The Butcher - Jennifer Hillier

 

"A rash of grisly serial murders plagued Seattle until the infamous "Beacon Hill Butcher" was finally hunted down and killed by police chief Edward Shank in 1985. Now, some thirty years later, Shank, retired and widowed, is giving up his large rambling Victorian house to his grandson Matt, whom he helped raise.

Settling back into his childhood home and doing some renovations in the backyard to make the house feel like his own, Matt, a young up-and-coming chef and restaurateur, stumbles upon a locked crate he’s never seen before. Curious, he picks the padlock and makes a discovery so gruesome it will forever haunt him… Faced with this deep dark family secret, Matt must decide whether to keep what he knows buried in the past, go to the police, or take matters into his own hands.

Meanwhile Matt’s girlfriend, Sam, has always suspected that her mother was murdered by the Beacon Hill Butcher—two years after the supposed Butcher was gunned down. As she pursues leads that will prove her right, Sam heads right into the path of Matt’s terrible secret."

 

This was exactly the type of thriller I was looking for - jump right into the meat of the story and with a pace that never really slowed down.  I've seen some reviews mention that they felt the book was mis-marketed as a mystery and they were disappointed.  This book was originally published in 2014 so maybe the publisher has changed the description from what it was, but I felt like the above description (which is what shows as of today in Goodreads) is accurate and pays off on the premise.  I agree that this isn't really a mystery of who but rather a thriller of when all these plot points will come together and I really enjoy that sort of set up to a thriller.

I enjoyed the character set-ups that we got and all of the characters were wonderfully realistic and flawed. Hillier gives the reader a good look of the 'before' state with these characters before the plot kicked in.  I did find myself, in the middle of the book, wanting more emotional stakes from the characters.  It kept feeling like we were building up to some emotional moment but then the character would either talk themselves down or another character would talk them down.  I wanted a bit more mess and a bit more angst than what we ended up getting.

I went back and forth on whether or not I would classify this as a horror book and while I eventually decided not to, it certainly has some horrific elements.  We do get some on-page murder as well as descriptions of past crimes and these are pretty gruesome.  The Butcher is an apt name for the acts done to the victims in this read.  I would categorize this as more graphic than most standard thrillers, but I've certainly read more graphic ones at the same time.  I kept coming back to the comparison of Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter and while I do think Pretty Girls is more graphic, I think these two reads are in the same neighborhood and have a lot of the same sinister vibes. 

Most of the thrilling elements in this read come from the reader knowing more than the characters. There were multiple instances of Character A not knowing they were in danger but the reader knew and I was on the edge of my seat reading to see if this would be the time that Character A finally realized what was going on. Hillier always managed to keep enough tension in the scene or in the preceding scenes for the reader to never quite feel that the characters were safe.  This is a multi-POV read so I knew in the back of my head that something could happen to one of the main characters and the story could still continue on so no one was ever really safe. 

Overall, this was a really great read and had a lot of things I look for in a thriller.  We had a great premise, good payoff, and good stakes.  

Blood Parish - E. J. Findorff

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Expected publication date is May 31, 2021.  

The Other Side of the Door - Nicci French

 

This story follows music teacher Bonnie during the summer that she was planning on getting her life together a bit.  Instead, she finds herself disposing of a corpse and hiding evidence from the police. The story is told in alternating chapters of "before" and "after" the discovery of the corpse as we unravel what, exactly, happened that evening.  TW/CW: 2 instances of on-page physical domestic abuse

I really enjoyed the overall premise and structure of the book.  I'm a sucker for dual timelines and it was fun to hop around in time and see how something we find out in one time comes up in the other.  The book opens with Bonnie finding the body but she never tells the reader who it is.  It is always 'him' or 'his' and she doesn't really give away any hints to what her connection with the dead person is.  We then jump back in time and see Bonnie putting together this ragtag band of musicians for her friend's wedding and they are mostly all men.  So we can assume that one of these men ends up dead, but we don't know which for about the first 1/3 of the book.  It was pretty fun to read along and guess which of them would be killed and possible motives for all of these characters.  Even once we do find out who dies, we don't know for sure the how or why behind the death.  The timeline switching continues to reveal pieces of the story that we don't know in a pretty intriguing way.  However, the last 2/3 of the story did take a bit of a downhill turn for me.

As a character-focused reader, I'm really forgiving on the actual plot elements if the character work is superb.  However, I found both characters and plot to be lacking in this story for me.  We spend the first 1/3 of the book meeting all these people in Bonnie's life - first her friends and then all these musicians.  The book does a really good job at grounding these characters in their personalities and other identifying characteristics so I didn't get confused.  However, I was expecting a bit of character growth over the course of the story.  It really felt that the characters started out as a bit of a caricature in order to help the reader keep them all straight but then they stayed that way even after the death of someone in their group.  And even if the side characters maybe weren't as developed as I would have liked, I think Bonnie should have had much more of a character arc than she did.  She found the body of someone she knew and decided to dispose of it.  I would expect something like that to have a much more profound effect on a person.  Bonnie is effected by it, but sort of in a weird way where she's walking around in a bit of a brain fog which didn't feel that different to how she was living her life before.  If Bonnie was super on top of her game really taking charge of her life and then suddenly changed to floating through her days then I think that would be really interesting.  But the character shift we get from her isn't as dramatic as I think it needed to be in order to have the last part of the book be interesting from a character perspective.

As for the plot, I was generally much more interested in the 'after' chapters but even those, eventually, lost my interest.  The 'before' chapters are just a bunch of mediocre musicians practicing together and making little snippy comments at each other.  I didn't really find them engaging or interesting and while they did reveal some pieces of information, I wish they were shorter or possibly cut out the practicing altogether.  Most of the information we need for the investigation is revealed either before or after the band practice.  I understand that the band aspect is needed to push the timeline along but I really think these chapters could have ended right when they started to practice.  The 'after' chapters, after a while, became really boring for me too.  They couldn't hold the tension of the investigation for me and I overall ended up not caring if they ever found out exactly what happened that night.  I think the main issue with the 'after' chapters is that Bonnie thinks she knows what happened (but she doesn't tell the reader) so she isn't concerned with finding out the truth.  There's no amateur investigation or anything like that, she's more concerned about if she's going to get caught for hiding the body.  This story takes place in London which has CCTV cameras everywhere.  These cameras are brought up a number of times throughout the beginning half of the book and I thought they were going to be a bigger source of tension/fear for Bonnie than they ended up being.  I basically wanted the tension turned up to 11 and for Bonnie to be more involved in the investigation elements.  

Overall, I really enjoyed the premise and first 1/3 of the story, but found the back 2/3 to be completely underwhelming and lacking the tension and character development I would have expected from the premise.

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow Paperbacks for the ARC

Expected publication date is April 27, 2021 (originally published in 2009 under the title Complicit)

The Dinner Guest - B.P. Walter

 

 

This is a domestic thriller following family Matthew, Charlie, and Titus and the year leading up to a deadly dinner with Rachel - a woman they think they met by chance.  Matthew is stabbed at the dinner table, Rachel calls the police and confesses immediately, leaving Charlie and Titus to navigate their new family structure and the murder investigation as everyone tries to figure out why Rachel killed Matthew. Told in dual timeline and dual POV, we follow Rachel and Charlie and slowly find out the truth of their relationship and what happened during the dinner.

The beginning of this book was my favorite part but I know some readers will disagree.  The prologue starts off when the police show up at Charlie and Matthew's home and start processing the scene.  There is a slight hint at the end of the prologue that maybe not all is as it seems and then in chapter 1 we jump to 12 months in the past and pick up the story from there to work forward to the murder. I personally love this structure where we know the ending and then the fun is the journey of how we get there.  However, I know that not everyone feels the same way.  I don't feel like the prologue spoils anything more than the book description, in general, does.  I watched a video from Kate Cavanaugh recently where she discusses why she sometimes skips prologues and I could see why people would skip this type of prologue.  I will say the book doesn't end at the murder, so there is more revealed after the dinner in the overall plot of the book.  Like I said, I just really enjoy this structure where I know what happens but finding how exactly how everything plays out.

I really enjoyed the world building that Walter did in in this story.  The story is set in London, but there are a lot of intricacies that come into play in regards to the different classes the characters belong to and how that informs their world view and actions.  For example, upon meeting Rachel, Charlie feels something is off about her but he can't explain why.  Matthew accuses Charlie of not liking her because she's lower class and a little different from all their other posh friends.  This adds and extra layer of tension to the story because now Charlie is double guessing his feelings but it also a bit put off that Matthew would accuse him of being judgemental like that.  We also see Rachel's home with her father so we get a direct contrast to the very luxurious life she's managed to find for herself in the story and we get a bit of her feelings on the issue.  All the little details really made this upper class group of people that Rachel was infiltrating feel like a whole other world with their own rules and guidelines.  

I thought the overall premise of the book was really interesting and one of my favorite thriller/mystery/horror premises of the stranger infiltrating someone's life.  We know from the beginning that Rachel has some sort of ulterior motive when it comes to getting close to Charlie and Matthew but we don't know the details.  Charlie and Matthew just think they've made a new friend at the bookstore and have no idea that the wheels of disaster have been set in motion.  It is a very suspenseful premise that I think really pays off at the end when all is revealed.  I also think that the structure of having very short chapters and switching perspectives and timelines often help raise that suspense and tension.  This story really put into perspective that adults making friends is pretty difficult outside of school or work so I found the initial meeting very plausible.  I know my partner is routinely striking up conversations with people when he goes out shopping and I could absolutely see him doing something like this (which terrifies me, an avid reader of thrillers and other such murder books). In any case, I'd say this is a really solid example of this trope of the mysterious stranger coming into the main character's life only to turn it head over heels.

The main part I disliked is that at about the 70% mark, all the secrets start to be revealed but it is done mostly by characters simply confessing to other characters.   I think the reveals would have been more impactful for both the characters and the reader if they were uncovered in a more active manner.  Also, the information revealed was very significant to the characters - so much so that I was surprised it didn't show up sooner in the book.  The characters, for the most part, were very polished and put together for the first 70% of the story and then suddenly they had all these big flaws and personal histories revealed.  I would have expected these types of flaws to have shown up in other parts of the characters' lives earlier in the story.  I wanted cracks in the otherwise pristine facade the characters were putting on. Or maybe something like they catch themselves thinking X because of their history with Y and have to talk themselves out of thinking like that. But I didn't pick up on any cracks until everything goes from 0 to 60.  I'm more of a fan of the slow and steady build up and I think if these reveals were to be hinted at earlier in the book it would have upped the tension for me.  I really liked the actual topics of the reveals and I for sure didn't see anything close to that coming (which I know some readers prefer in their mysteries/thrillers).  There was one character, specifically, whose flaw was a pretty significant character aspect that I really thought should be affecting the day to day life of that character more. 

When I initially finished the book, I was mad at the ending.  It wasn't that it was a bad ending, but I was just so emotionally invested in these characters that I ended up rooting for the one that ends up 'losing' in the end so I was a bit upset.  But after a few days of reflection, I did end up on the side of really enjoying the ending and I think it was really the only appropriate way for the story to end considering how all the plot lines were intersecting.  The last chapter picks up about 7 months after the murder where we see the surviving members of the dinner party moving on with their lives.  There's a vague cloud hanging over them about what happened that night, but overall they are going forward with no plans to speak about the events again.  So we have a good amount of closure with a little window that maybe something will happen down the line that will uncover certain truths that are currently buried.  Then we get an epilogue from 3 years in the future that shows just how delicate the situation ends up being and the epilogue leaves  us with a pretty significant cliff hanger-y type ending where we know shit is about to hit the fan but we don't get to see how everything plays out.

Overall, a very solid domestic thriller that pulled me right in at the beginning with the mystery of who Rachel is and what she wants with Charlie and Matthew but lost me a bit at the end.

Thanks to NetGalley and One More Chapter for the ARC.

Expected publication date is April 1, 2021.

The Lost Village - Camilla Sten

In 1959, all the residents in a small town in Sweden disappeared. Everyone, that is, except the woman murdered in the town square and a baby crying near by. Now, decades later, a small film crew wants to make a documentary about the tragedy in hopes of finding the truth of what happened.  When they arrive, the town is frozen in time.  Not long into their stay, however, mysterious things begin to happen and it would appear the team is not as alone as they originally thought.  

The first thing I'd like to address is that there are some really heavy topics/tropes used in this book that center around disability and mental health (my list of other content warnings is at the end of this post).  Most reviews I've seen mention these in some way, but I thought Alexa Donne's review was particularly in depth.  Here is her video review (link) and her Goodreads review (link).  Both have general content warnings and then go more in depth with spoilers (which she warns about ahead of time).  I know this content may be divisive for readers, but in my reading experience I thought they were handled well.  In both cases, the characters involved were treated with empathy and had other characters advocating for them.  However, both cases did have the characters being blamed for bad things happening and in one case are treated pretty horrifically because of this.  I highly recommend checking out the above links if you'd like more spoiler-y details.

The pacing of this book was phenomenal.  I would categorize this as a straight-up thriller and it has been a while since I've read one of those (most of my reads end up being mystery with a bit of thriller at the end).  Once you get past the set up, creepy stuff starts happening pretty much immediately.  There's a bit of a question at the beginning as to if there's something supernatural going on but that is quickly rejected once more concrete threats happen.  I was expecting this book to be much more creepy and atmospheric (which is what it started out as) so I was surprised when it took a turn where the characters are focusing on surviving this outside threat until they can either go get help or help arrives.  This book also holds back no punches on the level of danger these characters are in.  There are direct and consistent threats to their lives and I didn't feel like any of them were safe. 

This book is a split timeline with chapters showing us the months in the past leading up to the villagers disappearing.  These chapters in the past are much more quiet and disconcerting once we get an inkling to what is going on.  They work as a nice balance between the more direct threat in the present day.  It was also interesting where the present day characters would find something and then that same thing was discussed in the past.  It was a nice way for the two timelines to feel really connected.  Our main character Alice is the granddaughter of one of the villagers who moved to Stockholm before the villager disappearance.  In the past, we follow Alice's great-grandmother as she tries to understand what is happening to the village and her family.  The chapters in the past are a bit short so the reader is quickly put back into the present timeline but the information we find out in the past really helps ramp up the tension in the book because the reader knows how the village ends up but no one ever figured out why or how almost 900 people just disappeared.  I really enjoy dual timelines in my books as long as both timelines are equally engaging and move the general plot forward and I think this book did that extremely well.

For all the tension and build up, I did find the actual reveal at the end regarding what happened to the villagers to be a bit more basic than I was expecting.  I think the reveal made sense but was the most obvious (at least to me) option.  I was hoping the real answer would be something a bit more unexpected or have a twist on what I was expecting.  I think I feel this way because I guessed the ending about halfway through and thought there's no way that's it.  So maybe if other readers don't guess, then maybe the ending would have been more of a surprise.  I do feel that the ending was well hinted at and developed, I just wanted something a big more surprising at the end.  The reveal about what is happening to the characters in present day was interesting and a bit surprising. This part, I felt does ask the reader to suspend some disbelief which I've seen some reviews feel this part got into plot hole territory.  I personally liked how we didn't get too much detail into the how and why because our main characters weren't concerned with the details since they were busy trying to stay alive so it felt like the reader was in that situation as well.  I think one way of getting the explanation would be to have a sort of info-dump/flashback but that would have felt very heavy handed to me and I think I would have liked that option less than what we got.

I really enjoyed the character building in this story.  We're following a 5 person film crew in present day and the web of connections and relationships was really interesting.  They are all interconnected so when things start to go south on their trip, it really heightened the danger/suspense for me.  I enjoyed how some of the connections we knew right from the beginning but others were slowly revealed over the course of the story which was really fun.  Sten did a great job showing the reader the tension between some characters and hinted at something happening in the past which, again, ended up as a source of tension later in the story when stress levels were high.  I also found the characters to be very well developed and complex.  There's one situation two characters were involved in that they both remember differently and seeing that conflict come to a boil was fantastic.  The characters in the past, as well, had well developed ties to other members in the village and it was interesting to see how those ties were tested once events started to unfold. 

Overall, I found this to be a very engaging and thrilling thriller.  There was good character development and relationships, great use of the split timeline, and while I wish the ending was a bit more twisty it was still satisfying overall.  

**CW/TW: abuse of mentally disabled person (described as likely non-verbal autistic), sexual abuse that results in pregnancy, cults, mental health struggles, depression, suicide. 

 

352 pages

Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the ARC. 

Expected publication date: March 23, 2021.

Originally published in Swedish.  English translation by Alexandra Fleming

 

 

Every Last Fear - Alex Finlay

 

Four people are found dead in a vacation home in Mexico, leaving only NYU student, Matt, and convicted murderer, Danny, as the surviving members of the Pine family.  Danny was the subject of a documentary series investigating if he was wrongfully convicted of killing his girlfriend in high school.  Matt returns to his hometown in Nebraska for the funeral and is faced with hostility from the townspeople who were villainized by the docu-series as well as a fresh round of media attention.  As the deaths in Mexico start looking less and less like an accident, Matt must unearth the truth about what happened with Danny years ago and how it could be connected to the current deaths.  

The first thing I want to address is the language used in this book when describing Mexico/Mexican people.  I did read an ARC so there's a chance that some things may change in the finished copy but in the copy I read, I found the language negative, condescending, and judgemental.  The town is Tulum, Mexico and is first described as a destination for celebrities because it isn't as crowded as the usual tourist spots. That description lead me to expect that when our protagonist, Matt, goes to Tulum that the beauty of the area would be in direct contrast with his grief.  However, the descriptions that Matt gives to the reader are very negative to the point where I didn't understand how celebrities would be going to this place and the different images the book was giving the reader about Tulum didn't really make sense to me. Again, I was expecting Matt to not like it there because of the reason for his visit, but I didn't expect so many descriptions about how run down and corrupt everything was.  As a white reader, these descriptions made me take pause so I looked at other reviews and there were a number of readers of color who explicitly called out the language in these scenes as problematic and offensive. There's a chance that these descriptions could be changed in the final copy of the book, but I wanted to point it out now so readers are aware going in.

This book had a lot of potential to be a new favorite but there were a few pieces that fell flat for me and overall this ended up just being an okay read.  My main issue is that this book is being marketed as a psychological thriller but I found it to be a pretty even 50% detective 50% domestic thriller.  I kept hoping the narrative would take a twist to being more psychological but it never did.  I think it did a good job at being a detective/domestic thriller but I was overall disappointed that this wasn't the type of story I was expecting.  When I see a book being marketed as a psychological thriller, I'm expecting some sort of cat and mouse or some other sort of mind games to come into play.  I'm expecting the big bad to be directly influencing the protagonist and making them question what they think is the truth.  I found this to be a lot more straightforward physical thriller where the main character is put in some dangerous situations they have to survive.  The only psychological danger Matt was in was dealing with his grief over losing his family (which I didn't feel as strongly as I think the story wanted me to).  He didn't even seem that invested in independently figuring out what happened to them - it seemed to me he was fine letting the police and FBI do the investigating.  The psychological aspect came in more with the flashbacks to the family before they died but it was such a small part of the story that I wouldn't use it as the main selling point of the plot. 

This story was told in multi-POVs and dual timelines which I usually am a sucker for.  In this case, however, I didn't absolutely love it.  There were a number of chapters that just felt like filler.  It wasn't as if a whole POV was unnecessary, but just the occasional chapter here and there that I didn't think was necessary.  I can stand back and look at the chapters from a structural or plot standpoint and say "that chapter established X relationship" or "that chapter showed how Y changed" so I think all the chapters were technically needed for the plot, but I sure didn't care when I was reading some of them.  There were a number of subplots that I really didn't care about but I knew that if they were in the book then they must be important to the ending so I had to read them.  I think the best multi-POV stories are the ones where all the POVs are entertaining to the reader so even when the POV changes, the reader shouldn't ever feel disappointed.  I thought the dual timeline was very well done and it was really interesting for the reader to know one thing from timeline A but then see the characters find out about it in timeline B a few chapters down the line.  I also think showing the lead up of the family before they died made their on-page deaths really emotional because we've gotten to know them over the past 300 pages and we're hoping for a different outcome even though we know exactly how this is going to end.

Detective thrillers are one of my favorite types and I think the FBI investigation portions of this book were really well done.  Looking back, I would have preferred if this same plot was handled as a pure detective story since I didn't really enjoy the domestic side of the story as much with Matt grieving and going back to his hometown. My favorite character was FBI Agent Keller and I would read more books following her specifically.  I found her to have the most well-rounded characterization in the book.  Everyone else I felt like we know one or two main aspects of their personality and that's it.  For example, we know Matt likes movies.  He's going to NYU to study film and he is constantly making movie references and his friends make comments about how he is constantly making movie references.  And since Matt seemed to be content at letting Agent Kelley do her job, I didn't really feel a need to follow him around at all.  There were a few thrilling scenes in Matt's chapters, but they were the minority and when I think back over the story as a whole, those scenes don't stick out in my mind.

This story did finish really strongly which I think is one of the most important parts of any thriller.  The last 20% or so was really great and when the puzzle pieces started falling into place, I couldn't read fast enough to figure out all the different connections.  From a plot perspective, the big reveals were pretty standard for a domestic thriller but it was still a satisfying conclusion.  The ending was a little bittersweet for reasons I can't go into because of spoilers but the chapters in this last section were very short and we were jumping in between POVs very quickly which really ramped up the tension as well. There were two sort of epilogues at the very end after a time jump so we do see all the plot strings tied up by the end which is always satisfying.

I really liked how the docu-series was integrated into the story.  There would be some chapters where we would read the script from a scene from the documentary.  We also got different character's perspectives on the documentary and it was interesting to see the after effects especially since true-crime documentaries/podcasts/etc are very popular.  The documentary scenes served as nice little breaks in the narrative so I could get a moment before jumping back into the investigation. I think it was also interesting since the documentary filmmakers also showed up in the current investigation so seeing how people reacted to them now vs how they reacted in the initial filming was cool.

Overall, this story had a lot of interesting aspects that in the end just fell a bit flat for me.  It was a journey to find out how everything is connected and while the ending was solid, the journey getting there wasn't as interesting as I would have hoped. This is a solid debut that had some really strong elements and I'm interested to see what Finlay writes in the future.

368 pages

Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the ARC.

Expected publication date: March 2, 2021.

