Chasing the Boogeyman - Richard Chizmar

 

This mystery/true(ish) crime story is a really interesting work of metafiction.  The story takes place in the late 1980s with Richard Chizmar returning to his hometown for a few months before his upcoming marriage.  Days before his arrival, the first of a string of teenage girls are abducted and murdered - throwing the town into a panic of alarm system and handgun purchases.  Richard, working on developing a blossoming horror writing career, is intrigued with the murders and finds himself being drawn into the investigation especially because someone keeps calling him but never says anything on the phone.  Richard ends up writing an account of the months he spent back home during the murders, not aware that those events would continue to follow him for decades to come. 

The structure and metafiction aspect of this book was incredible.  Given my love of police procedurals and crime documentaries, one might think that I would be one of those people obsessed with true crime everything.  I've tried a couple true crime books, but I've always found them very dry and almost clinical to read (and all of them had reviews that said the prose was very readable).  Turns out, this work of fiction is exactly how I'd like my true crime to read.  I know there are people who don't like true crime because it can be extremely exploitative of the victims so if that is anyone's concern, I'd just like to confirm the murders in this book are 100% fictional.  Chizmar confirms in the author's note at the end of this book that the murders are fictional (there is mention of a real string of break-ins by someone called the "Phantom Fondler" which were real).  Chizmar also states that the stories from his childhood and memories of his time at home during that summer were real which I thought really came through in the story.  There is an incredible amount of emotion and nostalgia worked into this story despite the writing style leaning a more toward the typical straight-cut journalism style of most true-crime books. We spend a whole chapter just going through Chizmar's memories of growing up in this small town with his group of friends before they all went off after graduation.  I'm a few decades behind Chizmar, but I connected a lot with his descriptions of growing up in a small town (I'm from small town New England).  We also get, like many true crime books, a good number of pictures that show places from around town or newspaper clippings of the events being talked about.  We get everything from pictures of the field where one body was found to pictures of police press conferences to even pictures of the murder victims in happier times (again, Chizmar explains in the authors note that he hired a production company for these pictures, these are not actual murder victims).  My entire reading experience was heightened by these pictures and I'm so glad he chose to include them. 

Honestly, the whole reading experience was incredibly immersive.  Again, I'm not some huge true-crime lover so I wasn't entirely sure if I would fly through reading this or if would be one of those books where I can only manage a chapter or two at a time. I read the whole thing in one evening and stayed up way past my bedtime to finish. I really enjoyed how the murders kicked off right away and then we backed up a bit to get some history of the town, then went right back into the murders. We're getting little insights into all these people around town by Chizmar which gives just a hint of small town drama that, again, draws the reader deeper into this town.  I also really liked how Chizmar wasn't the stereotypical protagonist of a detective or a journalist for this story.  He was just a guy living in town that had a good amount of time on his hands and he was intrigued by these crimes happening in this little town.  If there was a string of murders in my hometown, I'd be on the phone with my parents every night for any developments. It really felt like Chizmar was more of a collector of information that he turned into a scrapbook rather than an investigative or journalist type of point of view which I think makes the narrative voice more personable for a reader to follow along with. The pictures as I mentioned above also drew me into the story more simply by having an added visual element.  It is one thing to read a description of a person but another one altogether to have a picture to put to a name. 

I really liked how the killer was revealed.  We know from the forward that the killer is caught, the person caught was the last person they would have suspected, and Chizmar interviews them in prison.  This, at the beginning, felt like too much information, like it would be too obvious when reading the rest of the story who the murderer was.  However, I didn't find that to be the case.  Once the writing was on the wall at the 90% mark, I knew who it was, but I think at that point the book is just holding your hand while the case gets laid out so most people will pick up on the killer at that point.  It was a little weird reading the ending reveal where Chizmar wasn't directly involved with catching the killer only because most mysteries center around the investigator so obviously they are the ones to figure out the killer.  In this case, since Chizmar was basically just a bystander, he carried on with his life while the investigation carried on separately. As the forward mentions, Chizmar does interview the killer in prison and we do get that interview on page in the book so that did help to make the whole story feel more connected. I don't want to give away too much about how the killer is finally caught, but it was nice to see a side of police work that maybe doesn't get as much attention in media as other parts. 

I thought the character work was really great, especially since the best thing about small town mysteries is that it is basically all about the characters.  Every time a new body would drop, we'd get the rising tension as maybe people weren't as friendly as they were in the past. I think a lot of times with books set in real places (fiction and non-fiction), there's a chance that the characters would almost feel underdeveloped because for the author who lived there with those people, they can see them as fully fleshed out people and that doesn't always translate well to the page.  For Chizmar, however, I found the characters to be just the perfect amount of developed.  We get a good sense of everyone's characters and then as we see more and more interactions on page, we get more and more information about them.  This slow build up makes it so the reader doesn't get overwhelmed in the beginning of the book by a flood of characters or character details.  I also really liked the characters that Chizmar interacts with and we find out how that character was back when Chizmar was growing up and how they're different now.  Especially when his childhood friend comes in for a visit and they fall back into their old dynamic.  I think many people have had a similar experience with being back somewhere or with someone from years prior and just falling into old habits so easily.  

In conclusion, this book was fantastic.  It isn't the most action packed thriller, isn't the most psychologically twisted serial killer book, but it is a really great small town true crime mystery.

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

Expected publication date is August 17, 2021.

Come With Me - Ronald Malfi

 

This mystery/horror follows widower Aaron Decker.  His wife, Allison, dies suddenly in a mass shooting and one day in the months following her death, he starts to go through some of her things.  He soon finds pieces of information that lead him to believe his late wife was hiding things from him and might not be who he thought she was.  Picking up the breadcrumb trail, Aaron becomes obsessed with finding out what Allison was doing no matter the consequences. 

TW/CW: mass shooting at a mall, drowning

 The horror elements in this book were really interesting and weren't entirely what I was expecting.  On NetGalley, this was listed in the General Fiction and Horror categories so I was expecting the horror to play a larger role in the story.  I'm not sure what parts, exactly, the author/publisher thought put the book in that horror category, but I found the horror aspects to be the quiet, creeping sort.  Personally, I thought this book fit better in the mystery category with some light supernatural horror elements to it.  So if the horror tag is making anyone question if they want to read this book or not, I'd say to give it a go.  There are numerous times in the story where lights are clicking on out of nowhere or Aaron thinks he sees Allison in his peripheral vision but none of those things really seem to scare Aaron. The story is told in first person so we are in his head the whole time.  Since he wasn't scared of his closet light turning on randomly, I found myself equally unconcerned with it (despite the fact that if that happened to me, I'd be sleeping at least in another room if not in a hotel).  The horror aspects really came in, for me, in the last 40% or so.  We're following Aaron's investigation into these small, rural, towns were it felt like every town was the beginning of a horror movie where the town is a little run down and the inhabitants are just a little off-putting.  It was a very atmospheric horror element instead of a more obvious body horror or haunting sort of horror. We also get some good ol' Appalachian folk lore which really heightened the spooky feelings the story had already set up.  There is a supernatural ghost-y type element to the story which isn't clear at the beginning if ghosts are real or if Aaron is just imagining things. 

I really enjoyed how Aaron's grief was handled in this story and I think this book ranks right up with Stephen King's Pet Sematary for me for how well it articulated and explored grief.  Since we are in Aaron's POV throughout the whole book, we are really in the nitty-gritty emotions with him as well.  Everything from that feeling of having the rug pulled out from under him after the shooting to being frustrated and a little angry over the secrets Allison kept from him and never being able to get an answer as to why.  There are also multiple instances where the narrative shifts to a second person-ish POV with Aaron speaking directly to his Allison.  We get passages where he's telling her things directly or asking her things.  It always came as a bit of a shock reading along and then suddenly being talked to directly.  Despite Aaron usually throwing in his wife's name when the switch happened (for example, "you, Allison, would always wear your hair like that"), him addressing his wife as 'you' always pulled me into the story more.  These moments where he is talking directly to his dead wife really highlighted the emotional journey Aaron was on as well as the impact of his investigation.  I do wish we would have gotten some more scenes with people who knew both Aaron and Allison in order to get a hint of an outside perspective of how he was holding up while going through all this investigating. 

My only complaint is that the pacing and investigation thread lost me at bit in the middle.  I understand that Aaron's grief and curiosity are what got him started following his wife's footsteps at the time and I can see at the end when all the puzzle pieces were coming together that he'd want to finish what he'd started, but I didn't get a very strong sense of his drive or reasoning in the middle of the story.  There are mentions about him still missing Allison, but every time he has to explain to a new person what happened to her, it seems to hurt him more and more.  I just didn't understand what he was getting out of this investigation that was greater than the pain it was causing him. The investigation pacing in the middle was also a little strange.  We know Aaron is driving all around, trying to figure out what his wife was doing and why she kept it a secret but I didn't have any really good time-frames for all of these stops in all of these towns.  There were a few times where it mentioned Aaron went back home but then it seemed he left the next day to a new place.  In the beginning of the story, we got some time-frames but it seemed like those went away once Aaron started investigating.  And, of course, this could be entirely on purpose because Aaron could be so obsessed with finding the truth that he doesn't notice how long he's been away.  But as a reader, I needed a few more mile-markers thrown in to help with my mental pacing. We find out toward the end that his investigation was only a couple months long which looking back makes sense but if the book had said it had been a year, I also could believe that. 

I overall enjoyed the investigation thread and thought the reveals were well integrated into the story.  I thought the overall premise of the story was really intriguing and I could see myself reading a whole bunch of different mystery/thrillers that are spins on the general concept.  I liked how the investigation started off as Aaron trying to find out about his wife, then it changed focus to information Aaron found, but it turned back to focus on Allison at the end.  The fact that Aaron was mostly following in his wife's footsteps means that there was a lot of information that we technically already knew but we would get just a little more context for that information when Aaron went to that place.  In the last half of the story, Aaron is making more original discoveries but it still had a weird feeling of just following Allison and almost like Aaron didn't have much agency on his own.  I also didn't love how there were a certain number of places to visit but it seemed like Aaron only visited a few of them so it made the investigation, to me, feel a little unfinished.  I also didn't love how most of the investigation was just Aaron talking to people and them happening to remember something or Aaron reading through his wife's files and finding what he needed.  Again, it made it feel like Aaron didn't have much agency or drive in the investigation.  All that being said, the individual plot threads came together really well at the end and I enjoyed how Allison's life story connected back in as well since the whole point of this journey for Aaron was getting to know his wife. 

Overall, this was a really great mystery that dealt with death and grief and secrets in a very gritty yet overall uplifting manner.  I loved the quiet, creeping horror and how the investigation played out.  The pacing got a little iffy for me in the middle, but it got right back on track and finished strong.

Thanks NetGalley and Titan Books for the ARC in exchange for review.

Publication date: July 20, 2021.

Romance Wrap-up 7/1/21 to 7/15/21

 Neon Gods - Katee Robert

This Hades/Persephone retelling is my first Katee Robert read and it will not be my last.  Taking place in the modern city of Olympus, Persephone is announced as Zeus's next bride.  She runs away and crosses a bridge to the low side of the city where Hades, someone she thought was a myth, rules. The two agree to have a *very* public relationship in order to get back at Zeus until Persephone can leave Olympus for good.  However, the two soon find that they fit together so well and both can be themselves around the other but with the threat of Zeus's wrath on the horizon, they will have to come up with a plan so they can be together.  I loved everything about this book - the world building, the relationships, the romance, the characters. I never had a Greek mythology phase growing up so I'm not sure how closely this retelling sticks to the original story, but other reviews seem to be consistent with saying this is one of the best around.  I thought this would be heavier on the fantasy elements but I was pleasantly surprised that this felt way more like a mafia romance than a fantasy romance. I really enjoyed Hades and Persephone's relationship dynamic and how caring he was for her when she never really had anyone look out for her like that before (I have a huge soft spot for that dynamic in romance).  There are some kink elements, but they stay more on the side of public sex/voyeurism than any sort of bondage or pain play.  I can't wait for the next book in this series!

The Dating Dare - Jayci Lee

This is the second book in the A Sweet Mess series and follows Tara and Seth.  Tara's best friend just married Seth's brother and the two meet at the wedding. Both Tara and Seth don't do serious relationships due to past trauma so a game of truth or dare over some beers turns into the Dating Dare where Seth dares Tara to go on four dates with him with one stipulation - don't fall in love.  Tara agrees and with Seth leaving for Paris in a month, any relationship chances are dead in the water.  The two end up spending a lot more time together than just the four dates and both realize the other might just be the type of person who could make them believe in love again.  I really enjoyed this book and loved how great Tara and Seth worked together.  I'm a big fan of any sort of contrived dating / fake dating plot and this was just super cute.  It is obvious from the beginning that they both are attracted to the other, but, in typical romcom fashion, their planned dates keep going awry.  However, all the times they see each other outside of those dates go exceedingly well and both are forced to examine their personal baggage and how they want to move forward.  I really enjoyed the balance between cute romance plot and how the two would get into deeper conversations about their past or their future plans.  I did find the dialogue to be a little stiff and almost formal at times, especially during the deeper conversations.  I also would have expected there to be a bit more bumps in the road from both Tara and Seth considering they both had some real bad relationship experiences before but most of that struggle stayed internal and they seemed to get over it pretty quickly until the big blow out at the 80% mark which made the big blow up moment feel a little out of nowhere. But overall, a very cute and fun read!

TW/CW: physical abuse, emotional abuse

Thanks NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for review.  Expected publication date is August 3, 2021. 

Love Life - Nancy Peach

This book follows doctor Tess Carter as she works a rotation in a hospice facility.  She's had a string of not great relationships and has a pretty constant barrage of negative voices providing a running commentary of her day to day life.  One day, the family member of a new patient walks though the door and Tess immediately recognizes him as someone she connected with at a party years prior (Edward) but left in a hurry.  He doesn't seem to remember her so she does her best to push away the feelings of rejection and do her job.  However, he's often at the hospice facility with his mother and he and Tess get to slowly know more about each other.  Tess fights hard to not build up their relationship too much in her mind - after all his mother has ovarian cancer and is at the hospice facility - but she can't help but feel a connection to him.  But if she's going to find her happy ever after, she might just need to get out of her own head and go live her life.  I liked this story well enough, but I would not call it a romance.  In my opinion, this leans more toward the general fiction side of the spectrum.  Yes, there is a happily ever after, but the romantic relationship is not the main plot. In fact, we don't even really get to see Tess and Edward actually in a relationship. We are in Tess's POV for 95% of the book but we do get a couple of scenes from Edward's perspective but those scenes don't really give us any clues as to his feelings about Tess.  When I hit the 50% mark and there was no indication of any relationship forming, I really thought this book would be just about Tess finding the courage to move on from her past (which would have been fine, but that wouldn't have been a romance). The subject matter is also much more somber than the blurb on Goodreads lead me to believe so that was also an adjustment I had to make. We are up close and personal as Edward's mother is dying of cancer and while I think it was handled in a very caring manner, the fact that cancer or hospice isn't mentioned in the synopsis at all I think will really throw off some readers.  I loved the character work in this book - especially with Tess and her inner commentary which hit closer to home than I would like to admit.  Once we got to know more about Edward, I really liked how layered he was and how soft he was under his grumpy lawyer shell. 

TW/CW: bulimia, cancer, death of a parent, cheating

Thanks NetGalley and HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter for the ARC in exchange for review.  Expected publication date is August 2, 2021.

Knotted - Pam Godwin

This dark cowboy romance is the first book in the Trails of Sin series and follows Conor and Jake.  After Conor is sexually assaulted on her 16th birthday in front of her brother, Jake, and Jake's brother, her dad takes her away from the family ranch in Oklahoma to Chicago.  Years later, she returns to honor an oath the four of them made that night.  Except the boys she left in Oklahoma are now big mountains of men with big mountains of secrets.  This was my first Pam Godwin and I can see why she is many people's go-to for dark romance.  I liked some parts of the book, but overall this was a bit of a miss for me.  My main issue with the book revolves around Conor's agency.  It felt like, until about the 75% mark, that the men in her life had taken away all her agency and the only reason they would give was that it was 'for her own good'.  The characters try to explain that if they would have told her the truth from the beginning that she would have insisted to be involved and probably would have gotten hurt.  So instead, they basically went no-contact with her and made her think for 6 years that her brother, boyfriend, and best friend had abandoned her after her brutal assault. Not a great foundation for a romance, in my opinion.  I also have no experience with PTSD or PTSD treatment, but I really hated how Jake was forcing Conor to work through her triggers and memories so quickly and head-on and it read more emotionally abusive than caring to me.  However, after the 75%-ish, Conor does gain back her agency and is able to put her past somewhat behind her.  She knows all the secrets now and can make informed decisions about her life. As a hopeless romantic, I did really like the 'meant to be together' feeling of Jake and Conor's relationship and how straightforward Jake was about how Conor is everything for him.  I was really interested in the secrets they uncovered while Conor was gone and if this was structured a little differently - maybe more like a typical romantic suspense - with Conor more involved in the secrets as well as her own recovery, I could easily see this as a 5-star read. It sounds like the rest of the series leans more into the traditional romantic suspense sub-genre so I will most likely be reading on in the series.

TW/CW: sexual assault on page, PTSD, physical abuse

Professed - Nicola Rendell

This forbidden romance follows Ben and Naomi after they meet at a masquerade party at Yale.  She's a junior, he's the 38 year old professor that just moved into town.  Not just any professor - he's her professor, her boss, her advisor.  The two can't stay away from each other despite the fact that if they're found out, it will ruin his career and her future.  So they try their best to fly under the radar, too bad the Dean has his eye on them.  This was a really fun, steamy read.  Teacher/student dynamics are really hard for me to get onboard with but the fact they met outside of the classroom before they knew who the other was really helped me root for them.  I will say this felt super insta-love which isn't really my favorite.  Ben and Naomi have undeniable sexual chemistry that sizzles off the page, but I didn't really get a good sense of what else they have in common. I definitely felt the connection between then and I believed them when they said they loved each other, but I just needed a bit more personality along with the great chemistry.  With an age gap this big, usually there's some mention of how the younger one has 'an old soul' but we don't really get anything like that here.  I thought Ben really didn't read like a 38 year old professor, I would have thought early 30s at the latest, so maybe that's why the age gap wasn't a big sore spot for me.  I really liked Naomi's friend and family backstory but I wish we would have gotten more from Ben especially since he's a philosophy professor who specializes in nihilism.  Despite the premise, this was a pretty low angst read (which I prefer) and pretty unproblematic considering the subject matter.

Lock Every Door - Riley Sager

 

This mystery thriller follows down on her luck Jules after losing her job, boyfriend, and apartment. While job hunting, she answers an ad for an apartment sitter and finds herself in the lobby of one of New York City's most notorious buildings - the Bartholomew. Steeped in history, secrets, and mysterious deaths, the Bartholomew and the residents there would be intriguing to any new resident.  However, the apartment sitter job comes with numerous rules that Jules must follow or risk her job.  Needing the money - $1,000 per week under the table - Jules agrees and soon finds herself befriending another apartment sitter in the building - Ingrid.  One night, Ingrid disappears from the Bartholomew and Jules can't shake the feeling that she didn't just move out - something happened to her.  Following her gut, Jules digs deeper into the history of the building as well as the rumors whispered about events - both past and present - that may be related.  However, searching for answers may open doors that should otherwise stay locked.

I feel like anyone who reads thrillers knows who Riley Sager is.  His books are instant NYT best sellers and the buzz around every new release is staggering and his 5 books combined have over 366 thousand ratings on Goodreads.  I did try to read one of his other books last year, but ended up DNF'ing it so I'll admit I wasn't sure what all the buzz was about.  However, after consistently hearing and seeing his books around (bookstagram, book Twitter, BookTube videos, etc) I was convinced to give another book a try.  I settled on Lock Every Door because it was described by multiple people as different enough from his other books that if you didn't like those then this one might be for you.  After reading this, I have plans to give the rest of his backlist a try (including re-trying the one I DNF'd) so I would agree that this is a good jumping in point for Sager's books. 

My favorite part of this book was the Bartholomew as a setting.  An old apartment building that only the richest of the rich can afford to live in and with tons of gargoyles? Yes please!  This story has that really great atmospheric haunted house vibes that I love in my gothic-y mysteries.  I thought the Bartholomew was a great example of a setting that is also a character because there is so much personality and history given to the building.  Sager's descriptions, while a little heavy handed for my personal liking, were really great at emphasizing this point (faces in the patterns of the wallpaper, for example).  Since most of the story is following Jules as she looks into the building's history and walks around to talk to some of the residents, we get a lot of description of the building.  I really enjoyed Jules's observations about the building as well because there's a lot that could be brushed off as 'rich people being eccentric' but she finds really off putting and almost eerie.  It reminded me a lot of when one of those super big mansions with the weird decor goes up for sale and the zillow listing starts making the rounds around social media.  

I really liked the character work in this and found Jules as well as all the residents she meets really well developed.   This is very much a fish-out-of-water story with Jules being initially very enamored with the Bartholomew because it is the setting of her favorite book.  I also liked how she initially shrugged off her friend's concerns and rumors that the building is haunted or at least very creepy only to later have the rose-tinted glasses removed as her investigation into Ingrid's disappearance deepens.  I really liked how we would get snippets of the other resident's histories though her brief interactions with them rather than getting some big info-dump of all the famous people living in the building.  I do wish we would have gotten some more development in the relationship between Jules and her best friend Chloe as well as Jules and Ingrid.  I could see that Sager was trying to link Ingrid to Jules's missing sister (as it says in the summary) but I didn't 100% buy into that.  I think we needed more of an extended friendship with them before I could really get on board with Jules spending so much of her time and energy looking for Ingrid.  Same with her relationship with Chloe.  We get a little bit of their interactions, but since Chloe was absent through most of the investigation portion of the book I didn't get enough of their relationship to really see them as best friends. 

I thought the structure of the book was interesting but I think it ended up weakening one of the later reveals. I love a good dual timeline and in this case we get Jules as she is brought to a hospital after getting hit by a car and then jump back a week prior to follow her journey into the Bartholomew.  We would get a few chapters in the past timeline before jumping back to the present in the hospital and besides the initial shock of her reaction, I didn't feel like the time jumps really added anything to the story.  When we finally catch up to the car accident in the past timeline and the plot twist that comes along with it, I really felt like it would have had more of an impact on me if we didn't know about the accident until it happened.  I really like dual timelines in most mystery/thrillers because it usually adds tension or some depth to the plot.  However, in this case, I didn't feel like the dual times did really anything to heighten the plot above what it would have been if it was just written chronologically.  I was glad that we didn't get a ton of chapters from the hospital timeline but every time it would come up, I just found myself annoyed that it was breaking up the intriguing investigation plot with boring hospital plot. 

The investigation reveals and thriller twists were a little hit and miss for me.  I thought the investigation was really well paced and there were enough breadcrumbs to follow through.  I didn't get put off by any sort of miraculous coincidences that sometimes come up in mystery books.  I do wish Jules had an investigation buddy or someone to bounce ideas off of because there were a few times where I felt the pacing of the overall narrative dragged because it was just a whole lot of Jules reading and not much else going on.  I think her reading those articles was important and the information was interesting, but I wish she was reading them with someone else so there could be a little bit of dialogue or something to break up the narrative a little.  While I really liked the final twist and reveal of what is happening with the Bartholomew, I did find it a little disappointing.  This is 100% a personal preference but I was thinking the story was heading Path A (and I think Sager wants all readers to think it is heading down that path) but then the big reveal is that it is something a little more grounded than Path A but arguably just as incredible.  This 'walking back' of sorts that the ending does reminded me a lot of how Every Vow You Break by Peter Swanson had me thinking we were going in one direction but the truth turned out to be a little less spectacular than I was expecting.  It felt very Scooby-Doo where the mask gets pulled off the bad guy at the end and while the bad guy is still a bad guy and is doing bad things, there's a bit of a let down that it wasn't a swamp monster haunting the amusement park.  And as much as the ending was very appropriate and very earned, I really wanted the swamp monster to be real.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story and I'm glad I gave Sager another shot after DNF'ing the first book I tried from him.  I think this is a really solid gothic mystery thriller with interesting characters and a great setting.  I did find some character relationships a little lacking and the overall reveal a little bit of a let down but it didn't really damper my overall enjoyment of the book.

Gone for Good - Joanna Schaffhausen

 This mystery/thriller follows police detective Annalisa Vega and grocery store manager turned amateur sleuth Grace Harper. Grace is a member of an online group that investigates cold cases to see if they can solve the crimes.  Twenty years ago, the Lovelorn Killer murdered seven women then disappeared  before the police could catch him.  The police say the killer is either in prison or dead but Grace believes he's been hiding in plain sight, still living in the neighborhoods he stalked, and she's determined to find him.  Grace gets a little too close and ends up as the killers 8th victim.  Annalisa is assigned to Grace's murder and with her personal connection to the case 20 years prior, Annalisa is determined to find the killer.  

I've been having some real good luck with my mystery/thriller/suspense reads recently (knock on wood) and this book was no exception.  I love a good serial killer book and this one hit all my soft spots - interesting killer, decades long mystery, tough female detective, high emotional stakes, and one bombshell of an ending. 

I thought the structure of the book worked really well to enhance the overall reading experience.  We are following 2 timelines - one is current day Annalisa and her investigation and the other is Grace's diary entries leading up to her death. Annalisa's perspective is a pretty standard police procedural mystery where her and her partner are going around and interviewing people and chasing down leads.  Grace's diary entries, in contrast, are much more PI-leaning where she's following a lot of the same paths the police do, but she isn't so stuck with the rules and regulations so her investigation feels a little more flexible.  I'd say the book is 2/3 Annalisa and 1/3 Grace so the diary entries act as nice little breaks from the typical police procedural narrative.  I personally really like reading police procedural books but I know a lot of people find them sort of dry and rigid so I think adding in Grace's perspective can help immerse those readers in the story.  This reads like a really good episode of a TV crime drama like Criminal Minds where there's an added layer of emotion from seeing Grace's efforts to catch the killer while we know the whole time that she'll end up dead. The writing style of both parts of the book also helped with the emotional impact.  I think the usual narrative style for police procedurals is pretty dry and clinical to give the book that real 'detective-y' feel.  In this case, however, the narrative style was more relaxed and familiar.  It didn't read like a procedural at all, even in Annalisa's parts.

I absolutely adored the characters.  I think a lot of times in these police procedural type mysteries, the detective character can come across as a little underdeveloped because usually they're super grumpy and broody for reasons that are only hinted at (but get revealed in later books in the series).  In this case, however, Annalisa's past is pretty much laid out on the kitchen table for us so it really felt like we got to know her really well.  The fact that the case was so close to her childhood and brought up some old, unresolved feelings really helped to deepen her character.  I thought the supporting cast was also really interesting, but those characters did fall pretty flat for me.  It felt like each side character was given one main personality trait and that's it.  Of course, not every character can be really intricately developed, but it just felt like there was such a large gap in characterization between Annalisa and everyone else.  I also think the reveals at the end would have had even more of an emotional punch if we got to know all the characters involved a little better.  There's a romance side plot that was pretty intriguing and since it didn't get resolved in this book, I'm assuming it will continue on into the next book.

The ending was a bit of a miss for me but it comes down to personal preference.  My main issue with the ending was that I was left with a bit too many questions for my liking (although the big main questions do get answered).  It sort of felt like I had finished building something and had a few pieces left over where I know they should fit into what I just built but I don't really see where they should go.  The book sort of made a point at the end that sometimes bad people just do bad things and that very well might be the answer to the questions I had left but it still felt like I was missing a few pages of explanation.  We don't get a big villain monologue at the end which I think is where a lot of those smaller pieces would typically be smushed in. I personally am a fan of the villain monologue but I feel like I might be in the minority with that one. This is also the first police procedural where I teared up at the ending so that was an interesting experience.  I apparently had become very attached to these characters so when the ending reveal came, it hit closer than I would have expected.  I am glad that this is the first in a new series following Annalisa so I'll maybe get some closure down the line. 

I thought the mystery thread and reveals were really well executed.  My one little issue was that the key to solving the case was something one of the side characters noticed but never told anyone and thus our main characters (and, by proxy, the reader) didn't know about it so there was no real way for the reader to guess the outcome ahead of time. This one little detail ended up feeling really convenient and I wasn't sure why that character didn't say anything when they first noticed that detail. I did really like how the evidence built up during the whole book instead of having a bunch of dead ends in the investigation.  Part of this, I'm sure, is because the case was very heavily investigated 20 years ago so a lot of those leads had already been investigated and found to lead nowhere. I really didn't see the last twist coming and I was honestly surprised that the book went there. 

Overall, this was a really great read and I was invested right from the beginning.  I really enjoyed the split POV and how the investigation developed.  Annalisa was a great main character and the supporting cast was really interesting.  The book did leave me wanting more details at the end but that is more of a personal preference and I didn't really feel like any of the main questions went unanswered.  I'm looking forward to continuing on in this series in the future.

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

Expected publication date is August 10, 2021.

What Lies Between Us - John Marrs

 

This domestic suspense/thriller follows two women who live in the same house. The two have dinner together every other night and then Nina helps Maggie back to her room upstairs and re-fastens the chain around her ankle. The two women have a long history together and Maggie has done irreparable harm to Nina and is now paying the price at Nina's hand. The two women are keeping secrets from each other and they would do anything to keep the other from finding out.

CW/TW: teenage pregnancy, miscarriage, grooming, adult/minor relationship, drug use

 This was a really fun read that I really think benefits from the pretty vague synopsis.  Going into this book with the least information possible was really great and I would say that if the synopsis interests you at all, to just go ahead and read it.  I've read so many thrillers that I'm pretty familiar with the usual story beats and pacing.  I prefer to sit down and read for long chunks of time so there are quite a few times that I'll have a whole afternoon to myself and will finish a book in one sitting.  However, for most thrillers, I would say they don't hit the 'unable to put down' level of intriguing until about the 75% mark.  If I have a mystery/suspense/thriller and I'm at that 75% mark, I won't pick it back up until I know I have the time to finish it.  In this case, however, I was so drawn into the story and the reveals that I did end up staying up way too late and reading the whole book in one sitting.  This was my first John Marrs book and I really enjoyed it so I'll be picking up more for sure.  Since there are so few details given in the synopsis, I'll do my best to keep the rest of this review as vague as possible while still trying to explain my thoughts so this might be a bit on the short side.

 I've said it before, but really enjoy my thrillers to have some sort of split timeline or flashback elements to them.  I think it is a really great mechanic to build tension and reveal information without the book feeling too info-dumpy.  In this case, we get to see Nina and Maggie in 3 distinct times - 25ish years ago, 2 years ago, and present day.  Within these times, we see Nina and Maggie separately so we can really get to know them and see how things have changed over time.  It was especially interesting because the plot in the present seems to have hit a sort of standstill where Nina and Maggie have fallen into a routine of sorts and there isn't much deviation to that routine.  So most of the action and momentum in the story comes from the past timelines (the present plot does pick up speed in the last 1/3 of the book). Another aspect of the past timelines is how great the character work is during these flashbacks.  I find some 'flashbacks' end up feeling more like the present day character remembering back to the past which can cause them to sort of color those past experiences with their current perspectives.  In this story, however, the characters and their voices are still recognizable as Nina and Maggie, but they are different enough from the Nina and Maggie of present day that it really reads like a true flashback which really helped my overall immersion and enjoyment of the story.

I loved the dynamic between Nina and Maggie and how the reader comes to understand the different aspects of their relationship as more details are revealed.  I found myself rooting for Nina and Maggie on different occasions.  Marrs did a great job really slowly revealing details that would shift the reader's sympathies from one character to the other all the way to the end. Neither character is all good or all bad in this story which I think helps it stay grounded and come across as a more believable story.  We switch POV between Nina and Maggie and there were a few times we got to see pretty much the same moment from both POVs which was really interesting, especially once we started getting into the real juicy details of their history. I thought both women were extremely well-developed characters.  We are really deep into both of their heads and I really liked how we got their reasoning for their actions and while maybe I wouldn't have done the same things they did, the decisions felt authentic to their characters.  This story, at the base, is the relationship between these two women and how it has evolved over the decades and, in my opinion, the only way to make a story like that compelling and intriguing

The one thing I would have liked to be different would be to see more of Nina and Maggie during the time in between the 25 years ago and 2 years ago that we get.  We get little details at what happened during that time, but I think it would have been beneficial for the reader to see some of those.  The events 25 years ago were pretty significant and I think they would have had a long term impact on both women.  I wanted to see directly how those events changed the women, even in small ways.  For example, we are told that Maggie hasn't had a boyfriend in all that time, but did she ever go out on even a date?  Did her friends try to set her up?  Was Maggie okay with this or did she want to have a boyfriend but couldn't for some reason?  These sorts of scenes would have helped to bridge the gap between the 25 years ago and 2 years ago and I think would have made the story feel more complete.

I'll admit, I was a little iffy on the ending at first, but after thinking about it for a few days, I think it was a really appropriate way to end the story.  My initial knee-jerk reaction was that I didn't like it because I wanted to see more, I wanted to see the next scene and the reactions to the information we learn right at the end.  I think that sort of reaction really speaks volumes to how invested and interested I was in the story.  So while the ending is a little open, I think we get an appropriate conclusion to Nina and Maggie's story which is what we were following all along.  While this story felt more on the suspense side, there were a few twists along the way that I thought worked well.  The big twist toward the end that sort of kicked off the events of the story 25 years prior was really obvious and I found the foreshadowing almost a little too over the top.  I really don't mind if I guess the twists in a mystery/thriller ahead of time, but I really get annoyed when it feels too obvious or like the author is really holding the reader's hand.  For example, there were a lot of vague but obviously heavy statements along the lines of "she could never know the truth" and "I could answer her questions but then she'd know" and the context in which those heavy statements were made I felt really gave away the big twist.  The one saving grace of that big twist is that if the reader does figure it out early (like I did), the character in question still doesn't know so the tension is still in the story and we are just waiting for the character to put the pieces together. 

Overall, this was a really immersive and intriguing domestic suspense/thriller.  I really enjoyed the character work and the way each reveal would change my understanding of the plot.  I do wish we had gotten some more scenes in between our main time periods and the ending wasn't immediately my favorite but I can already feel this is going to be a book I remember and recommend going forward.

All's Well - Mona Awad

 

This literary fiction novel follows Miranda Fitch as she struggles to find a way to manage her debilitating chronic pain.  After her career as an actor ended, Miranda is now the theater director of a small college.  Miranda wants to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well but the student cast would rather do Macbeth. All's Well was the last play Miranda acted in before her accident and when the chance to redeem herself starts to slip through her grasp, she begins to spiral.  Thankfully, she meets three strange men in a bar one night and they tell her that she'll get to put on her play as well as have the truth of her pain shown to those who doubt her.  As we get closer to opening night, Miranda's life gets increasingly strange and unseen consequences take center stage.  

So my feelings about this book can be summed up by: I think the book did a good job at what it was trying to do, but what it was trying to do was not for me.  I liked this book alright while I was reading it, but I wish it had a stronger ending.  Based on the synopsis for the book, I was expecting this to be a more externally focused story - basically Miranda versus the world - and for it to have a sort of horror/thriller vibe with the "mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead". The story ended up being much much more focused internally on Miranda and her struggles and desires. There are still external sources of tension (doctors who don't believe her, her students, etc) but the majority of the narrative focused on how those external sources made Miranda feel and her reactions to some of these external situations. And while there are some strange magical elements to the story, they paled in comparison to the dissection of Miranda's psyche on the page.  I think I misunderstood parts of the book synopsis and put my own expectations on the book to be something that it isn't.  This was a really great lit-fic examination of the human experience and how lives can be changed in an instant but that type of story just isn't my jam.  

I think the most stand-out element by far is the writing.  It is incredibly immersive and entrancing but I didn't find it overly flowery.  I usually find the prose in lit-fic stories to be self indulgent and almost feel like the author is showing off.  I think Awad toes this line well and a good part of that is because a lot of the things she is describing in this poetic language are pretty terrible things like chronic pain and feelings of rejection and self-destruction. The narrative structure really helps emphasize Miranda's emotional state and when she is spiraling we will get these large chunks of text of description.  Since this is an ARC, there is a chance the book formatting will change but these large blocks of text felt very intentional so don't think they will be changed in the final copy.  I did have a hard time not skipping or skimming these large blocks but that is a personal issue more so than a problem with the narration.  I had to force myself to slow down and make sure to not skip over these chunks so I could appreciate the story. 

