This book opens with a bang, almost literally. To call Hunted fast-paced is doing it a disservice: This book is utterly furious in its pacing, relentlThis book opens with a bang, almost literally. To call Hunted fast-paced is doing it a disservice: This book is utterly furious in its pacing, relentless as time itself as it inexorably works for the antagonists in this book and against the protagonists.
The story engages you immediately, hooking you with a tension and terror-fueled scene that unfolds in a busy Los Angeles mall. After that the hits just keep on coming as we bounce from a female POC FBI agent who loves her work but faces discrimination at every turn, two parents of two different potential terrorists who are trying to get to their kids before the cops do, and one of those potential terrorists as he struggles with the ethics and morals of what he’s doing and where it’s all leading.
It’s eloquently written, with a lot of genuine emotion that’s sometimes lacking in thrillers. The plot is incredibly executed and the story is incredibly relevant to current times. There’s compassion here for everyone except the people who don’t deserve any of it: The actual terrorists.
It’s a terrific, compulsive, page-turning read.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley, the Novel Suspects Insider’s Club, and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: 5 Star Review/Conspiracy Thriller/Crime Thriller/Political Thriller/Suspense Thriller ...more
The issue with giving books a 3.5 star rating is that people automatically assume that means you hated it or that it was a bReal Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars
The issue with giving books a 3.5 star rating is that people automatically assume that means you hated it or that it was a bad book. That’s usually the case. For If Something Happens to Me, it simply means it was an alright thriller that I didn’t mind reading, will likely appeal to the average thriller reader not looking for something deeper or with more substance, but isn’t a title I’d go around recommending or putting on my own bookshelf.
ISHTM starts with a killer (ah, come on, let me have my fun) opening scene straight out of a slasher flick or scary story that ends with one of this novel’s main characters blacking out. It’s well-written, creepy, and immediately engages you. It’s a very nice piece of bait to lure you into a boiler-plate plot that’s been dressed up with a hodgepodge of other story elements: A boyfriend who was wrongly accused of his girlfriend’s death who ultimately had to leave town and change his name, a shadowy eight-fingered man, a young and plucky new female officer in town just as new evidence comes to light regarding this cold case, a good ol’ boy police force that may be keeping secrets, a mysterious FBI agent, and an organized crime syndicate with a bone to pick. It’s a puzzle, so, how does it all fit together?
Of course, there are the predictably-timed turns. There are some attempts at red herrings and misdirection, but I don’t think this book was plotted very well because they didn’t hit like I assume they were supposed to. The pacing was actually done very well, without much lagging or rushing. There were some attempts at social commentary that I felt were clumsy in nature and ultimately came across as trying too hard and that made the ending of this book feel more than a little cheesy.
At the end of the day this book was an okay read and I don’t regret spending my afternoon on it, but I can’t say I’d recommend you rush out and buy it. It’s not the worst time either.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
Black Wolf doesn’t pick up exactly where Red Queen (which I also rated four stars, though for different reasons) leaves off, but the same subject is oBlack Wolf doesn’t pick up exactly where Red Queen (which I also rated four stars, though for different reasons) leaves off, but the same subject is on Antonia Scott’s mind now as then. So it stands to reason that Inspector Jon Gutierrez not only has his partner’s back in this endeavor, but that he’s also trying his best to shield his queen from all harm. That includes harm to herself.
Sometimes that’s a thankless endeavor, or at least a fruitless one, especially since Antonia is convinced their last case is connected to what happened to her husband and that accepting no assignments until these phantoms have been run to ground is their story and they’re sticking to it. Well, they were sticking to it until a mafioso’s pregnant wife narrowly escaped being assassinated in a shopping mall and then vanished into the wind. Now their boss wants Scott and Gutierrez to find her. The thing is: There’s a lot of people looking for this woman, and they all seem to have different interests.
