The Flight Attendant - Chris Bohjalian

 

This mystery/suspense follows flight attendant Cassie on what starts as a typical morning for her - waking up with a killer hangover in a strange hotel room next to a strange man.  Only this time, the man is dead and Cassie is covered in blood. Her heavy drinking the night before means Cassie only has brief flashes of memories and the last thing she remembers before blacking out completely is that the man beside her was alive.  Cassie has two options - call the police and possibly get stuck in Dubai while the investigation and probably legal ramifications play out for years or she can leave and lie.  When Cassie chooses the second option - lying to her coworkers, her family, the FBI - she unknowingly starts a chain reaction that has dire consequences. 

TW/CW: alcoholism, animal death, death of a parent

I found the book's description to be a little misleading - but in a good way.  I originally thought from the description that this would be similar to The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins where the protagonist is an unreliable narrator due to her alcoholism and she comes across as paranoid and a bit unhinged to those around her.  The Flight Attendant does, technically, do all of those things but to a much lesser extent than I was expecting.  Cassie is sober a lot of the time in this book and she does have people on her side that she can, to an extent, lean on. This story also has a more cat-and-mouse type of dynamic to it more so than just Cassie bumbling through an investigation on her own.  Absolutely alcohol is a main issue and factor in Cassie's life and the situation she finds herself in at the beginning of the book. However, it didn't play as big a part in the story like I was expecting it to.  I did like this better because instead of the entire story revolving around Cassie's blackouts and unreliable memory, it is really just that one night in Dubai that she can't remember.  That moment was a bit of a wake up call, so while she does still have drinking problems in the rest of the book, it isn't nearly to the extent that it affects her memory for the rest of the book.  

I really loved Cassie's character, even when she was making incredibly frustrating decisions.  She was an interesting mix of being pretty cynical and closed off but she definitely has some tender spots where we can see how she wishes things were different. While I've never (knowingly) been close to someone who struggles with alcohol, I did find her struggle depicted in what felt like a much more relatable and measured way than other books I've read.  She had a really interesting mix of being very self-aware with her struggles but also coming across as a bit naive about how she's reacting to those struggles.  We find out snippets of her childhood and how that impacts her life and relationships now.  She knows she uses alcohol as a coping mechanism but being able to recognize it and being able to change that behavior are two different skills.  I think a lot of characters who struggle with alcohol fall into the stereotype where alcohol is an uncontrollable vice and they are almost in denial about the affect it has on their lives.  Again, I can't say if this representation is accurate or not, but it felt much more nuanced than other characters.  I also enjoyed her self-reflection when it came to her actions even when sober and how straightforward she was that she often makes impulsive decisions.  Some of her decisions were so outrageous that I was suspending my disbelief a bit and I think her 'impulsiveness' was maybe used a bit too much as a way to move the plot along easily.

Maybe it is just the police procedural lover side of me, but I wanted a whole lot more FBI involvement in this story.  They are such a constant source of worry for Cassie but we really don't get much interaction on page so it ended up making the tension feel a bit uneven.  There are multiple times when Cassie would be so worried that the FBI would come and arrest her or have a voicemail waiting on her phone when she landed.  However, those worries were almost never addressed and we didn't see the FBI hounding her or focusing on her as a suspect.  Because of this, after the first few times, any FBI-related worry Cassie had I pretty much instantly dismissed.  There was so much internal conflict and pressure that Cassie puts on herself during this book but I wanted some more external pressure from the FBI.  The reader knows, due to the dual POV of the book, that Cassie is in some amount of danger but she has no idea so it really feels like if Cassie wouldn't have been so obsessive then there wouldn't be much of a story at all.  Additional external pressure from the FBI could have helped the narrative feel like it had more forward momentum than just Cassie bumbling around until she conveniently found something out at just the right moment.

I took a few days to collect my thoughts and I'm still mad at the ending of this book.  And from my quick skim of other reviews on Goodreads, I'm not the only one.  This is the sort of ending where the author is asking for a whole lot of suspension of disbelief and I think it went too far.  To keep this spoiler free, I'll keep things as general as possible.  The ending had some character-related reveals that felt entirely out of character.  We spend almost 350 pages knowing that Character A has certain traits X, Y and acts in a particular way Z ... until it is convenient for plot reasons for them not to act like that.  Also, once we were about to hit the big climax, suddenly everything just fell in place and all the characters agreed on the direction they should go from there.  We spend 340 pages building up all this suspense and intrigue only for it to be resolved by 10 pages of pretty much just talking.  We get an epilogue two years later that shows where some of the characters end up and all I'll say about that is that I was very surprised at where some of these characters ended up given their past history.  There was one big reveal that I think was extremely underutilized in the overall plot and I really would have loved that to be played up much more.  

This book was turned into a TV series for HBO and, based on the episode synopsis I read, they changed many of the plot elements. I haven't watched the series yet, but knowing that the show takes much more of an active route for their plot makes me much more excited to watch it.  

Overall, I enjoyed this book and Cassie as a character but the ending was a real mess.

The Harbor - Katrine Engberg

 

The Harbor is the fourth book in the Kørner and Werner Series set in Copenhagen.  The English translations are being published out of order, so this is the third book that has been translated at this point. This story find police detective partners Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner called in after fifteen year old Oscar Dreyer-Hoff disappears.  Initially, it seems like this might be a typical teen runaway situation, but when Oscar's parents find an odd note left behind, they start to consider the possibility that Oscar has been kidnapped and the note they find is a threat of some kind.  As with all missing persons cases, time is of the essence and as the hours tick by, Kørner and Werner do their best to untangle the mess of connections and ties the Dreyer-Hoff family have - including some less than savory rumors. 