My main issue with the book was the ending. It just didn't really give me any real sense of closure or that the story was wrapped up in a satisfactory way. The best way I can explain without spoiling anything would be that the book ends with a sort of dread where we (and Miranda) know what will happen soon but it is left a bit ambiguous when exactly that event will happen.  My issue is that this future event is tied pretty closely to the main story arc so instead of the ending being a bit mysterious or being a little open-ended (which is what I felt like it was going for) it ends up just feeling sort of unfinished.  It felt like we were missing about 30 pages where we see the aftermath of the main plot and then this future event.  We spent this whole book getting all this build up and this ramping up of the tension and stakes and the climax of the story raised those stakes even more and I wanted to see the full downfall on the other side of the climax.

I usually would say I'm a more of a character-driven reader but this was pushing it even for me.  It is told in first person and we are the furthest inside any character's head that I've ever read.  Almost uncomfortably inside at times. I think this is used to the greatest success in the chronic pain parts of the story.  The story literally starts with Miranda on the floor in her office while trying to get well enough so she can go teach her class.  We see her at her lowest and really jump into the deep end with her character and the reader can really empathize with her pain and how it affects her life.  But we also get Miranda's inner monologue when it comes to the people and situations around her and I would categorize her as an unlikable protagonist.  There's an interesting back and forth where we start to feel bad for her and her struggles but then she can be a real bitch to the people around her so then we don't feel as sorry.  Obviously, people are complex and are never all good or all bad and I think Awad really highlights these differences in her characterization of Miranda.  

So much of the prose was focused on Miranda's inner running dialogue that I did find the world to be a little underdeveloped for my liking.  Also, since it is in first person, I wanted Miranda to interact more with the other characters so we could get a better understanding of how these other characters view her.  I think Miranda projects a lot of her pain and anger onto people around her but I would have liked to see more of how that type of projection might have affected individual interactions.  I also do want to mention that there is a magical healing aspect to the plot that may bother some readers.  I don't have any chronic pain or illness so I can't speak to how that aspect of the story was handled from that perspective.  I did think the way it was handled was interesting and not really something I had seen before.

Overall, this was a really interesting and immersive lit-fic story that really sunk us deep into the psyche of our main character.  However, I would have liked more depth when it came to interactions between characters and the ending so overall this was a pretty middle of the road read for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for review.

Expected publication date August 3, 2021.

Romance Wrap-up 6/16/21 to 6/30/21

 The Blind Date - Lauren Landish

 This story follows Riley and Noah.  Riley is a social media influencer whose focus is bringing some sunshine into the world.  Noah is a driven app developer who, along with his best friend (Riley's brother), created a dating app with no pictures.  The app algorithm matches people based on their answers to a series of questions and the goal is for the two people to talk and get to know each other without any physical influence. Riley and Noah both decide to make profiles under fake names and they end up being the app's highest percentage match.  They spend weeks getting to know each other but when they finally meet in person, they have to decide if they want to follow the app (and their hearts) and continue seeing each other.  I thought this book was really cute and I really liked Riley and Noah together.  I was expecting this to be a little more grumpy vs sunshine but it seemed liked Noah's grumpiness started to wear off almost immediately once he matched with Riley on the app. The main conflict set up in the beginning of the book was that Noah is best friend's with Riley's older brother and Riley is best friends with Noah's little sister so they did decide to keep their relationship a secret.  However, I was really pleased that conflict got taken care of pretty quickly and there wasn't a whole lot of turmoil around it.  I really loved the side characters and hope they get a book or two of their own.  The social media stuff felt a little heavy handed, especially because it was the center of the third act fight.  I was also a little thrown off because social media had such a big part to play in the story that I was expecting maybe some little cracks to show in the relationship earlier.  Like maybe Riley's posting is a source of some tension and then in the third act, it all boils over.  But Noah seemed fine with everything through most of the story so it felt like the main conflict in the third act was a bit forced and was added in for a moral lesson of sorts.

Playing for Keeps - Kendall Ryan

This is the first book in the Hot Jocks series and follows pro hockey player Justin and sister of his teammate, Elise.  Justin is best friends with Elise's older brother and the three pretty much grew up together.  After some time apart with the boys playing pro hockey and Elise going to college, they reconnect and both Elise and Justin have feelings for the other.  However, they don't want to complicate their relationship with Elise's brother especially since he and Justin play for the same hockey team.  But one drunken hookup might just be the push that Elise and Justin need to finally give into their feelings and be together.  I liked this book, but I do think the background and some of the characterization needed some work for me to love it.  We are told about Elise and Justin's history growing up together, but that's about it (no flashbacks or dual timelines here).  Also, we are told that Justin sleeps around a lot just like the rest of the team (there's even a slight pregnancy scare that lasts all of 5 pages before being resolved basically off page) but he hasn't been interested in random hookups for a little while at the beginning of the book.  His sexual activities are constantly being mentioned and are a source of some jealousy and anxiety for Elise but she hangs around with the team so much that she must have noticed a change of some sort when he started not sleeping around as much.  So I just sort of ended up ignoring those aspects of the story and treated it just like a normal 'sister of my teammate is off limits' sort of story.  I really liked Elise and Justin together but I did find that Justin's relationship insecurities really only came up at the end as a convenient third act fight/break up issue and I wish it had come up sooner, even if just in smaller areas of the relationship.  I am excited to continue in the series and the second book sounds like it has a similar premise as Elle Kennedy's The Deal which I really enjoyed.