Black Wolf is just as good as Red Queen, but for totally different reasons. The breakneck pace of Red Queen has slowed down a bit in exchange for a hurry-up-and-wait approach, because in this book there isn’t the ever-looming presence of a ticking clock bearing down on our characters and the plot. In my opinion, this is a good thing, because it allows us to get to know both Antonia and Jon more as people, which is a luxury we didn’t get in the first book. We learn about Jon, his loneliness, his struggles with being a queer man who’s large, and his longing for a loving relationship. We get to learn more about Antonia’s training, her feelings about her son and her fears about being a mother, her guilt and resentment surrounding the decline in her husband’s health, and her fears about becoming too reliant on Jon. The pacing suffers a little, but the story is interesting and a quickly developing subplot surrounding the entire Red Queen project kept things interesting around the perimeter.
I’m going to be very interested in seeing how this trilogy ends.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: Book Series/Crime Fiction/Crime Thriller/Murder Thriller/Suspense Thriller
I love hiking, but I didn’t like this book. I thought the premise was neat, but the way it was carried out was absolutely ridiculous and required me tI love hiking, but I didn’t like this book. I thought the premise was neat, but the way it was carried out was absolutely ridiculous and required me to suspend too much disbelief.
Instead of the female friendships coming across as sincere and heartfelt, their bonds felt contrived and shallow. The book was predictable and absolutely dry.
I can’t say I recommend it at all.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Personal policy dictates that since this title received a rating of three stars or lower it will not appear on social media or bookseller websites. ...more
This is my first Stacy Willingham book. Shocking, I know, considering how many thrillers I read and review. This is the first title of hers I’ve been This is my first Stacy Willingham book. Shocking, I know, considering how many thrillers I read and review. This is the first title of hers I’ve been approved for, though, and I really enjoyed this book, even if it was somewhat predictable and the ground is pretty well-trodden.
I empathize greatly with our protagonist, Margot. I never felt like my best friend was as good of a friend to me as I was to her (that’s a long story) or did as much for me as I did for her. It felt like a very unbalanced friendship. All of my friendships felt like that. That’s eventually why I stopped allowing people to get close to me. I was tired of being hurt. Back when I was in my late teens and early twenties, though? I didn’t know any better. Just like Margot. I just wanted to belong. I just wanted to find my people. I wanted love, safety, and acceptance. Just like Margot, I found that at that age, most people don’t know what they’re doing or who they really are yet. They make a lot of mistakes. A lot of accidents happen. They do a lot of things they can’t take back.
The well-trodden ground of fraternity culture gone wrong in thrillers has been done better in recent years (see Lauren Nossett’s The Resemblance). Willingham does put a nice spin on it with the fraternity having a questionable power exchange dynamic over the girls and their housing situation next door, but it feels rather dated for 2024. I don’t question the hazing culture because I have no doubt hazing still happens in the smaller private universities, no matter what the public may think. I certainly don’t question the other, more insidious aspects of Greek culture that permeate this book either, because those for sure exist, no matter the university.
The plot itself is complicated and twisted, but well-plotted and well-paced. It winds in and out of time throughout the book but never slackens in pace or suspense. Willingham did an excellent job at giving the reader just enough of the past, present, and future in juggling intervals to slake a thirst for knowledge before switching to a different timeline, leaving us eager to know more with every switch. The turns may not be shocking, but when they get there it’s so well-spun you don’t mind you figured it out.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
The Rumor Game is an interesting historical thriller set in Boston during WWII, featuring a female reporter who works to stoReal Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars
The Rumor Game is an interesting historical thriller set in Boston during WWII, featuring a female reporter who works to stop the spread of disinformation with a column in her local paper and male FBI agent who’s assignment is supposed to be preventing sabotage of industries vital to the war effort in and around Boston (the town being a vital port city). On the surface, the only thing the two seem to have in common is a hatred of Nazis. War makes for strange bedfellows, though, and soon it proves that these two have a lot of connections, both personally and professionally.