The Burning Girls - C.J. Tudor

 

This story revolves around a church in a small town in England.  The book summary starts: "Five hundred years ago, eight protestant martyrs were burned at the stake here. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared without a trace. And two months ago, the vicar of the local parish killed himself." Color me instantly intrigued.  This book follows multiple characters across two different timelines but mainly focuses on Jack Brooks, the new vicar for the town of Chapel Croft, and Flo, Jack's daughter. As with many sleepy small towns, there are darker things hidden under the idyllic landscape.  

This book packs a heck of a lot into just over 300 pages and the pacing does not let up the whole time.  I was immediately pulled into the story and I could not put it down until I was finished.  There are a lot of moving parts and people to keep track of, but the overall plot I found relatively straightforward.  There were some nice, quiet moments in the book where the characters could think a bit about their situation and the events unfolding, but it wasn't long (maybe a paragraph or two) before we were back in the thick of things.  I found this to be a pretty equal split thriller/mystery/horror which I really enjoyed and all of my favorite elements to those three categories I found in this book. I think Tudor did a fantastic job of cycling through the different aspects of the story at just the right moments for me to never feel exhausted at how fast one plot line was moving.  We skipped around a whole bunch and that kept the pacing up but didn't make it feel like the story was moving unbelievably fast.  The timing for the chapter breaks were really well chosen and the best way I can describe the reading experience is that the back of my brain was chewing over the information we just learned in chapter 6 while the front of my brain was following all the new things in chapter 7.  Then, by the time I would get back to the first plot line, it felt like I had enough time to process what happened and then could continue with the story.  

What I would imagine will be the most hit-or-miss part of this book for readers is the multiple POVs and timelines.  I, however, loved the structure and couldn't imagine this story being told any other way.  We follow a total of 5 characters, but 2 of them only come up every once and a while.  Our main POVs are Jack, Flo, and an unnamed narrator - all taking place in the present day.  The other 2 POVs are the two girls that disappeared 30 years ago and we follow the weeks leading up to their disappearance. Jack's POV is told in first person and the other four are third person, which is the one aspect I found jarring only because in my flow of reading I wouldn't immediately realize that we changed POV with the new chapter.  I'm more used to the chapter headings telling us which character we're following which they didn't have in the ARC I was reading (but that may change with the finished copies, I'm not sure). I really liked how each POV had their own plot line and mystery for the reader to follow. There wasn't a single time the POV switched where I wanted to skim through just to get back to another plot line.  Every time, I was excited to find out more about X or Y now that we're back with this other character.  The plot lines do all converge with the number of reveals at the end so I found the payoff to be satisfying. Some of the reveals were hinted at (pretty strongly in my opinion) earlier on in the book but there were more subtle ones that I didn't see coming.  Even the reveals that I saw coming were still interesting because I didn't count on how that reveal would impact the other characters we're following.

I do wish we had gotten more interaction and politics of the day to day activities of being a vicar in a small town.  There's one main family in the village who is described as being very influential and donates a lot of money to the church which does come up later in the book but I would have liked to see that family using some of that power earlier for somewhat mundane things.  I think this would have helped flesh out Jack's world a bit more and set the town's hierarchy more clearly in my head. Along the same lines, I would have liked to see more community gatherings to see the towns people interact with each other as well as with Jack and Flo to get a better sense of how different Jack and Flo are as newcomers.  We get a bit of this during a pub-quiz night but I wanted maybe an extra 50 pages scattered throughout the book with these smaller sort of scenes and then I'd be very happy.

I really loved how well the historical events and town traditions were integrated into the story.  The titular burning girls are a town tradition to honor the spirits of the martyrs.  They are small figures made out of twigs that are set alight in a ceremony held every year by the village on the anniversary of the martyr deaths.  Over time, they have evolved into a ghost story of sorts where local legend says if you see the spirits of two of the martyrs then danger will befall you. The story of the martyrs gets brought up often throughout the book and at times makes characters question if ghosts are real.  It adds and extra layer to the story overall since the characters and the reader aren't sure what exactly is real or if there's a more logical explanation to what is going on. The story doesn't go full paranormal ghost-hunter but the reader is reminded of the legend just enough to keep it in mind as maybe a possibility of something else going on. This is where a lot of the more horror-leaning elements are integrated into the story and I think it is a really great way of adding an overall spooky atmosphere to the book without having to go with big scares. 

Finally, I found all the characters were really well developed and their personalities so different that I was able to remember who everyone was.  I was a bit worried going into the book that Jack, being a vicar, would have a bit of a superiority complex or be a little too perfect just because of being involved in the church.  However, we learn Jack's backstory and how faith was something learned later in life that Jack chose to pursue.  There was a line toward the beginning about how faith is something that needs to be consistently cultivated and worked on like a marriage and, as a non-religious person myself, I thought that was a really interesting view for Jack to have and be so upfront about it with both the reader as well as some of the people in the town.  There were a lot of characters in this book but I was able to keep all of them straight in my mind because their personalities were so clearly defined and shown to the reader. The personalities weren't detailed in the way that I know everyone's favorite color, but they were detailed in such a way that I know what their place in the story was and their overall connection to the town and history. Again, I would have liked to have seen some more interactions between some of the different townspeople to see how their different personalities would interact in this small town and what tensions would arise.  We did learn a few different connections and personal histories of some of the people in the story, but as a more character-focused reader, I ideally would have had a bit more.  Give me a big town meeting or something where tensions are high and there are a bunch of snide remarks and I'm a happy reader.  

Overall, this was a great, fast paced mystery/thriller/horror that kept me engaged all the way to the end.  Multi-POV and dual timelines really helped develop a rich and complex town mystery and the story had a good payoff in the end.

305 pages.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC.

Expected publication date is February 9, 2021.

The Echo Wife - Sarah Gailey

 

 TW: implied domestic violence

This is a sci-fi domestic thriller that follows 2 women - Evelyn and Martine - as they navigate a truly unprecedented relationship. Evelyn Caldwell is an award winning research scientist who focuses on cloning - human cloning.  Evelyn's lab grows human clones and programs their personalities in order to fit the job - body double for potential assassination attempt, for example.  She's dedicated, focused, no-nonsense, and she's recently found out her husband is having an affair with Martine.  Martine is a clone made from Evelyn's research and she is the opposite to Evelyn in many ways and a seemingly perfect match for Evelyn's husband.  Except now the husband is dead and the two women team up in order to protect themselves and their future.

There are a lot of things I liked about this book, but my favorite was the concept and execution of the overall plot arc.  I was telling my mom about the plot and the first thing she said was that it sounds like a movie.  And I completely agree. I found this to be a very commercial, fun to read, intriguing story that I would 100% would not be surprised if it got a movie adaptation.  This is not a super heavy sci-fi read and there more thriller aspects really do a good job of balancing out the science-y stuff.  Gailey's writing was incredibly easy to fall into and I found myself getting lost in the pages for longer than I intended a few times (but who needs to go to bed on time anyway?).  One of my main worries going into this book would be that it would have a lot of either sci-fi or thriller elements and not much of the other.  However, all the aspects of what I look for in a sci-fi and a thriller were there but neither overpowered the other so my reading experience ended up being really satisfying from both sides. 

I didn't love the place in the plot where the book started.  We start with Evelyn as she's accepting an award and see her having to dodge questions about her soon to be ex-husband, Nathan. I was expecting to start before she found out about the affair so it felt like I missed out on a pretty central emotional moment to the plot.  We do get bits in flashback form where she found out about Martine and confronted Nathan but I still found myself wishing we would have started earlier and found out with her.  I also wish we didn't know Martine was a clone going into the book.  That reveal was built up so well and it really felt like it would have been a mic-drop moment in the book except that I already knew she was a clone going into the story.  I think if the clone reveal and the affair reveal were done together like a one-two punch it would have been really great.  But we miss out on the affair reveal happening before the book started and I knew about the clone ahead of time so both were less emotionally hard hitting than I wanted them to be.

I thought the science elements were handled really well.  I don't read a ton of sci-fi but the number one aspect that will make or break a sci-fi for me is how naturally integrated the science is in the book.  Some books really take me out of the story when they suddenly start feeling like a textbook when the science stuff is introduced.  The cloning technology wasn't too far out of reality (they grow humans in tanks filled with artificial amniotic fluid) and there were a lot of words that I recognized from all my soapy TV medical dramas so it felt grounded.  The technology felt like it could be only a few years away from current day, not hundreds of years in the future, so I think even non-sci-fi readers could have a good handle on that side of the story.  There were some parts that got a bit hand-wavy and skimmed over with general language and I'm glad we didn't get bogged down in every single step of the process being explained to the reader. (but maybe fans of more in depth sci-fi would find those omissions bothersome).  

On the thriller side of the story, this was a pretty typical domestic thriller with secrets being revealed throughout the story.  There weren't any super high action or high tension scenes (no high speed car chase running away from the killer, for example).  However, there were a ton of reveals and twists in the story that I didn't see coming - the one at 80% really threw me for a loop - so they were satisfying.  I do wish there was a bit more tension on Evelyn and Martine when they were trying to figure out what to do after Nathan's death and I think that would have helped with the overall stakes in the story.  Despite Evelyn stating that her career would be over if any of the events in the book got out, I never felt like she was ever really in danger of being found out.  I would have liked maybe a surprise lab inspection or something.  

Finally, I found this to be an overall character driven story, which is my preference.  The larger discussion in the book centers around what makes a person a person which was really interesting to watch Evelyn and Martine work through their feelings on.  There's also a bit of question of what is genetically ingrained in someone vs what can be artificially programmed into them.  Evelyn and Martine were the main two characters we followed, but we do get their interactions with Evelyn's lab assistant as well as scenes from Evelyn's childhood which helped show their different relationships.  Gailey did a fantastic job at really ingraining in the writing the different ways the characters act with one another.  Evelyn would be more curt and straightforward with her lab assistant than with other people and we can see that not only in her outward interactions and dialogue with him, but also her internal monologue would change.  I think Gailey did a fantastic job setting up the character relations for the reader to immediately know the status quo only for those relationships to be changed as the story progressed.  I wouldn't consider Evelyn an entirely likeable person - she's very cold, a bit rude at times, and does come across as a bit full of herself - but I found her to still be very human and easy to root for as the book's events unfolded which is really the best thing I could hope for.

Overall, this is a very well balanced sci-fi domestic thriller that would appeal to a broad range of readers.  I found the characters to be intriguing, the plot well paced with good reveals, and I was satisfied with the ending. I do think we missed out on some emotional connection since the book started after a big plot point that I think would have been better suited to be explored on the page.

256 pages.

Publication date is February 16, 2021.

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for the ARC in exchange for review.

Get to Know the Thriller Reader Tag

 I saw this tag video from Griff Reads on YouTube and thought I'd answer the questions.  Sam said she took questions and inspiration from two other tags - get to know the romance reader and get to know the fantasy reader.  

What is your thriller origin story? i.e. How did you come to read your first thriller.

I remember finding Lois Duncan in the YA section of my local library when I was in 6th (I think?) grade and up until then I was reading mostly contemporary and some fantasy.  I didn't know books like that really existed and I was instantly hooked and read through the entire collection in a few weeks.  I then asked my mom if she knew of other books like that and she mentioned Stephen King and the rest is history.

What are your favorite thriller tropes? 

 Small town secrets is #1 by far.  Other top options are: maybe something supernatural is going on, serial killers, isolation locations (cabin in the woods, island, etc), and unreliable narrators.

 What is a thriller you've read in the past year that you would recommend? 

 The Dark Bones by Loreth Anne White 

This is the description from Goodreads:

When Detective Rebecca North left her rural hometown, she vowed never to return. Her father’s apparent suicide has changed that. The official report is that retired cop Noah North shot himself, knocked over a lantern, and set his isolated cabin ablaze. But Rebecca cannot believe he killed himself.

To prove it, she needs the help of Ash Haugen, the man she left behind. But Rebecca and Ash share more than broken hearts. Something darker lies between them, and the investigation is stirring it back to life. Clues lead them to the home of Olivia West and her deeply troubled twelve-year-old daughter, Tori. The child knows more about the murder than anyone can imagine, but she’s too terrified to say a word.

And as a cold-blooded killer resurfaces from the past, Rebecca and Ash begin to fear that their own secrets may be even harder to survive.

 What is your favorite thriller sub-genre? 

 Psychological thrillers and police procedural thrillers

 Who are your auto-buy thriller authors? 

 Gillian Flynn, Loreth Anne White, Stephen King

 How do you typically find thriller recommendations? 

 Usually book reviews on YouTube and the "Readers Also Enjoyed" section of Goodreads.  I've recently followed a handful of Booktubers who read thrillers but I'm still trying to work out if their reading tastes and preferences are the same as mine.

 What is an upcoming thriller release you're looking forward to? 

I'll be honest, I'm horrible at knowing about upcoming releases.  I mostly learn about them when I'm requesting books from NetGalley so The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor is one of the more intriguing ones I've requested recently.

 What is one misconception about thrillers that you'd like to address? 

 I'd like people to know that thrillers aren't all serial killer murders and crime solving.  If you don't want a super dark read, then there are plenty of other sub-genres available. I've found mystery thrillers to be more tame as well as most domestic thrillers.  My mom, for example, really doesn't like the serial killer type books that I love but she really liked Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. 

 Are there any content creators (BookTubers/bookstagrammers) that you follow for thriller recommendations?

 The one that seems to most align with my personal tastes and preferences is BooksandLala although she doesn't really like the crime procedural books like I do and she reads a ton of genres.  I'm still feeling out a few other Booktubers to see how their tastes line up with mine. 

 If someone had never read a thriller before, what 3 books would you recommend?

 Misery by Stephen King

 I think this is a really good example of what I love most about Stephen King - his character work.  We're in an isolated setting with just two characters and things get crazy from there.  King often has some supernatural or horror elements in his stories, but I find this one more a straight forward thriller (and the movie adaptation is also really solid).

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

This was the first thriller where I remember getting to the twist and it completely blowing my mind.  Like I did a double take while reading the page and had to re-read the last section just to make sure I understood it correctly.  I liked Gillian Flynn's other books as well, but I think this one is the most generally commercial of them so I think it would appeal to the widest array of readers.  This one also has a movie adaptation but I've never seen it and I've heard some pretty meh reviews about it so I'm not sure I'd recommend it.

 The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

This would be for anyone who wanted to jump into the darker side of thrillers.  Police investigation and serial killers?  Yes please.  I feel like you'd be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't at least heard of Hannibal the Cannibal at least as a pop culture reference. I personally think the Hannibal book series should be more beloved than it is.  The film adaptation is iconic (and I re-watch it at least once a year) but I find the books just as tightly paced and disturbingly fascinating as the movies.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay

  Darkly Dreaming Dexter is the first book of an eight book series.  It follows serial killer and forensic blood splatter analyst Dexter Morgan as he balances his two very different lives while trying to solve a series of brutal murders. This is the book that the TV series Dexter is based on and the first season of the show follows the same investigation as this first book.  I watched the show back when it first came out and got to halfway through season 4 before I went to college and stopped watching.  When I started watching the show, I didn't know it was based on a book series but when I found out a few years later, the books have always been in the back of my mind as something I wanted to read.  I really enjoyed the TV show (the seasons that I saw anyway) and I love a good serial killer book so I was excited to pick this up.  Unfortunately, I was not really a fan of this first book.  I don't think it is a bad book, by any means, but it feels like one of those books that is pretty polarizing and people either love or hate.

The book pulls no punches and opens with Dexter ready to kill (and then killing) a child murdering priest. We are in his head as he waits, watches, then makes his move.  I thought this is a great way to start this story because there is no debating for the reader what Dexter is.  He's a serial killer with his own moral code.  The actual murdering is done off the page which I wasn't entirely expecting.  I didn't think we'd go full torture porn with super detailed descriptions but I did think we would get a bit more gore than we ended up getting (this held true for the rest of the murders in the book).  The opening was so strong and pushed the reader right into the deep end with Dexter that I was a little let down that there weren't more on-page murders in the book.  After the initial murder, the book does a good job at quickly and efficiently getting the reader introduced to all the people Dexter works with as well as his origin story.  The reader is given the bare essentials and we grow to learn more as we go on in the book, but the initial base information was really helpful to quickly get the reader grounded then move along with the plot.

The plot moves very fast in this book.  At only 300 pages we start out sprinting and don't slow down very much until the very end.  Depending on your personal tastes, this can go either positive or negative.  I'm a character-driven reader so I normally prefer slower paced plots in exchange for more deep character or relationship developments.  I did feel like the fast pace and shorter page count took away from the potential character development but there were enough quiet moments of introspection and we did get some good relationship moments so I wasn't too bothered.  I also fully acknowledge that this is the first book in the series so there is much more room for character development in later books as Dexter's story develops.  The plot is based around the police case trying to catch a serial killer so it does have a bit of that procedural aspect to the narrative that I know some people aren't a huge fan of.  I will say as someone who loves police procedurals, a good amount of the police work happens off the page.  We aren't sitting in on interviews with suspects that are dead ends or following around detectives as they canvass a neighborhood.  This is because we are 100% in Dexter's mind and Dexter's POV for the entirety of the book and he's just a crime scene technician, not an actual detective.

After letting this book settle for a few days, I realized what I disliked most and what really made this an overall unenjoyable read to me - Dexter.  Yeah, that Dexter, the main character.  I think this is where readers can go either way on this book.  If you like Dexter, I think you'll enjoy the book but if you don't (like I didn't) then the book becomes a pretty rough read.  Since this story is told in first person POV, we are in Dexter's head and it is structure in such a way that he is telling us the story.  We get everything filtered through his lens and we get his inner monologue commentary on everything and everyone around him.  I generally don't have a problem with first person narratives but holy heck did I want to get out of Dexter's head.  When the book started and I realized we'd be in his head for the entirety of the story, I was excited because I figured it would be such a unique and dark perspective to get. That opening chapter was fantastic and I would have loved to stay in that darker headspace for the entirety of the book. However, for the majority of the story, Dexter felt like a fifteen year old boy trying to be edgy by making murder jokes and he would get some pretty good mood swings.  I was expecting him to be much more sinister in his head.  We know he has these urges, this itch he needs to scratch, because he tells the reader, but I didn't feel the tension in him.  There was a question posed in the book of if Dexter could be sleep-murdering these victims because he sleep walks and had almost a sixth sense about the murders.  That's a pretty big mystery to figure out but Dexter seemed to be completely uncaring and almost a bit amused at the idea.  As a result of his flippant attitude toward this idea I didn't feel any suspense or even want to find out the answer.  I wanted to leave his head and go follow the detectives or other crime scene technicians - anywhere except stay in Dexter's head.

The ending of this book, for something so important and potentially life shattering, was pretty meh for me and the reason, for me, was that Dexter didn't seem to do anything - he had no agency.  We see him in the beginning of the book as a hunter watching his prey and now, in the moment where those dark skills would come in handy, he comes across like a bumbling local cop.  I couldn't get a handle on his character for the entire book and the ending felt like a mismatch of his inner voices battling it out to see who would win Dexter over at the end.  If there had been more tension built up throughout the book then that internal struggle could have been super powerful.  I think the theme for a lot of my issues with the book is that the elements were all there, but the pieces didn't fall into place so it overall didn't come together well.  

To end on a positive note, Lindsay has some really great almost poetic lines in the book.  The narrative is in first person, and it almost feels like there's another personality in Dexter that wants to write a literary novel and thinks in this really flowery prose. As a contrast, Dexter is much more blue collar and down to earth with his observations. These sudden tone shifts were really jarring to me when I was reading but this was the first book where I took pictures of the prose because there were some really good lines.  

Here's an example:

"The very body parts seemed to sing to me, a rhapsody of bloodless wonder that lightened by heart and filled by veins with an intoxicating sense of awe."

Then the next paragraph:

"I sat in my apartment, rubbing my sleep-crusted eyes and thinking about the stow I had just watched. It has been as near perfect as a press conference could be without free food and nudity."

I thought both lines were really great characterization lines, but I just had a hard time marrying them together as being from the same person. Again, we the reader are drowning in Dexter's head so all the lines in the book feel like they should be his direct thoughts.  There wasn't really any room for some third party narrator to be stepping in and giving descriptions.  I borrowed this book from the library, but I almost want to buy a copy just to go through and highlight all the lines that I really liked. 

 Overall, this was an interesting premise with a fast paced plot full of death and serial killers but I found the first person narration to be annoying and I couldn't get a good handle on the tone the book was going for.  

304 pages.

 As a final note, if this book's premise sounds interesting but you also don't like the execution or some of the narrative style choices, I'd recommend trying the TV show.  I'm only halfway through season 4 but I found the show to be a bit darker in tone (but still has some good comedy moments to break up the subject matter), Dexter's characterization is more concrete, and we get much more out of the other characters that really add depth to the show.  There were some pretty big plot changes between this book and season 1 of the show as well.

Her Perfect Life - Sam Hepburn

 Her Perfect Life is a domestic psychological thriller following two women - Juliet and Gracie.  Juliet is a down on her luck single mom struggling to make ends meet and keep going for her daughter.  Gracie, on the outside, has the perfect life.  She has a successful career as a celebrity chef, a loving family with her husband and daughter, and a beautiful new house.  However, behind closed doors her life isn't so perfect.  Juliet and Gracie meet while watching their daughter's dance class and find themselves becoming friends. As their relationship develops, they start opening up and sharing their backgrounds and personal troubles and the two discover just how closely their lives are intertwined. 

I really enjoyed the characters of both Juliet and Gracie.  I found them both to be dynamic, interesting, and complicated characters which made me want to root for both of them.  The book is told through alternating POV chapters between these two and initially I had a hard time because both of them sounded so similar.  Their circumstances and plots were very different, but their voice through the first 25% of the book was so similar that it felt like I was just reading about a single character.  However, once they started interacting with each other, I found their voices to be much more distinct.  Them meeting is also a catalyst for some of their personal insecurities to start showing up which I think was integral to developing them more as distinct characters.  With Juliet and Gracie being so different, I think it would be easy to have one character be obviously worse than the other, but I think there's a really good balance presented.  We get the good and bad of each of them, from both their own and the other perspective.  I didn't find the other side characters as well developed and there were so many of them that I honestly would get them confused if they were just mentioned by name.  I am very bad with names in real life and all the characters did have a purpose for being in the story - I don't think any of them could have been cut - so this might have just been a personal issue.  

The relationships between all the characters were really interesting as well.  Gracie with her husband, Juliet with her ex, Gracie and her best friend, and of course Gracie and Juliet. Each had a different dynamic and I thought it was really interesting to see how the characters changed depending on the situation.  Juliet is emotional, hot headed, and scared of her ex but with Gracie she is vulnerable and in need of a friend. Gracie with her best friend is confident and carefree but with her husband she is a bit paranoid and standoffish.  There are more side characters such as the in-laws and the nanny as well that are all intertwined.  Again, these relationships and the way they're developed throughout the story do a fantastic job at creating well rounded characters.

The plot got off to a bit of a slow start.  We find out a big conflict right in the beginning but it gets pretty much brushed aside almost immediately and the rest of the set up (about 25%) is mostly domestic stuff like picking up kids from school, finding a new house, going on job interviews, etc.  The plot and tension really pick up once Juliet and Gracie meet but getting through that first chunk was a bit of a slog.  Looking back, I think the beginning served for a good set up showing how different these two women are but I would have liked the plot to get moving a little more quickly.  The rest of the plot moved along at a good pace that really kept me engaged once I got past that slow beginning portion.

Of course, this is a thriller, and all thriller readers want a good twist.  I thought the twist was built up really well through Juliet's investigation and trying to find what Gracie was hiding.  I found Juliet's investigation to be really methodical and well laid out, but I found it mostly information gathering and then she puts it all together at the end without too much speculation or red herrings in the middle of the book.  I could see part of the twist coming, but was wrong about which characters were actually involved. I don't mind being wrong about twists in thrillers (I actually prefer to be) but when I reflected on the plot of the book, I couldn't really see any threads that would lead to the ending.  To be fair, the other characters were just as surprised so the twist character did a good job of hiding what they had done but the fact that I couldn't go back and pick up on little things made the reveal feel a little 'gotcha'-y. It wasn't bad enough to affect my overall enjoyment or rating, but it is something I could see some readers disliking.  It also could be that I just didn't pick up on smaller details so maybe this is just another personal issue. 

What did bother me was the ending, literally the very last page of the book, where a plot point that I assumed was resolved with the big twist ends up still being a problem.  Granted, maybe I was wrong to make such an assumption but I really think the plot and structure of the book was pushing the reader toward that thought of X being resolved because Y was resolved.  However, this turns out not to be the case and one of the big conflicts of the story comes back right at the end and we are left with a cliffhanger.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't mind ambiguous endings or endings where not everything is tied up in a neat little bow.  If the book ended with the character wondering if X was still going to be a problem down the line, then that would have been perfectly fine.  But this sort of ending where we get smacked over the head as if the book is saying "look! look! X is still a problem!" is too heavy handed for me especially when this isn't being marketed as any sort of series.  Will we ever find out what the resolution to this plot thread is?  Probably not, and that would not bother me if the ending wasn't so flashy with the reveal. 

I really enjoyed Hepburn's writing style particularly when it came to the inner thoughts of these characters.  I find it really fun to be able to look back at the beginning of the story and see, in the structure of the prose, how the characters are changing.  I think this difference was particularly striking in Juliet's chapters where, by the end, we're getting these long rambling paragraphs as she is trying to connect all the dots of her investigation.  The writing really focused on the characters more so than the surroundings but I still had a good picture in my head of the different settings we get throughout the book.  I prefer a writing style that isn't super flowery while still being interesting and dynamic and I think Hepburn did a good job straddling that line for me.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book - bit of a slow start but once it gets going, it chugs along steadily and picks up speed right at the end.  I loved the writing style, characters, and relationships that Hepburn created.   Really solid domestic psychological thriller. 

392 pages

First published February 23, 2017 by Harper

New release date: February 15, 2021 by Bookouture 

Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for the ARC.

Possession - Katie Lowe

 Possession is a psychological thriller that follows Hannah as her past comes back to threaten her future.  Ten yeas ago, Hannah's husband was murdered in their home but Hannah doesn't remember anything from that night.  She is, understandably, the main person of interest in the case until the police end up charging someone else with the murder.  Hannah takes her daughter and moves on with her life until a popular true crime podcast dedicates a whole season to her husband's murder.  The podcast casts doubts on the case, Hannah's memory loss, and unearths other troubling parts of Hannah's past.  

The part of the book I was most worried about ended up being my favorite - the podcast.  Despite loving to read thrillers and watching all sorts of police procedurals on TV, I have yet to fall in love with the true crime genre.  I've tried a book here and there, but didn't like them mostly because I found the writing pretty dry and I felt the story leaned too hard on the 'this is all true' aspect to pull the reader into the narrative. I know true crime podcasts are very popular and I haven't tried any of them out yet. That being said, I know how popular true crime podcasts are and incorporating true crime podcasts into thriller novels is a bit of a recent trend. Before reading this, I was worried it would come off too heavy handed or would be used as an excuse for an exposition dump.  I was pleasantly surprised that neither of these options ended up being true.  I think the podcast angle really worked well for me because it was set up as the antagonist in the story.  Hannah is not a part of the podcast and she listens every week just like the rest of the audience.  We don't get any perspectives or behind the scenes from the podcast host so the reader sees the podcast as an outside force coming to ruin Hannah's life.  I loved getting Hannah's reactions as she listened to the podcast episodes and it was a constant source of tension in the novel since the episodes are released weekly.  

 I think Lowe did an incredible job writing the slow psychological breakdown of Hannah.  Psychological thrillers, from a reader perspective, can be tricky to get just right.  In this case, the gradual but consistent disassembly of Hannah's life and what she thought was true was incredibly paced and explored.  The story is told in first person so we are in Hannah's head and there is a lot going on in there.  Hannah is a psychologist and is therefore a bit hyper-aware of her actions and thoughts but that doesn't stop her from doing things that she knows maybe she shouldn't.  These sorts of contrasts grow in magnitude throughout the book and give the reader a really good view into Hannah's mental descent.  While the podcast is the main antagonist in the story, much of the tension and emotion in the book comes from Hannah internally.  Sure, once a few episodes are aired, the community starts whispering about Hannah and there are more external consequences but the majority of the story is Hannah and how she's dealing with finding out these missing parts of her husband's murder. The way the narrative style changes during the story is also incredibly well done and so gradual that I really didn't notice it was happening - which is exactly how I like it!  It is really fun to go back to the first few chapters and compare them to the last few and compare the style of both sections.  Lowe did a great job getting the reader into Hannah's head and keeping them there all the way through to the ending.  

The relationships Hannah has with the other characters were handled really well.  I think each character - Dan, Evie, Darcy, and Sarah - all give us one particular part of Hannah's life and the reader can use that relationship as a lens to see how Hannah is coping.  Sometimes, with side characters, I can get them confused if they don't show up often enough or aren't distinct enough from the other characters.  For example, if a main character has three friends, all three better be distinctive from each other and each serve their own purpose in the narrative or else my brain is going to just squish them all together.  In this case, each of the side characters were very distinct and Hannah is different with each of them as well.  Hannah has different masks that she puts on and since the reader is in Hannah's head, we can see her choose her words or actions carefully with each individual person she is interacting with.  I think this is really true for most people - I know I'm not the exact same with my fiance as I am with the cashier at the grocery store - and as a reader, these different relationships and versions of Hannah we get really deepen the narrative as a whole.  (As a side note, Hannah and Dan's dynamic reminded me of Joyce and Bob from Stranger Things.)

The one part that irked me was the ending.  I had to take a few days to figure out exactly how I felt about the ending and why I felt that way.  No spoilers, obviously, so this is going to be a bit vague.  First off, I thought the ending was really well done from a technical aspect.  There were twists, turns, and more twists.  All the pieces were falling into place and some of my guesses from earlier in the book were paying off which I really enjoy in a thriller.  My guesses were only 50% accurate which was really fun to see how Lowe took what I was thinking and then went three steps further with it.  The ending also plays on reader expectations, in general.  Most readers expect in most books for the main group of characters to 'win' the story, come out on top, beat the bad guy, be somewhat happy in the end.  Plot armor is a phrase that exists for a reason which is why stories like Game of Thrones are so fun for a lot of people to read (or watch) because there is that constant threat of 'maybe this character won't make it out alive' to engage the reader.  This ending, without giving too much away, played on my expectations that the main group of characters we'd been following for the past 300+ pages were going to 'win' and when the ending came, it wasn't as cut and dry as I was expecting it to be and it felt like I had lost.  The only similar feeling I can think of is when you're watching your favorite sports team almost win and then the other team scores right near the end of the game and ends up winning the whole thing.  There's a sense of disappointment there because the game had been so good but the ending just didn't go your way.  I know the endings to thrillers can make or break a book for most people and I'll admit when I first finished the book, I was a little mad at it.  But after thinking it over for a few days and reflecting on the overall reading experience and plot as a whole, I decided while I didn't have to like the ending, I do respect it from a craft perspective and other readers who maybe didn't get as attached to certain characters might actually really like the ending.

I loved the way the flashbacks were presented and integrated into the book.  We get more and more of them as the book progresses, which lines up with Hannah remembering more as the podcast uncovers some dirty laundry each episode.  I've read a few thrillers where the reader knows more than the protagonist and while it is fun to see a character discover something the reader already knows, I do prefer to discover along side the main character.  Watching Hannah figure out what really happened 10 years ago at the same time her current life is falling apart was heartbreaking but in the best possible way because we are rooting for her the entire way.  Also, the big reveal at the end in which the reader gets a sort of flashback over the recent events to show how everything was connected was really great.  

 Overall, this is a very well crafted psychological thriller. The podcast elements are incorporated well into the storyline, interesting and complex character relationships, and while the ending stung a bit all the story lines came together perfectly in the end.

352 pages

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC - release date is January 26, 2021.

Riley Thorn and the Dead Guy Next Door - Lucy Score

Wow wow wow.  I absolutely loved this book.  I picked it up in early September because the premise seemed super interesting but never found myself in the mood for a quirky detective romance ... until October 1st hit.  Of course, I decided, this would be the perfect book to kick off ~spooky~ October.  It was so much more in depth and intriguing than I was expecting and I highly recommend this book to everyone that is even remotely interested in the premise.  

This story follows Riley Thorn, reluctant psychic, and Nick Santiago, dashing PI. Riley comes from a long line of women with some sort of psychic ability but Riley has made it her life's mission to be 'normal'.  She's spent 30 years trying her best to block out or ignore any visions of the future or messages from beyond the grave.  One day, a vision hits so close to home she can't ignore it - her neighbor in the apartment across the hall is going to be murdered.  Nick is looking for that same neighbor so he can serve him some legal papers. Nick just wants to do the job he's being paid for and go back to his life of living by his own timetable but he's enthralled by Riley, her big brown eyes, and her plucky attitude.  The two of them team up to track down the murder before the killer finds out that Riley knows more than she's letting on. 

Now, right off the bat, I wouldn't say this book is primarily romance.  Lucy Score does write a lot of romance (and I've read a few of her other books) and this book is marketed as an action/adventure romance.  I'd say it leans much more toward the line of a detective PI thriller than a traditional romance.  The romance elements are definitely there and the two characters do obviously like each other but they are much more focused on solving the murder so the romance takes a sort of side step for most of the book.  There are some real steamy kisses, but they don't actually fall into bed together until about the 80% mark. Just a heads up for anyone that was looking for a romance with thriller side plot - this is not that book.  

One of the best parts of this book for me was the overall tone.  This is not some hard-boiled noir detective fiction story.  The tone is pretty lighthearted (considering the subject matter) and there were quite a few laugh out loud moments for me.  The tone reminded me of the TV show Dead Like Me - bit of a dark comedy with a lot of lighter comic relief moments put in. The comic relief mostly came in the form of the eccentric cast of characters that surround Riley and Nick.  Riley lives in a house with a bunch of elderly neighbors that are well into the phase of being old where they feel they have carte blanche to do whatever they want just because they're old.  They have no filters and questionable hearing but they look out for each other.  Nick works with his cousin and his cousin's wife.  The cousin will get a few wise cracks in at Nick's expense and his wife is the muscle of the trio. Riley's family are also a colorful bunch of characters - her mom and sister are very accepting of their gifts and lean in to the whole 'woo-woo' aspect of it all.  And finally, there's Riley's spiritual advisor sent by her grandmother to help Riley develop her gift.  He's plays the straight man to the others' antics but has his funny moments as well.  All in all, the overall tone and cast of characters was perfection.

The thriller/mystery part was pretty interesting as well.  It is the standard detective fiction set up of crime happens, investigator runs down various leads, throw in a few red herrings, and then solve the whole thing at the end.  I think Nick being a PI and not a cop really helped loosen the story up since he was able to get a bit 'creative' with his methods.  The investigation isn't all interviewing suspects or serving search warrants like it can be with other detective thrillers which I think will be a big draw for people who don't generally like this sub-genre. I thought the different directions of the investigation were interesting and all of them seemed viable until they were proved to not be part of the murder plot.  I didn't find myself guessing the twist at the end, which I always appreciate, but the breadcrumbs are there so maybe a more careful reader would pick up on them.  I was just having too much fun going along with the ride to pickup on and follow those crumbs to solve the mystery first.  It isn't an overly complex crime plot and there are lots of other plot lines that we follow throughout the book that give a sort of rest from the constant investigation aspect that a lot of detective thrillers can fall into.  While this book does have a very light tone overall, there are still very thrilling elements.  It opens on a car chase and then goes back a few weeks into the past where we pick up the story from the beginning.  I really liked this choice Score made because the whole time we have the countdown of the date in each chapter heading so we know how close we are to the car chase from the beginning. The investigation is relatively low danger, but once the dominoes fall all bets are off and the characters need to act fast. 

The chemistry between Riley and Nick was fantastic.  They go from strangers, to friends, to co-workers, to lovers and each step along the way made perfect sense.  This is a long book and I think the relationship development was perfectly executed.  Both characters are pretty set in their ways (Riley is 34, Nick is 37) and they know who they are.  They both think they have figured out what they want in life and are equally annoyed at the other in the beginning for disrupting that status quo.  However, they both enjoy the adventure of solving the case and they work together really well.  I especially appreciated how Riley was anything but a stereotypical damsel in distress.  In fact, she saved the day on more than one occasion.  And Nick would always try to yell at her for putting herself in danger and she wouldn't take any of this scolding because she knew she did a good job.  I really felt that they were the type of people who could see past each other's prickly exterior and that helped them really click in a way that neither of them had clicked with someone before.  There is the fake dating/fiance trope in this book, which is one of my personal favorites.  Both of these characters are fully developed people and they work together really well, leaning on each other when needed but also not needing the other to save them all the time.

The one part I wasn't happy about was the sort of cliffhanger ending.  Yes, Riley and Nick solve the murder and get together by the end, but there are some unanswered questions and new characters introduced right at the end with a "that's not a good sign" sort of ending.  In the author's note at the end,  Lucy Score mentions wanting to write more stories with these characters - which I'm all for!  I just really really hate walking into that sort of ending when there isn't a second book I can immediately start reading.  By the halfway point of the book, I was already hoping this would turn into a series of cozy mysteries with Riley and Nick and the whole colorful cast of characters working together.  I just didn't need the obvious sequel bait and it just made me a little grumpy that now I'd have to wait however long until the next book comes out (this book was just published on August 27, 2020).  

544 pages

A light comedy thriller detective fiction that really ramps up the action toward the end.  Cast of colorful characters support the two main characters who are perfect for each other and a super investigation team.