Tie Me Down - Melanie Harlow

This is the fourth and final book in the Bellamy Creek series and follows long time friends Beckett and Maddie.  They were neighbors and friends growing up but after high school, they both went their separate ways.  Beckett always had feelings for Maddie but was respectful of her relationships.  Well, now Maddie is recently divorced and back in town with her 6 year old son to sell her mother's house that sits across the street from Beckett's farm.  The old house is in no condition for anyone to stay so Maddie and her son stay with Beckett and his aging father.  Old flames are rekindled and in no time the two are sneaking around like teenagers.  However, decades of baggage and old wounds need to be dealt with before the two can finally have the chance they always wanted.  I loved this book, absolutely head over heels loved it. The Bellamy Creek series centers around 4 best friends and while Beckett was probably the least active in any of the previous books, we get a good amount of guy-time with the other 3 friends coming together for Beckett.  I love the friends to lovers trope but normally the two characters are friends until one of them almost wakes up one day and can't believe they didn't see this amazing person right in front of them.  In this case, Beckett has been pining after Maddie for years but he's always been a perfect gentleman and friend to her until she lets him know how she feels about him and then all bets are off and the two get down and dirty.  Beckett and Maddie are perfect for each other and it really shows when they fall pretty quickly into a rhythm for the 2 weeks Maddie is there.  They have breakfast as a family, work on the farm, and have family outings - pretty much as close to an inta-family as it gets.  Top it all off with a big love declaration from the guy who keeps everything bottled up and this was just the best. Melanie Harlow was already an insta-buy author for me but this solidified her as one of, if not my favorite, romance author.

Run Posy Run - Cate C Wells

 This dark romance follows Posy and Dario.  Despite growing up in the mafia world, Posy isn't your typical mafia heroine where she is locked away in a tower.  Her family was disgraced and she has been making ends meet on her own, dating through a couple different mafia men.  Dario is the money laundering guy making big dollars in the stock market. He was intrigued by Posy and took her as his own. Or he did, until scandal hits and he kicks her own.  She has to fend for herself and avoid the bullet with her name on it until Dario comes knocking on her door again and takes her back to his home. There were a lot of things I liked about this book, but the pieces didn't really fit as well together as a whole as I hoped.  It is listed at only 250 pages and I think we really needed that extra 50 pages to add some more depth and context to the story. This is a standalone but it read much more like the second book in a duology.  The first chapter introduces us to Posy already months into their relationship and then has Dario kicking her out of his house. While on her own, Posy learns that Dario is a psychopath and while she loved him, he didn't love her back. This could have been a really great reveal if we had seen them interact together happily at the beginning at all but we didn't.  Because of this, the overall emotional turmoil Posy goes thought over the course of the book really doesn't hit as hard as it could.  Both Posy and Dario would make references to how it was 'before' but I wanted to be able to see the before for myself. Give a chapter or two at the beginning showing how happy but disconnected they were and then the character development down the line means so much more.  I really liked the dynamic between Posy and Dario especially with their chess battles.  It was also interesting to have the psychopath mafia guy be the money guy and not the hitman like we see a lot.  Also, the psychopathy shown I thought was really well done.  A lot of these mafia romances fall into the 'I hate everyone except you' side but Dario straight up admits that he's a psychopath and as such probably will never lover Posy the way she wants but the two still end up finding a sort of middle ground where they are both honest with what they're able to give and show, in their own way, how much they care about the other person.  The dynamic reminded me of the Scarlet Scars series and it was interesting to have a romance book not have some of the typical romance elements (like big love declarations).

Charmed by the Bartender - Piper Rayne

 This is the first book in the Modern Love series and follows Whitney and Cole.  Whitney moves back in with her grandparents after being let go from her job and meets Cole while drowning her sorrows one night at a bar.  She wakes up the next morning at his apartment to a note that he had an appointment but wants her to leave her phone number - she leaves without leaving it, determined to move on with her life.  Too bad he's the brother of her best friend's fiance.  She's the maid of honor, he's the best man, and the two end up spending a lot of time together taking care of wedding errands for the happy couple.  This was a really fun enemies to lovers romance.  I've determined I really love the maid of honor/best man enemies trope because not only is it forced proximity but the setting of an upcoming wedding really ups the romantic tension - love it.  I thought Whitney and Cole had amazing chemistry and seemed to be a really good pair right from the beginning.  Whitney doesn't like Cole due to a situation 10 years prior that Cole doesn't know about and I thought that would be the main conflict in the story but she tells him about it pretty early on which was really nice to see the characters acting like actual adults and not hiding secrets.  I really liked how both Whitney and Cole had their own baggage thanks to their different upbringings but they naturally work together and worked through those feelings. Whitney's friends were also great and I'm looking forward to continuing the series and reading about them. The one thing about this book I didn't like was that it was only from Whitney's POV - I very much prefer my romances to be dual POV.  In this case, I really wanted Cole's POV because he would drop little lines about how Whitney deserved to be treated or how special she is and since we didn't get to see any of his POV those comments really seemed to be coming out of left field.  I think if we had gotten more of his POV then those comments would make more sense.

 

Scandalous - Sybil Bartel

TW/CW: drugging, sexual abuse of a child

This is the first book in the Alpha Bodyguard series and follows bodyguard Tank and actress Audrina.  Audrina gets slipped a drug at a club and ends up running around the beach naked.  Tank is tasked with keeping her out of the paparazzi cameras until she comes back down to Earth.  However, he never expected that instead of a spoiled actress, Audrina is a spitfire woman who has her own agenda and will end up changing both their lives.  Tank lives up to the series name and is a capital A alpha / alpha-hole.  There are times where he veers a little into a BDSM type of Dom but it isn't explicitly stated.  Audrina has walls up between her and everyone, and for good reason.  The two of them press each other's buttons in just the right way that the first 40% of the book was really great.  There's tons of back and forth snippy comments with a huge amount of underlying sexual tension.  They are the kind of couple that almost use shouting as foreplay which I was all for in the beginning but it got old fast.  As their relationship progressed, they never seemed to get past that stage and even in the epilogue they're yelling because Tank is trying to get Audrina to sign a prenup and she doesn't want to. There were some tender moments between the two of them but it seemed like Tank only had 2 moods - broody and silent or yelling - and Audrina matched him blow for blow.  So while I can pick out moments of character development, it never seemed to me that the relationship got much past the initial chemistry phase.  I was initially fine with this because the main plot takes place over only 2 weeks but the fact that nothing seemed to change in the months leading to the epilogue and I just couldn't help but feel that the amount of yelling they were still doing wasn't how I want my romances to end.