The Rumor Game has a great story, but my great issue is that it doesn’t ever seem to come together cohesively. It’s all over the place, narratively. There are a lot of threads to pull on, and not all of them are pulled on equally. Some are left dangling for too long and when Mullen comes back to them it’s been so long that it feels almost confusing. Some threads are resolved a little too neatly, or not in a satisfactory manner for the amount of outrage they elicited for the characters in the story (who deserved better). At times it also felt like Mullen may have been having his own characters act stupider than they were being otherwise written, because their ignorance regarding certain matters beggared belief.
It’s a cool story with great atmosphere but there’s a lot missing from it. If it had a tighter plot I would’ve loved it a lot more.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
If it’s okay with all of you I’m just going to start calling Gillian McAllister’s books, “Thriller Games of Truth with Consequences: The Ethical DilemIf it’s okay with all of you I’m just going to start calling Gillian McAllister’s books, “Thriller Games of Truth with Consequences: The Ethical Dilemma Edition”. I’m not saying that to be insulting in any way, shape, or form. It’s simply that both of the books I’ve read of hers (Wrong Place, Wrong Time and now Just Another Missing Person) were both largely domestic thrillers revolving around mothers who faced huge ethical dilemmas involving their child and the cost of telling the truth would have major consequences for both them and their child. So the idea behind the whole book is, “How do I save my child? Should they be saved? If I do this, should I try to save myself too, or should I pay the price for the crime my child committed?”.
In Wrong Place, Wrong Time, the plot largely centered on a mom and her son. In Just Another Missing Person, however, we’ve got more than one parent facing an ethical dilemma and potential consequences for unlawful behavior in the name of either protecting or avenging their child. Heck, we’ve got ethical dilemmas just about everywhere we turn. Guess what? I’m here for it. I was so into this book I didn’t want to come out. I lost track of time.
This is one of those rare thrillers that actually managed to shock the heck out of me. The first turn actually caused me to shout, “What the f*ck?”
There were a few more surprises after that (not going to say how many), but they were all actual surprises and they were all welcome ones. At no time did I feel like McAllister had just shoehorned a turn in just so she could screw with us readers to pad the book. Every time we needed to change direction it was obvious why we had to and it ended up making sense. This book was thoughtfully, carefully, strategically constructed. I loved Wrong Place, Wrong Time, but I think I love Just Another Missing Person more simply because it has this vibe surrounding all the characters that says, “You all f*cked around and found out”. And they did. They all found out the cost of turning your back on the ethics of your profession or your place in someone’s life. And then there’s that murky, blurry, shadowy place: what’s the ethics when the love and need to protect your child runs right into the ethics of your profession? What then?
I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a book not to be missed.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
I love character-driven thrillers. I love that while I was reading this book I was more concerned with the journey than the destination. The most impoI love character-driven thrillers. I love that while I was reading this book I was more concerned with the journey than the destination. The most important thing to me wasn’t “whodunit” but “who were the victims?” Because this book doesn’t hold out a whole lot of hope for an arrest or even a solid suspect when it starts out, but what it does strive for is to put a name to the victims of the crimes that are central to the plot.
It’s a 30-year-old cold case with misplaced and missing paperwork, degraded evidence, and no witnesses. Detective Jean Martinez has transferred to Sierra County’s cold case bureau and wants to clear their department’s oldest cold case, or to at least give the victims their names back. And librarian Laura MacDonald comes across the case on a message board while she’s being treated for breast cancer (the author herself is a breast cancer survivor) and uses her spare time to research the case and then ventures into genealogical research to try and help to achieve the exact thing the detective is doing. Eventually, Laura takes a leap of faith and flies to New Mexico to present everything she has to the detective, and a kindredship is forged.
What I’m saying above doesn’t sound like a thriller, does it? Well, that’s because this book isn’t high-octane. It’s not the type of thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat. This is a simmering thriller, just tiny hot bubbles that keep pricking and poking at you. Maybe it’s even a little bit of a different burn at times, like the antiseptic burn of rubbing alcohol or the blistering heat of a sunburn. