of a more slow-burn build up to get them back to where they were. Also, later in the book where there's a big conflict, the reader knows why Simone is so upset, and I think she mentioned her past history to Roman once, but I was expecting much more conversation about her past as an explanation of why she feels the way she does about the situation.  Since Simone's history never really comes up on page between her and other characters, it was a bit strange to me to have it be in the book at all.  I knew from the page count (about 260) that this book would be a bit fast paced for me, but the other books in the series are around 100 pages longer and even though I know each book in this series is a stand alone romance, I still like to read as many books in a series as possible.  I really enjoyed the writing and plotting, I just wanted some pieces to be more fleshed out which I hope I'll get with the other books in the series.

Dirty Player - Mira Lyn Kelly

This story is a friends to lovers sports romance that follows NHL player Greg and NFL reporter Julia.  During their senior year of high school, they agreed that if they were both single at the 10 year reunion that they would finally kiss. Reunion day is here and there are no significant others.  After years of friendship, the kiss was a Pandora's box and the two fall hard.  Only problem is Julia's personal rule of not dating anyone in the sports sphere so it doesn't tarnish her professional image. This book was super sweet, swoony, and sexy in all the ways I love.  Only problem was that I wanted more build up and exploration of their friendship before they get together.  This book is about 200 pages long, which is 100 pages shorter than my usual preferred length of romance.  I wanted them interacting a bit more together before the reunion, maybe going out with friends or she comes to one of his games and the two hang out afterward.  I also think Julia's personal abandonment issues could have been much more fleshed out.  It really didn't feel like she was having any issues until the very end when suddenly everything was going wrong.  I wanted more little issues that get resolved quickly to build up the tension.  Once Greg and Julia are together, I really love how sweet Greg is.  He's obviously 100% into Julia and wants the relationship to work no matter what.  I thought their chemistry was great and I liked how supportive their friend groups were to them.

 

Tempted - Ava Harrison

 This story follows recovering addict Bailey as she tries to get her life back on track.  Asking for a favor from her sister's fiance, she gets a job at Silver - a high end club run by Drew (who is no stranger to drugs or their downsides himself).  The two start working together and are drawn together but aspects of their pasts that they thought they had dealt with come back with a vengeance.   TW/CW: drug use, drug abuse, relapse, overdose.  I knew that Bailey was a recovering addict when I picked this book up, but I wasn't expecting just how much that fact would affect the story.  I did find the way that addition was handled in this book to be pretty well done.  Bailey is actively in recovery and attends NA meetings (she's 2 years sober at the beginning of the story).  We see staying sober is a struggle for her, at times, but Drew's love doesn't 'fix' her.  She stays sober for herself and both her and Drew know that the only way for an addict to stay in recovery is to do it for themselves and no one else (although Drew does have a bit of a savior complex that I didn't love).  I do wish we would have gotten a bit more build up with Bailey and Drew's relationship.  It felt like as soon as they were alone at work they just couldn't keep their hands off each other and the relationship grew from there.  I really liked Bailey's friendship with her coworker but it felt like as soon as she and Drew got together, we didn't get much of her outside relationships.  I also wanted more from Bailey's sister and her fiance since they were a key reason why Bailey ended up working at Silver in the first place.  I did like Drew and Bailey together and thought that their chemistry was really well developed but I would have liked more development in other parts of the story as well.

Baby, It's Cold Outside - Kait Nolan

This story follows former Army Ranger Harrison and thriller writer Ivy as the two cross paths on what they both planned would be isolation get-aways.  Harrison rescues Ivy after a car crash and the two end up snowed in together at Harrison's cabin.  The two have more in common than they initially expect and quickly get to knowing each other more. But when the snow clears, they both need to come to terms with their own internal battles and figure out how to live their lives outside the cabin.  I really enjoyed this read.  I've been in a bit of a romance slump the last half of March and into this first half of April so this quick and pretty straightforward read ended up being really refreshing.  It is only 200 pages, which is usually too short for my preference but I think the length ended up just about perfect for the plot.  There wasn't a lot of angst or conflict between the two characters and the one conflict that does come up is solves pretty easily because these two actually talk to each other and just explain what happened. I really enjoy my lumberjack heroes and cozy cabin settings so I was pretty much sold from the get go.  I think Harrison and Ivy just really clicked together for me from the start and they had such great chemistry both in and out of bed. 

Blood Parish - E. J. Findorff

 

This mystery crime thriller follows FBI agent Angel Blondeaux as she returns home to rural Moreau Parish where the Blondeaux family's crime empire is woven into the fabric of the town.  Her grandmother is the matriarch of the family and all Blondeauxs - except for Angel - have a role in the crime family.  Angel was all but banished when she left to join the FBI but, now, the mysterious death of her aunt brings Angel back to face her family.  The FBI hope she can get information about the family's business.  As Angel digs through her aunt's house that was left to Angel in the will, she starts to unearth secrets decades old - including hints to the whereabouts of a school bus full of high school athletes that disappeared 30 years ago.

 Right at the start, I want to say that I absolutely loved this book. It was dark, twisty, atmospheric, and thrilling.  I'm a big watcher of crime TV shows and this book read like a season of a show like True Detective.  While Angel is an FBI agent and she is technically on assignment, since she's a bit  undercover, it didn't read like a procedural.  It really read like a small town secrets sort of thriller that really amped up to more like an action movie at the end. 

For me, the setting was key for this story and it really paid off.  I love it when the setting of a book is so well developed and described that it really feels like the author knows it inside and out.  After finishing the book, I looked at the author's information and Findorff was born and raised in New Orleans, graduated from the University of New Orleans, and served six years in the Louisiana National Guard.  This isn't to say the book is loaded down with a ton of extra description, but rather that the descriptions were so particular that they really gave the most bang for their buck on the page.  The setting also has all the built in tension potential of a small town gossip mill.  As someone who is from a small town, I can really appreciate the little comments about "oh X mentioned they saw Y there" or "go ask A, I'm sure they'll tell you B" where everyone knows just enough of everyone else's business to be annoying.  Add to that setting the fact that the Blondeaux family pretty much runs the town and knows everyone's business and it is a perfect storm of drama, backstabbing, secret keeping, and deal making.

I found the characters in this story to be well developed and intriguing.  I loved Angel as a main character with her sharp wit and laid back calculating of situations.  It was really interesting to get in her head as she was dealing with the conflicts in the story and navigating the relationships with the people in the town.  The other member of the Blondeaux family were also really interesting, especially how many of them owned businesses that were fronts for illegal activity at the same time as providing legitimate services for the other members of the town.  The sort of moral dilemmas or cognitive dissonance that some characters have was fascinating.  No one argues that the Blondeaux family aren't criminals, but they also support the community (as long as everyone stays in line).  I also loved how the family was a matriarchy with the power passed on from mother to daughter which was a refreshing take on typical criminal enterprises.  We do meet a pretty large cast of characters, but they are introduced pretty slowly so I never got confused about who each character was.  However, one part that threw me off a little is that the first half of the book was told from Angel's point of view and then we started getting other points of view around the midpoint.  I don't mind multiple POVs in my thrillers and I understand the reason why we needed these other view points but it was just a bit jarring.  I wish we would have gotten some other characters earlier so it wouldn't be such a change after I had settled into Angel's character so much.

The main part I didn't love about this story was the romance.  Angel is single when she arrives in town and strikes up a romance with the local lawyer who drew up Angel's aunt's will.  They start off fine with some light flirting but I really didn't get any chemistry at all from them. Now the romance wasn't much of a plot point in that there isn't much conflict brought about by their relationship so it really felt very surface level.  I do read a lot of romance so maybe my romance-meter is a little skewed, but I really just couldn't believe these two actually had feelings for each other.  After finishing the book, it feels like the romance was just to give him a reason to be integrated into Angel's investigation so I personally think a better way would be for maybe them to become friends. I'm pretty sure all of the plot points, more or less, could have stayed the same if these two were just friends instead.  I really enjoy romantic suspense novels and romance subplots in my thrillers so I was a little bummed by the fact that I didn't get a whole lot of feelings from their relationship.  The two characters do tell each other (and the reader) that they do like each other so I think this one plot point fell into the telling side rather than the showing side so I just took the characters at their word and went on with the story.

I really enjoyed the overall mystery thread and how everything comes together at the end.  When the bus full of high school boys went missing originally there was an investigation but no answers were found.  We are also told there have been other investigations into other criminal activities over the years, but nothing has ever stuck to the Blondeaux family so Angel's goal is pretty much to get any information she can that could make something stick to the family.  She knows the family is pretty tight lipped about their activities and sees the assignment as more or less a dead end but she agrees and slowly starts pulling on threads, seeing what she can get to unravel.  At one point, she even admits to the reader that she is basically asking questions that she know will draw attention to see what she can get to happen.  The way the puzzle pieces come together is really satisfying and while the investigation takes logical steps when Angel decides to who to talk to or where to go next, there are some reveals that are still surprising. Pretty much the last 25% of the book I couldn't turn the pages fast enough and kept gasping while reading. 

Overall, this was a fantastically crafted crime thriller that felt like I was watching a really good season of television.  Surprising reveals, complex characters, and an atmospheric setting - I can't recommend this enough.

I received a free ARC of Blood Paris from Book Sirens and  I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Expected publication date is May 31, 2021.  

The Hunting Party - Lucy Foley

 

This mystery/thriller follows a group of friends on an annual New Years Eve vacation to a remote hunting lodge in Scotland.  Told from multiple points of view and with flashbacks, we learn more about the characters and how their relationships have evolved over the past 10 years since being in school together. What starts out as a leisurely vacation turns deadly when a snow storm strands the group and one person disappears and is found dead.  The snow storm blocks all means in or out of the area so the group is forced to look within to find the murder trapped among them.

I read Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None last month and absolutely loved it.  I believe that was my first closed circle mystery and after this one, I think these are becoming a new favorite flavor of mystery. I really like the immediate tension and suspicion that this type of story structure naturally brings out.  That being said, this didn't exactly work 100% for me but it was still a really fun read.  

My favorite aspect of this book was the cast of characters.  We get the perspectives of the group of friends as well as the two workers who live at the lodge full time.  The characters all alternate chapters and we get their feelings and actions in the days leading up to the death as well as reflections of their past.  I thought the characters were diverse in their feelings and relationship dynamics.  The main friend group were all upper middle class  whose problems boiled down most of the time to 'rich people problems'.  I know some people would be put off by that, but I found the interpersonal relationships to be fascinating in a sort of Mean Girls kind of way.  Our initial view of all the friends are pretty positive, but we quickly find out that they aren't as chummy as they pretend to be.  I also found the two staff members at the lodge to be really interesting - they both have pretty dark backstories that explain why they would choose a job where they are pretty much isolated from society most of the year.  I wish we would have gotten more chapters from their perspective of the friend group but the whole book takes place over the course of about 4 days so space was pretty limited.  This is one of those books where most, if not all, of the characters are unlikable which I really like.  We also don't find out who dies until well into the book so we see all these different potential motives between the different characters and we just have to go along for the ride to see how everything ends up.  This was really fun to guess along and try to decide which of the motives were potentially strong enough that someone ends up dead.

The setting in these isolated, closed circle mysteries is really key to how believable the plot ends up being.  In this case, I really enjoyed the hunting lodge as a setting.  It is super atmospheric, dark, and creepy which is the perfect contrast to what started out as a fun holiday away with friends.  We do get some scenes of the characters walking around the grounds and there is one scene where they go out hunting deer (and successfully kill one) but I think more could have been done with the landscape.  I think a lot of the tension comes from the interpersonal conflicts that arise in the group so it feels like a bit of a lost opportunity for some man vs nature tension to be in the book as well.  I do like how we get the backstory of the lodge which is dark and bloody in its own way.  I think if there were like 2 fewer characters and about 10% more interaction with the outdoors it would have been perfect.  The lodge is a really interesting mix of modern and rural.  For example, they do hunt deer for food and population control but they can also catch a train into the city to pick up more luxury items. Also, the lodge and cabins are all recently built and are furnished well.  One of the staff members thinks about how the city people come up to the lodge with their luxury outdoor wear (boots, coats, etc) but those brands don't actually hold up to real wilderness weather.  Again, I think there was a good amount of opportunity for more tension and conflict with the setting but most of the time it wasn't explored as much as I would have liked. 