TW/CW: alcoholism, child abuse, attempted suicide, death of a child

This is my first Kørner and Werner book but the first in the series has been on my radar for a while. I almost didn't request this one, but when I saw that the English translations were being done out of series order (only books #1, 3, and now 4 have been translated), I decided it was probably pretty safe to jump in the middle.  And I'm pleased to report that I was correct - this book almost felt like it could have been the first book in a series.  We do get some mentions of past cases but really only in passing so it didn't feel like in other police procedural series where the references to previous books are much more heavy handed. The other characters and relationships, as well, were introduced in such a way that it felt like Engberg was introducing them to us for the first time. For example, I'm assuming that Anette's husband shows up at least a little in one of the previous books so I would have expected his character to be introduced in a way that leans toward the reader already knowing him.  However, his character reads like he's being introduced to us for the first time and Engberg does a great job of showing us key moments of him as well as how he and Anette act together. 

The characters were great and I especially loved Jeppe and Anette's relationship.  They had a great back and forth banter going through a lot of the book and seemed like they had a great working partnership.  There wasn't a whole lot of time in this book spent developing any of the relationships, so like most other detective series, that is probably more obvious from the series overall.  The story takes place over only 6 days so it isn't surprising that there wasn't a ton of character development in that timeframe.  I think there was more of Jeppe and Anette going off in their separate directions and I would have loved to have more of them on page, together, for more of that partner banter.  There were a ton of side characters and, for some reason, my brain had such a hard time keeping them all straight.  It really felt like it took me until the 40%ish mark to be able to remember who everyone was by name.  This is a bit unusual for me, especially since all the characters had very distinct names (there was no Mary/Maria situation here).  I couldn't really pinpoint an actual issue in the writing that would lead me to have that problem, so it might just be me not being completely engaged while reading because of other distractions in the room.  I did enjoy how often the side characters were used and how much we got to see of them on page instead of them just being introduced in the opening and then almost nothing until the big reveal at the end.

This book is multi-POV which I really enjoy.  I think this choice is able to give the reader a good insight into this whole cast of characters and it makes for some really fun guessing opportunities.  However, Engberg does the one thing that I hate with multi-POV mystery/thrillers - she has these characters, in their internal monologues, be extra vague for no reason other than to keep the info from the reader.  I 1000% know this might just be a pet peeve of mine, but there were enough times when we'd be in one POV and they'd leave off with something frustratingly vague that will end up obviously being part of the reveal/tie together by the end.  These little bits almost act like cliffhangers to pull the reader along with the hope that, in the next chapter from that character, we'll find out what the secret is.  Of course, we don't until the very end.  I think, for me, the issue is that this particular choice feels like the author is trying to trick me and insert this artificial tension in a way that feels very obvious.  It pulls me out of the story and makes me feel like I can see the seams in the story.  It won't completely ruin a book (unless it is used in nearly every chapter) but it will pull me out of the story and lower my overall enjoyment because of that. As an aside, I really enjoy when this mechanic is used in a way where the cliffhanger is resolved in the next chapter, but it ends up being a very innocent reason but that is not what happened in this book.

I liked how this was a pretty straight-up mystery.  I think a lot of police procedurals, at least the ones I tend to pick up, have a thriller-lite element that picks up in the third act.  In this case, however, the main plot is really putting these puzzle pieces together and seeing how some of these other seemingly unrelated aspects are all tied together.  There were a lot of moving parts and a pretty extensive cast of characters that all had to come together so the middle did get a little muddy for me - however, I think Engberg pulled it off in the end.  I did find the wrapping up and reveals to be a little underwhelming. In most mysteries, even if they don't have any thriller elements added in, the reveal is usually built up throughout the entire book and the detective has some sort of 'ah-ha' moment where everything clicks.  In this case, however, we didn't have any moment where we could feel that big accomplishment when everything falls together.  Looking back, I think that has to do more with how the story was structured.  The main plot line that we're following - the disappearance of Oscar - is pretty much solved at the 70% mark which is pretty early for the main mystery to be closing in a story.  The remaining 30% of the book is really seeing how these other plot threads are coming together and seeing Jeppe/Anette each having that sort of sixth sense that the case isn't quite solved yet.  And there are some pretty big reveals in the last third of the book but because they're introduced so late in the story there isn't much time to develop them into more concrete threats/suspects so they end up feeling less like a big deal than is ideal. 

We also had some interesting, very short chapters, from these un-named characters that gave us an extra peek at some of these events surrounding our main investigation.  I think these interludes are used pretty frequently in mysteries but are normally from the killer's POV.  In this case, it seems to be from the vicitim's POV but we don't know who that victim is.  I think these small chapters were where Engberg was really able to add in some more atmospheric writing and sort of remind the reader what is at stake in the story.  We might not know exactly who this mystery POV is, but we know they must be tied to the investigation in some way so they are important to the story.  

Overall, this was a really solid Noric Noir story with some really interesting characters and mystery elements.  I do think the structure of the plot wasn't exactly working for me but the story came together well at the end.  I loved the relationship between our two main detectives and will be reading more in this series for sure.

Thanks NetGalley and Gallery Books for the ARC

Expected publication date is February 22, 2022.

The Marsh King's Daughter - Karen Dionne

 This general fiction/suspense follows Helena - a woman with a quiet life and very happy with her husband and two daughters.  She's tried, and generally succeeded, to put her past behind her and keep it there.  However, when her father escapes from prison, Helena's quiet life is uprooted.  Helena's father is in prison for kidnapping Helena's mother when she was a teenager and keeping her in a remote cabin in the Michigan wilderness.  A few years later, Helena was born and she lived the first 12 years of her life in this remote location.  She grew up loving her father and enjoying the time spent learning how to hunt, track, and other survival skills.  However, there's another side to her father - a deadly side - and after her father kills two prison guards while escaping, Helena knows she just might be the only person in Michigan who can find her father.