The main plot is where this story fell down a few pegs for me.  As I mentioned before, I really liked finding out all the different motives that the characters may have against other characters, but once we find out who the victim is, I feel like it defeated the point of all that build up.  I think it would have been more suspenseful if we didn't find out who died until the past timeline had caught up to present day and then we go full steam ahead into the end of the book.  I also found the investigation to be pretty lacking in substance, mostly due to the time constraints of the book.  I feel like the chapters we get from when after the body is discovered are pretty low stakes until the very end climax of the story.  I would have liked more of an active investigation and more red herrings since one character is, sort of, investigating what happened.  I found the story to float in a weird middle between being a procedural and more of a character study.  The reader knows various reasons why the victim might have been killed, but the group of friends just thinks the person is missing so they aren't really turning on each other or questioning motives which would be fine but when the other characters are half investigating what happened, it made everything feel underdeveloped.  I also guessed the twists ahead of time, but only because there were just one too many hints or mentions of a particular thing.  Once or twice and my brain just thinks that's background info or world building but mention that same aspect a few more times and alarm bell start going off.  It felt a little too heavy handed right at the end like *hint hint* remember about X? *hint hint* X might be important soon *hint hint*.  Maybe readers who don't read as many thrillers wouldn't pick up on these same hints.  I don't mind guessing twists ahead of time but I do get a little annoyed when they feel too obvious in the actual story.  I want my mysteries to make me feel smart, not like I'm taking a reading comprehension test.

I wanted to briefly mention my feelings about the actual solution to the book.  This book does use the trope of mental illness in the solution and while I didn't find it to be an exploitative use of that trope, I do know some readers prefer to stay away altogether.  We also get an epilogue where we find out how the killer and some of the other characters end up a few months after the events of the book so we get a bit of closure that way.

I listened to the audio book of this while I was doing yard work and it is a full voice cast which I really like.  I really have a hard time with remembering character names and in an audio book I can't easily flip back and forth to remember who X character is.  But with the different narrators I could immediately remember who was who (even if I couldn't remember exact names).  I also found Foley's writing style to be really readable (or, I guess, listenable).  I think she does an excellent job at grounding the reader before going off with the rest of the chapter which I find an imperative skill to have for multi-POV books.  I didn't find the prose overly flowery or overly descriptive but Foley seemed to have a way of telling me the exact right amount of information for me to get a quick sketch of where the character was or what was happening at the beginning of the chapters. I also found the narrative style to be a bit different with each character as far as what types of details they would notice or how their inner monologues sounded which, again, helped me keep this whole cast of characters distinct from one another. 

Overall, a pretty fun mystery where we follow a bunch of rich jerks as they try to have a good vacation in a remote hunting lodge in the middle of winter.  Backhanded complements, judgemental looks, and angst abounds.  Wish the actual murder and subsequent murder investigation heightened the tension instead of somewhat lessening it.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix

 

This book is exactly what you think it is.  A suburban woman's book club that must protect their community from a vampire.  Literally.  We follow Patricia, a former nurse and now stay at home mom, as she navigates the community in the new town her family has moved to.  This seemingly perfect town outside Charleston, South Carolina has been a life goal but now that she's achieved it, she is faced with the reality of a distant husband, cranky teenage kids, and a constant revolving list of chores.  Her one reprieve is the local book club that reads true-crime and thrillers - a true escape from her otherwise boring life.  Boring, that is, until a tall, dark, and handsome stranger comes to town and charms everyone.  But when children start going missing, Patricia and the book club must gather up the strength to fight for her family and her community.

This book was released about a year ago and was one of the most talked about books in the bookish circles I follow.  It sounded really interesting and I was pretty convinced I would love it but it was so hyped up that I just couldn't bring myself to actually pick it up.  As a personal rule with any media (movies, TV shows, books, etc), if something is so widely talked about and so widely loved, I wait at least 6 months to let the hype die down.  I don't enjoy having my expectations set so high that the actual product would be an almost guaranteed let down. So I put this book on my TBR list and went about my life until enough time had passed that I felt I could give the book an honest chance.  Am I a year late to the party? Yep. Do I regret it? Nope.  Because this book ended up really working for me on almost every point.  But it wasn't exactly what I was expecting from all the hype so I think if I had read it a year ago, I think I would have ended up liking it but being disappointed overall.  However, giving it the chance to breathe means this book is probably making my top list of favorites for the year.  