TW/CW: kidnapping, sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, animal death

I had a good time reading this, but I did find this a quieter read than I was expecting.  I was expecting, based on the description, that this would be a sort of cat-and-mouse game between Helena and her father.  What we got instead was a lot of Helena reflecting and telling the reader about her life growing up and that story is interspersed with chapters in the present where she is tracking down her father.  And it wasn't done in a way where present-day Helena was setting a snare trap and then flashing back to the first time her father taught her how to do it.  We pretty much follow Helena in chronological order from her early childhood until she was 12.  For me, even calling this a suspense was a little generous because the only real parts where I felt suspense was in the last chapters.  The present day story line takes place over less than 24 hours so there isn't a ton of time to built up a lot of tension in those chapters.  This really felt more like a general fiction story with suspenseful elements, which is great but wasn't exactly what I was expecting based on the description of the book.

I did really enjoy how much detail and description went into the seemingly mundane elements of Helena's world and upbringing.  We go in depth into various survival techniques including what types of knives are best for what jobs, how to prepare different types of food, and how to track animals.  I could really feel Helena's wonder as a child at learning these different skills and how attached she was to her father.  I think Dionne does a great job at showing us the dichotomy between these moments when Helena was a young child and then the brutality and abuse later that her father is responsible for.  I also really liked how some of these lessons from the wilderness came back in the present day narrative and were used by Helena in her search for her father.  The way in which some of these skills were ingrained in her from such a young age really came across on page and I think they were very well integrated into the rest of the story.

The character interactions and relationships were really interesting because, as the reader, you know that Helena's father is a bad guy who kidnapped her mother, but to Helena, he was just her dad.  We get to see how Helena broke out of her father's spell and begins to see him for who he really is.  This character progression reminded me a lot of the memoir Educated by Tara Westover where Westover had a similar progression with her upbringing where she slowly realized that her parents (and father, specifically) were flawed people.  I wish we got to see more of how adult Helena's relationships with her own family played out more in the present day.  We get a lot of Helena telling the reader how much she wants to protect her husband and daughters, but we don't see much interaction on page.  I really enjoyed Helena's relationship with her mother and how she, at first, followed her father's lead and sort of looked down on her mother.  Their relationship does change over the years, but it is, understandably, complicated as Helena is a direct result of the horrible acts her mother lived through.

I did find the pacing to be really slow through most of the book, but the last 20% or so did kick things up a notch.  Like I mentioned above, this book really read more like a general fiction so the tension and pacing wasn't as tight or as high as I would expect from a suspense/thriller book.  Most of the tension and intrigue was in the reader knowing that Helena does, at some point, leave the isolated Michigan wilderness and her father goes to jail, but we don't know the exact circumstances behind those decisions until the later parts of the book.  I listened to the audio book, which I think probably helped me in this point because audios are more engaging for me so it is my preferred method for slower paced books like this (or non-fiction).  I really enjoyed the narrator (Emily Rankin) and thought she did a great job at really conveying some of the more quiet parts of the story in an engaging way.  

I think the ending gave me everything I was looking for when I started the book.  The pacing and tension ramp up, we get more direct action on page instead of the memories and flashbacks we'd gotten most of the rest of the book.  It almost felt like the reader, just like Helena, had this backlog of information that we can use to try and outsmart Helena's father. The ending was great because the climax turns into this turning point for Helena where she has to finally face her childhood and history that she, to some extent, has been running from for the past 20 years.  I think Dionne did a great job at including details and conversations that helped to fill in some of the gaps that were still left at that point in the story. We get a little bit of resolution after the climax, but I would have liked to see more.  

Overall, this was a really interesting read, although it did have less action than I was expecting.  I really enjoyed the characters and relationships as well as the detailed naturalistic elements.  I would recommend the audio book, especially because of the slower pacing and lower tension. 

The Mirror Man - Lars Kepler

 

 Translation by Alice Menzies

This Nordic Noir thriller is the eighth book in the Joona Linda series and follows the detective after the body of missing girl Jenny is found hanging in a public park.  Five years prior, 17 year old Jenny was abducted walking home from school and taken to a run down house where other girls are being held.  Their captor is unpredictable and the punishments are harsh and often deadly. Joona suspects Jenny isn't the killer's first victim and when another girl - Mia - goes missing it becomes clear they are dealing with a serial predator. As the police investigation unfolds, Mia and the group of young women at the house are plunged into increasing danger and Joona is in a race against time to save them.

TW/CW: kidnapping, sexual assault, child abuse, torture, animal abuse, animal death, drug use, alcoholism, death of a child, mental illness, police treatment of someone with mental illness, abuse in mental health facilities

In typical fashion for me, I didn't look up if this was part of a series before requesting on NetGalley and I was a little worried when I found out it was the 8th book.  Also, there were a few reviews I read that said this book would have been confusing without reading the previous ones so I was worried but decided to give it a shot anyway.  This series has been on my list as one that I'd like to read so if this 8th book wasn't making much sense, then I'd put it on the backburner and go read through the first seven books first.  However, I was very pleased while reading that I was not confused at all.  Like many police procedural series, the mystery in this book is self contained.  There are a number of references to outside events that happened in what seemed like the previous book and while I didn't know what, exactly, the characters were referencing, there were enough context clues that allowed me to get the gist of what happened.  Also, these other references didn't have any impact on the current case Joona is investigating so they were really more so for some character development and background info.  As with most police procedural series, the characters and relationships develop over the course of the series so I'm sure I missed out on some of that, but I still really enjoyed this book as a standalone. I'm sure when I do get around to reading the series from the beginning, these character interactions will hold more weight.

I really loved the characters in this book and how interconnected they all became by the end.  In the beginning few chapters, we did hop around to a few different characters and it made the story feel a bit disjointed because it wasn't obvious how any of the characters were connected.  However, as the investigation progressed the ties and connections became increasingly obvious and I really loved how they all came together in the end.  Each of the characters we follow was very unique and well developed so I never felt like any of them were just 'extra'.  I think Kepler does a great job at quickly defining these relationships between the characters by giving us just the right about of backstory and then showing us a few key scenes with the characters to really cement in their personalities and relationships.  We're following a handful of the characters throughout the story and it felt really well balanced.  I think in a lot of police procedurals, the main POV is (unsurprisingly) the police detective.  In this case, however, it really felt like it was a 33% - 33% - 33% split between the detective, the main witness, and the girls being held which really made this read less like a procedural and more like a traditional commercial thriller.  This also allowed for a lot more character development and exploration since so much of our time was spent with these other characters. 

As I mentioned, this was my first book by Kepler and the writing style in the beginning did take some getting used to.  A lot of the sentence structure, particularly early in the book, was very basic and repetitive - for example: "Character A does X. Character A does Y. Character A goes to H and does Z." Now I know every author has their particular style and this is a translated work so maybe that narration style is more common in the native Swedish but I've read my fair share of Nordic Noir translated works and this one stood out to me as being a little extra dry and simplistic in the writing style.  As the book progressed, about after the 30% mark or so, I noticed those sort of simplistic sentences showing up less and less and the narrative took on a style that didn't really have much outstanding defining characteristics.  The narrative style faded into the background and let the plot and characters come through. Personally, I enjoy that way of writing where the narrative craft is almost invisible and I know it takes a lot of work to get a narrative to that level.  In those early chapters, the sort of monotone, repetitive narration is broken up by moments of very visceral descriptions of what is happening to these girls and how they're feeling.  We see Jenny's abduction on page and the narration goes from "Jenny went to her locker, Jenny left school, Jenny took a left down the short cut" etc and quickly turns into a terrifying close third person narration of what it feels like when she wakes up and the terror growing as she realizes what happened and probably will happen to her.

The thriller aspects of this book really elevated this book for me.  I've said before that I'm a big fan of police procedurals but I can understand how other readers find them boring and dry and even I'll point out when certain books lean a little too far into the 'procedure' of the investigation.  This one, however, had a really great balance between the investigation aspects and the survival aspect due to the multi-POV.  I loved how we had chapters following the kidnapped girls and seeing how they were surviving and dealing with their ordeal.  Then we're also following other characters who are connected to the case in various ways. I think the POV choices as well as how much of the violence and torture we're shown really amped up the tension because the reader knows that the Joona is investigating the case but none of the girls believe they'll be rescued.  Also, we see some of them try to escape like we know Jenny was able to - at least until she was caught again and killed - so the reader also knows they probably won't make it if they try to escape but understands that they don't know that. 

I do want to touch on a main reveal that revolves around a certain mental health diagnosis. This is just my pet peeve, but I really dislike when this certain diagnosis is used in this way.  I personally think it is a cheep and overdone twist and while I personally do not have this diagnosis, I've seen many people who are diagnosed speak out against using that diagnosis in this type of way. Based on my understanding of this diagnosis, I do think Kepler got a lot of the factual aspects correct (like how it usually manifests, the root cause, etc) but, again, I think how it overall ended up being used was still not great and overall harmful to the public's understanding of this particular diagnosis. Mental illness is a bit theme and plot element in this story and there are some discussions about abuse in mental health facilities 30 years prior that I found to be a thoughtful addition to the story.  However, we also see police officers not listening and taking advantage of a character in a precarious mental health state which, again, was a nice acknowledgement that these sorts of abuses of power are still happening.

Overall, this was a really great detective story and it really solidified my feelings that I should start this series from the beginning. Great characters, good balance between the investigation and more thriller-y elements, good balance between keeping the mystery self contained in this book but also having connections to the previous books in the series.

Thanks NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday for the ARC

Expected publication day is January 18, 2022

(originally published October 19, 2020 in Swedish)

Greenwich Park - Katherine Faulkner

 

This domestic thriller follows pregnant Helen as she makes a new friend - Rachel- at her birthing class.  Rachel is brash, unpredictable, soon to be a single mother, and Helen finds herself drawn into a friendship with her.  While Helen's husband is off at work, Helen and Rachel spend more and more time together, often unexpectedly running into each other while they are out and about. At first, Helen is glad for the company and someone to distract her from her worries about her pregnancy.  However, as their relationship grows and Rachel's behavior becomes increasingly erratic, Helen starts to try and distance herself.  Unfortunately, they are too deeply connected for Helen to simply ghost away and when Rachel threatens to expose a secret from the past, it becomes clear that some secrets won't stay buried for long.

TW/CW: pregnancy, past miscarriage, sexual assault, drug use, infidelity 

This turned out to be a much more of a psychological thriller than I was expecting.  I find that most domestic thrillers have some elements of psychological thriller to them and that is always my favorite part of domestic thrillers.  So I was very pleased when this started out pretty standard domestic thriller but pretty quickly took a turn into the psychological and then went full speed down that road.  We get into some unreliable narrator territory as well which I think really works well to heighten the tension in the story. 

The characters were really well developed but I think a lot of them fall into the 'unlikable' category which I know some readers don't like.  Helen has had multiple past miscarriages so she is a little high strung and worried about her current pregnancy that seems to be going well so far.  She comes across as judgemental and there were times where she seemed so oblivious of the feelings of those around her (like her husband) that I wasn't sure how someone like her could have actually formed and kept these close friendships.  I really loved the amount of history Faulkner was able to insert into these character relationships very easily and they all seemed to get along really well.  Which just made it all the more satisfying once the secrets start coming out and those relationships get tested.

The different POVs did not really work for me well in this book despite that being one of my favorite narrative styles for thrillers.  I found the POV switching to be, at least in the first half, pretty jarring and it felt really unnecessary.  We're following Helen in her adventures around town for a good number of chapters and then suddenly we're in the POV of this other character who I don't think we'd even heard about before then.  Of course, I expected the two POVs to become connected at some point (because this is a story, afterall).  It felt like that other POV started off at the wrong point in that character's story arc.  Looking back, I can see why Faulkner would choose to start there, but in the moment while I was reading, I really didn't see the point.  I do like the POV switching in the last third of the book better because when we're getting a bunch of secrets revealed we can see just how those secrets are affecting the various characters.  There were some great reveals done with these different POV chapters but it felt like the author had those moments decided on first and then she had to add in other POV chapters earlier so they wouldn't come in as a surprise that late in the narrative.

There was a pretty strong mystery element to this story that really kicks off after the midpoint twist and I did feel like some of the pieces for that mystery were a little too heavy handed.  It felt like each character was given one big piece of information/clue revealed about them that really stood out to me.  There wasn't really any other, smaller pieces of information given so then when the twists and reveals start happening in the last 75% of the story, it felt so obvious because I was thinking "of course A character did that, they were the only one that was mentioned doing X".  It felt like the mystery hinged, mostly, on the reader not really noticing/thinking too much about these bits of information at the time but then they can look back after the reveal and see the clue was there the whole time.  Some of the clues just seemed to be dropped into the narrative in such a heavy handed way that really made me pick up on them immediately and be on the lookout while I continued reading for anyway that information would be useful. Now, of course, this is a domestic/psychological thriller, not strictly a mystery so maybe I'm being too picky about how the mystery thread was handled. I think the reveals and plot points were really well done and there were some surprises for me despite everything I picked up on, but I really would have liked a little more finesse in these elements.

The ending was absolute perfection and honestly kicked up my rating a whole star.  I thought the way everything came together was done really well and this is where all the multi-POV chapters really paid off.  The tension and pacing was great and I felt like I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.  We were neck deep in unreliable narrator mode so there was also this underlying aspect of maybe nothing is as it seems and there's going to be a twist completely out of left field.  The book opens with a flash forward so we sort of know the general direction the story is headed, but we don't know the who or why of how, specifically, we get to that scene in the future. I thought the narrative device Faulkner uses to give the reader the big explanation of the 'why' behind the actions of certain characters was really well done and didn't feel info-dumpy as many reveals at the end of these thriller/mystery books can.  I also loved the last line of the book and the implication that line provided was a really great moment. 

Overall, this was a really great domestic/psychological thriller with fantastic characters, tension, and a great ending.

Thanks NetGalley and Gallery Books for the ARC

Expected publication date is January 25, 2022

Romance Wrap-up 1/1/22 to 1/15/22

Washed Up - Kandi Steiner

This age-gap romance is the first book in The Bayside Heroes series and follows Amanda and Greg.  The two reconnect after a decade apart when Amanda ends up in the ER after a car accident and Greg is her anesthesiologist.  They met for the first time when Greg was 18 and the best friend of Amanda's son.  Now, Amanda is almost done divorcing her abusive ex and is trying to figure out who she is.  Greg doesn't want to lose this chance now that he's reconnected with her but can the 13 year age gap and him being her son's best friend come in the way of their happiness?  I really enjoyed this read and loved Greg and Amanda together.  I really enjoyed how both of them were at this spot in their lives where they wanted to branch out and try new things.  Their accountability partnership of trying new things like rock climbing, kayaking, going to a hockey game, etc was my favorite part.  This is the first book in a 4 book series and we meet all the heroes in this book but I did have a hard time keeping all of them straight. I also thought the conflicts between Greg and Amanda weren't addressed as much or as thoroughly as I was expecting.  I felt that the resolution was basically just handwaving the concerns away and just saying "that won't be a problem for us".   The first half of the book was spent building up their friendship and with little pockets of sexual tension and then when they actually took that leap, it kind of flattened out from there. 

CW/TW: domestic abuse, alcoholism, drug use, medical trauma

Hot Heir - Pippa Grant

This royal romance is the third book in The Royals series and follows royal bodyguard turned king Viktor and small town southern girl Peach.  The two both enjoy pushing each other's buttons and consider themselves to be more enemies than friends.  However, when Viktor finds out he's to be king there is one stipulation to taking the crown - a wife.  Peach finds herself the temporary guardian of her troublesome half sister and the judge won't let her have full custody until she's - you guessed it - married.  Viktor and Peach team up so both can get what they want.  After all, there's no way these enemies could turn into something more.  This is typical Pippa Grant rom-com and there were some great laugh out loud moments.  I've DNF'd a few royalty romances in the past and I really think this trope just isn't for me but I did end up really enjoying this one for a few reasons.  This is the third book in the series and it is obvious that Viktor and Peach have spent a good amount of time together so they do have an established relationship that is royalty-adjacent so neither of them are completely blind-sided by the royal aspect to the plot.  I also really liked how Viktor falls first and with this being a marriage of convenience plot, there isn't any needing to choose between his kingly duties and Peach.  I loved the support system of friends and family they had as well and these lead to some really great heartwarming moments about making your own family.  Their actual chemistry together was off the charts hot hot hot (like break down a literal wall hot)!  The one part that bothered me to the end was Viktor's voice.  Of course, being a royal bodyguard, I would 100% expect him to say a bunch of "my lady" and "your highness" etc.  However, the man even thinks in this way of speaking and the first time his internal monologue used the word "twas" I almost DNF'd right there.  I'm also pretty sure Grant used just about every weird word for penis that she could find so reader beware I suppose (example: she cradled my stiff tallywacker through my suit pants).

How to Love Your Neighbor - Sophie Sullivan

This enemies to lovers romance follows Grace and Noah who have just become next door neighbors.  Grace is graduating from design school and recently inherited her house from her estranged grandparents.  Noah recently relocated from NYC to California in an attempt to get out from under his father's thumb.  Noah likes his house, but he'd like to also have Grace's and he's ready to make her an offer way over market value.  But Grace isn't giving in that easy to the smooth talking and stuffy businessman next door.  But when a home designs magazine wants to do a story on Noah's home renovation project, Noah hires Grace as his interior designer and the two start spending much more time together and find out they have more in common than they initially thought.  I really enjoyed this read and loved the progression of Grace and Noah's relationship.  Enemies to lovers is not my preferred trope, but this book had a really solid middle section where they really became friends first before transitioning to lovers and I think that is exactly what they needed to do.  There was a ton of emotional vulnerability on both sides and I really adored the lessons about healthy communication we see them learn (especially Noah).  I did think the pacing was a little rough at the beginning but after about the 40% mark, we were into pretty solid friends to lovers territory and I felt that the narrative pacing flowed a lot better after that point.  The cast of characters surrounding our main couple are perfection and I really enjoyed the amount of time Grace and Noah spent with these other characters.  This really was really low angst between the main couple, but there were a good amount of outside pressures that they had to overcome in order to be together.

CW/TW: emotionally abusive/manipulative parents

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the ARC

Expected publication date: January 18, 2022

Such a Pretty Smile - Kristi DeMeester

 

This horror/thriller follows mother and daughter Caroline and Lila Sawyer.  In Atlanta, Georgia, girls have gone missing only for their mutilated bodies to be found days later. They are more suspected victims of the killer known as The Cur who has killed in multiple states over multiple decades.  We follow the dual timelines of Caroline (New Orleans in 2004) and Lila (Atlanta in 2019) as both deal with this threat in their lives as well as being terrorized by nightmares, delusions, and the unyielding feeling of being watched and followed.  Caroline has tried her best to protect her daughter from the threats that she feared followed her from New Orleans to Atlanta.  But now that Lila is 13 and starting to rebel against her mother's rules, the two must dig through Caroline's past and figure out what connections there are to the present day.  

TW/CW: intrusive thoughts, mental illness, child death, animal death, child abduction 

This was an intense read, but I really loved it. This was, for me, psychological horror at its best.  The gradual building and expanding of the horror elements as the story progressed were absolutely spot on.  I really enjoyed the creeping way the horror edged in from the outside until the characters couldn't escape from it.  This gradual escalation also made it hard to tell what was real and what wasn't in this story - for both the reader and the characters - so by the midpoint, we were pretty solidly into unreliable narrator-land.  I especially loved how the beginning horror elements were small enough that I think most readers could identify with - for example: brief intrusive thoughts about how you wished you could just tell your friend to "shut up already" before immediately correcting and briefly wondering why you would think something like that.  I think starting horror novels with smaller horror like that (as opposed to jumping in the deep end) really helps with reader buy-in and getting readers to stay with the book as it goes deeper and more sinister from there.  

I do want to mention that the most extreme parts of the horror are attributed to the main character's mental illness that was, until this point, undiagnosed.  We see this character dealing with these new aspects to their reality as they get more and more extreme until they finally are forced to seek help and get a diagnosis.  I personally do not have the specific mental illness in this story so I can't speak to the representation but from how the book came across to me, it seemed like DeMeester walked the line between a couple of tropes very carefully.  It isn't for me to determine if that was successful or not, but I did feel like she was aware of the stereotypes that many books fall into and she tried to work around those.  Most of the violence and gore was off page with only descriptions given after the fact so this story was really set in the mind of our characters and about how they're experiencing things in their world.  I think this made for a very immersive and emotional read and I can only imagine would hit even harder for someone who does have the particular mental illness portrayed in this story. 

The pacing of this story was phenomenal.  It is told in dual timeline and as the story progresses and the two plot lines start to converge, the chapters start alternating more and more quickly from one timeline to the other.  DeMeester does a great job at really settling the reader into the story initially and then she starts throwing escalating plot points and emotional moments at the reader.  Once the story really kicks into high gear (for me, around the 50% mark) there wasn't a whole lot of downtime between plot point reveals and the escalating horror elements.  I think if this book was any longer, that would have been a problem.  Looking back at my reading experience, there were times in the last 25% of the book where it really felt like I couldn't read fast enough and while that is a really thrilling reading experience, I do think it lowered my reading comprehension because I was reading so fast to get to the next plot point that some of the deeper themes didn't have time to sink in.  I don't often re-read books, even years later, but I think this book has a really great re-read potential because of all the theme layers combined with the incredible plot. I can absolutely see how some readers won't enjoy that sort of constant acceleration reading experience but I had a really great time with it.

I thought the characters and their relationships were really well done.  So much of this story revolves around relationships and tensions between a parent and child that these connections in the story really needed to be solid. The plot did not have a whole lot of time to dillydally around but DeMeester does a great job of drilling down and giving us a handful of key scenes and interactions so we are well-grounded in the reality of these relationships.  In the opening scene, for example, we see Lila's feelings about her relationship with her mom, dad, and best friend as well as her feelings on the tension between her parents and the tension between her friend and her mom.  

The one aspect of this book that I wasn't 100% sold on was Lila's voice.  She did not read to me as a 13 year old, she came across more like a 15/16 year old.  So much so that when we're in the climax of the book and she needs to travel, I was surprised for a moment that she didn't have a drivers license but then I remembered she is only 13.  There were some points that came across as very authentic 13 year old girl like how she's handling her crushes and how she's trying to break apart from her mom a bit to be more independent.  However, a lot of the inner monologue that we get from her feels really overly complex and made the character read older than I would have expected.  The story is told in third person, but has a close narration style so we get inner thoughts of both Caroline and Lila and the narration style and language used for both characters was the same so it made Lila read older for me.  I don't think this was detrimental to the story overall, but it did cause me to pause at a few places and take me out of the story a bit while reading. 

The ending to this story is one of those endings that is a little open and I know that is hit or miss with readers.  We get some details that show us the world isn't entirely what we thought it was but we don't really get any sort of concrete, sit-down explanation that X was A and Y was B, etc.  We get enough resolution and a snapshot of the future so we know how certain characters end up and how they are coping with the information we learned in the climax.  Throughout the story, DeMeester does a great job of layering in some social commentary about growing up as a woman and all the different ways girls can fight against aspects or forces in their lives that are trying to make them be less, make them be quiet.  I think this is the type of book, for me, that I need another read through to really grasp these commentary layers.  I can see they are there but upon first read through, I was so caught up in the literal plot points of the story that I think some of those deeper layers didn't get as much brain-time from me as they should.  I have a feeling (that looks to be confirmed by other reviews) that if I had grasped these extra layers better then the ending wouldn't feel as open as I think it came off to me.  

Overall, this was a fantastic horror read that had some great layering of social commentary I would like to revisit. Phenomenal pacing, horror, and characters. The ending I think will be a pinch point for some readers and the pacing could be considered overwhelming at times.  I'm not sure how the mental illness aspects will land with readers more closely tied to those than I am, so a note of caution going forward on that point.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC

Expected publication date is January 18, 2022

Road of Bones - Christopher Golden

 

This supernatural horror/thriller follows a small documentary crew led by producer Felix “Teig” Teigland as they traverse Siberia’s Kolyma Highway - "The Road of Bones" - aiming to finish at the town of Akhust - “the coldest place on Earth” - collecting ghost stories and local legends along the way.  However, when Teig and his crew arrive at the town, they find it abandoned except for one nine-year-old girl in shock.  While trying to formulate a plan and figure out what happened to this town, a pack of wolves comes out of the forest and attack.  But these aren't any ordinary wolves, they're faster and stronger, and when Teig and his crew attempt to leave the town, the wolves follow. 

The horror aspects of this book were phenomenal.  It scratched the same horror itch that The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones did for me where it was a slow, creeping horror punctuated by moments of violence with a sprinkle of body horror on top.  Road of Bones does lean more into the thriller side of things because the characters we're following are well aware of being pursued by these supernatural forces. I especially loved the fact that our group of characters is running away but the horror elements are just following them at a steady pace which creates this stifling feeling of almost hopelessness while reading. The supernatural horror elements don't come in until about the 25% mark, so the first quarter of the book was a lot of set up to these characters as well as the harsh environment they find themselves in.  While the supernatural elements are the forefront of the horror in this story, the environmental horror is also very well established. The characters are constantly discussing the weather and the cold and how both are going to affect the trip and the cold becomes another force against them while they're trying to escape - if their car crashes, they die. There was a really great push-pull dynamic between the survival horror and the supernatural horror in this book that I think really worked well to highlight both parts.  For me, it very much felt like as soon as I was getting a little burnt out reading about one kind of horror, the other would become the larger threat and vice versa.

I do want to acknowledge that Golden does utilize the native people and native folklore in this story and while I thought was handled well, I'm not a member of that group so I can't say for sure.  Since I read an ARC, the acknowledgement section was not completed in my copy so I'm not sure if he went and spoke with anyone the Yakut native group (his bio on his website doesn't list him as being a member of this group so I'm assuming he's not).  The book opens following two Americans - Teig and his cameraman Prentiss - as they are on their way to meet their guide.  Their guide is a native man in his 20s named Kaskil and this guide tells them about some of the local legends and customs.  The supernatural element of the story is from the native folklore and there were a few times where it felt like we might be leaning toward the trope of native horror being entirely evil and needs to be overcome by this white American trying to save this little girl.  However, the place where the story ended up at the end was a much more careful integration of these creatures into the overall narrative.  I was also a little worried about veering into the 'native burial ground' trope because of the focus on the story behind the "Road of Bones" name (hundreds of thousands of people died/were killed while constructing the road and were simply buried below the road).  However, this aspect also turned out to be handled in what felt to me a much more respectful and sympathetic way.  

The characters, to me, were the weakest part of the book but I also think this was very much more of a plot-driven book more so than a character-driven story.  Teig and Prentiss have known each other for years and they did have some good banter back and forth mostly at the beginning of the book.  Then when Kaskil joins and we eventually run into other characters, they are basically strangers to Teig and thus are also strangers to the reader.  The whole story takes place in less than 24 hours and there wasn't a lot of time to sit around and tell each other their life stories so it makes sense that the character development was a bit shallow.  That being said, Golden does a fantastic job at writing the emotion of these characters that the reader barely knows.  For example, we had just met Kaskil only a few pages earlier, but the panic and despair he feels when he finds out his hometown is mysteriously abandoned is palpable.  I think Teig, being our main focus for the story, had the most character development but even that felt a little forced to me.  There was one moment from his past that kept being mentioned so it was really obvious that it was going to be significant in the story at some point.  It, of course, does end up being important but I think the balance of how often it was mentioned during the story didn't quite line up with how significant it ended up being at the end. 

I found the pacing of the story to be really tight which I think is essential in this sort of horror/thriller story.  The beginning 25% does start a little slow with a lot of talking while driving a car but as soon as our characters arrive at the abandoned town it is pretty much full steam ahead.  There were enough quiet moments in the bulk of the story to give the reader a moment to settle and have a bit of a breather before the next round of action.  Since our characters are actively trying to escape these entities chasing them, we do have some great thriller moments and close calls in the story.  There is so much action packed into these 24 hours in the story (and 240 pages of a book) that it really felt like a much longer read because there was so much packed in. We even got a nice slow down in the resolution after the climax that I appreciated. 

Overall, this was a great horror/thriller read that was a little slow to get started but then it went from 0 to 100 in no time. I really enjoyed the progression of the horror and the integration of native folklore into the story.  There were some great gut-punch moments and the pacing was incredible and well-balanced.  I'll be checking out more from Golden in the future and I have added a few of his backlist titles on my TBR now.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC

Expected publication date is January 25, 2022

The Fields - Erin Young

 

This mystery/thriller, the first in a planned series, follows Sergeant Riley Fisher when she arrives at the scene of a woman found dead in a corn field. The case becomes personal when Fisher realizes the woman is a childhood friend and reminds Fisher of a dark point in her past she thought she left behind.  What starts out as a seemingly straightforward investigation soon branches off as more victims are found and Fisher finds connections to something much larger than the small Midwest town.

TW/CW: cannibalism, drug abuse, medical experimentation, sexual assault (rape) of a minor

 The first point I want to make right away is that, in my opinion, the description/cover/title of this book do not in any way indicate just how graphic and violent this book gets.  For me, this was a big plus!  For other readers, this can be a big problem and I have seen some DNF reviews that had a problem with this exact point.  I was expecting a kinda quiet police procedural story set in a rural Midwest town.  And while that is the core of the book, the actual crimes depicted and how much of those crimes end up on-page were quite surprising.  Most of this book does follow Fisher in her investigation so we get descriptions of the crimes through her but there are a few chapters from other POVs that have a much more direct connection to the darker parts of these crimes and we do see some graphic scenes on page in those chapters. Each reader is going to have different lines in the sand, but for me, the graphic choices Young made in this book never cross the line into gratuitous but I can absolutely see how that would cross the line for other readers.  For me, Young walked a really tight line of balancing the graphic nature of the crimes with the investigation and, in the end, I found the payoff to be well-earned.

I loved the characters in this book and I'm so glad the author is planning on making this a series so we can see how the relationships develop.  Riley Fisher is the first female sergeant in the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office which is pressure enough.  But then when the mutilated body of a local woman shakes the small town, Fisher is faced with even more pressure to find the killer and close the case.  We get a great balance between Fisher's professional life and her rocky home life and we see how each affects the other.  These different areas pulling on Fisher's time really helped her become a very fleshed out and realistic character. She's flawed and has baggage just like everyone else and we see her deal with these struggles (although with different amounts of success at times).  The other characters in the world - the other police officers as well as her family - are also well developed and I especially loved the different types of relationships we see on page.  I think this is a complex and interesting group of characters that I'd love to follow into the next book in the series.

The one part that fell flat for me was the integration and connection of wider outside threats to this town. I knew from the description that there was going to be some sort of outside threat or connection which from an overall plot perspective, I think was great.  I had some problems with the pacing and actual narrative way those plot points were worked into the story.  The first 20% of this book is following Fisher and her investigation.  That was a pretty significant portion of the book and was long enough for me, as a reader, to settle in and get comfy with these characters, setting, and plot line.  So then, when the next chapter is removed from the town and investigation, it felt very jarring and confusing.  Now, I know that this chapter wouldn't be included unless it was important to the story in some way.  As the book progresses, we do get more of these other chapters that seemingly follow a different plot line that is completely separate from Fisher's murder investigation.  Again, I know as a reader that the plot lines should converge at some point (and they do), but as I was reading these other chapters really felt like they were potholes in the road. They were all pretty short and over quickly, but they disrupted my reading experience and I had a hard time understanding how/why they were a part of the road (overall story).  Fisher's plot line probably took up 85% of the story and the other 15% was this other plot line outside of town and this split, for me, was just enough to be disruptive while at the same time not being enough to be pulled into and enjoy that other side of the story.  I think if we had gotten this other plot line earlier in the book and it was more significant percentage of the book then that would help the two lines mesh together better.  I generally like split POV/plot line stories but this one just didn't come together great for me in the reading experience. 

 As this is a police procedural, the investigation is really front and center in this book - as it should be.  That being said, I think Young's writing style was really engaging and she does a great job of adding in these layers to the writing that help the story feel so much more exciting and eventful than a typical police procedural.  For example, I really noticed how much movement the characters have - they're walking around the office, driving to a new scene, multitasking while on the phone, etc.  As a lover of police procedurals, I can admit they can get a bit boring in places especially when all the lab tests results, coroner's report, etc start coming in.  There can be a good amount of info-dumping going on in those sections and most of that info won't be immediately impactful to the investigation.  Young, however, managed to balance all this same info-dumping with so much character movement and other activities happening in the same moment that it never felt like the characters were just sitting around and reading these medical reports aloud.  There was also a fantastic way of layering when the information came into the investigation, often while the characters were still actively investigating other leads.  Again, this left almost no downtime on the page as the characters were pretty consistently moving from one scene to the next, one interview to the next. There were a lot of good reveals in this story and seeing how all the pieces of these different plot lines came together in the end was fantastic. 

The ending to this book is a little over-the-top but I really liked where the story ended up.  The second plot line based out of town that I addressed earlier comes barreling in at about the 75% mark and then it is full speed ahead.  The ending does veer a bit into political-thriller category and integrates Midwest farming concerns over big-agriculture companies buying out and taking over family farms. I think Young did a really good job weaving in these bigger ideas into what started out as just a small town murder investigation but not all readers are going to appreciate that slight curve in the narrative.  I've never lived in a rural small town in Iowa, but based on the acknowledgements at the end of the book, Young spent a good amount of time traveling in the area and talking with local police officers and politicians to get a better grasp on the issues that people living in these towns experience (which is impressive considering Young resides in Brighton, England).  I really enjoyed the way the different plot lines all came together in the end and while this is the planned first book in a series, all the major lines are wrapped up pretty neatly so it can 100% be read as a standalone.

 Overall, I really enjoyed this read!  I loved the characters, investigation, and the graphic depths the story surprised me with.  I had a little bit of trouble with the way the chapters on other plot line were integrated in the story but I think the ending payoff was well earned.  This was a really surprising read and I loved how the story veered off in an unexpected direction a few times.  I look forward to reading more books in this series in the future.

 Thanks NetGalley and Flatiron Books for the ARC

 Expected publication date is January 25, 2022