The characters were my absolutely favorite parts of this book.  There are a lot of characters, which I normally struggle with, but they were all so distinct and filled particular roles in the story that I was able to keep everyone straight and I didn't feel like there were unnecessary characters just floating about.  Patricia is our main character and the book club and her family are the main secondary characters that we get the most information about.  Then we have the book club member's families and other neighbors that Patricia interacts with on occasion who aren't really fleshed out more than their relationship and maybe their job.  Since we are centered on Patricia for the story and it is told in third person close perspective, most of the information we have about other characters are based on what she sees or knows about them which was really interesting.  I did like how, throughout the course of the story, we got character development from all the women in the book club and while, at times, the development was frustrating to read about, I think all the characters stayed wholly authentic to their own arcs.  We start off with Patricia being a bit judgemental about the other women and how they handle themselves but as she becomes better friends, they really start to feel like a support system and not just neighborhood acquaintances.

The overall plot and themes the book explored were also fantastic.  In a forward at the beginning, Hendrix explains how he thought of the idea for the book and the part that stuck with me was the line about how he wanted to see his mom vs Dracula - it was such a great image to keep in mind when reading the book.  I find horror books fascinating on a thematic level because they are often lenses through which we can explore deep fears, either personal fears or societal fears. In the case of this story, we see examples of white, upper class people wanting to use their privilege for good until those actions would threaten their own life.  There's a really interesting exploration and examination of what it means to be an 'outsider' or and 'other' in communities.  These themes are laid out, but Hendrix isn't super heavy handed with them so they didn't distract from the overall enjoyment of the book.  Instead, the book leaves room for reader introspection and, toward the end, we can see the result and 'lessons' the characters learned through how the events of the book were handled.  I think these sorts of themes are most often talked about in books that get labeled as 'hard hitting contemporaries' and while all genres can have lesson or explorations of themes in them, I don't think examples like this book are talked about nearly as much.  And maybe that's because a smaller number of readers would pick up a book about vampires if they wanted a sort of social commentary type of reading experience or maybe because the lessons on how to act when a vampire comes to town aren't as immediately applicable to daily life. And even if we were to leave the themes out of the discussion, the plot of the book was great.  It was a fun ride and had enough secondary plot points and arcs that I was always engaged with the story.

The one aspect of this book that I didn't really like was the pacing in the second part of the book. There are a number of time jumps in the book, usually just skipping forward a month to the next book club meeting.  However, there is one larger jump in the middle of the book where we jump years into the future.  I get that this jump allowed us to see the extent of the results from the first half of the book.  We see how Patricia acts now and her relationships with her children and we see how the community has accepted and embraced this stranger and how he's helping their businesses.  So on a conceptual level, I understand it, but from a reader perspective, I wanted to see all of that development.  Patricia is a pretty broken person on the inside but she's putting on a good show for all these people and I wanted to see how she got to that point.  It felt like we had missed out on a lot of character growth for many of the characters and were just told that things are different now because of X.  But I wanted to see those gradual changes in attitudes and personal relationships.  The fact that the change was so sudden took me out of the story for a while and I had to readjust my perceptions and understanding of these characters before I could get completely immersed back into the story.  I would have preferred if we had a few smaller jumps of maybe 4 months at a time so the reader could have seen these changes and how they came about and how other characters reacted at the time. 

Finally, I do want to mention how perfectly bloody this book was for me.  I know that every person has their own personal limits to how much they can tolerate when it comes to blood and gore but I found that this book really had a perfect mix of psychological horror and physical horror.  I found this story to be like 85% psychological horror where we're following Patricia as she's working on her theories to what could be happening in her area and grappling with how absurd the information she's finding out actually is.  However, in that other 15%, Hendrix is pretty brutal in all the best ways.  The bloody scenes were very action heavy which I think ended up working very well so the gore never felt really overdone or like some sort of B-movie bloodbath.  I found these scenes to be dynamic and very clear on who was doing what and where everyone was so I was able to stay in the story and didn't have to re-read sections to figure out what was going on.  We get two main bloody scenes in the first 1/3 of the book and then we settle into Patricia's investigation and mostly some creepy psychological stuff happening.  The book finishes, however, with a real banger of a bloodbath.  Without getting into spoilers, I'll just say that I was both surprised and ecstatic that Hendrix went there with the ending - this is a vampire story afterall.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book - well rounded characters, suspenseful plot, balance of blood vs psychological horror.  Pacing in the second part of the book was a little bit of a miss for me, but didn't hinder my enjoyment overall too much.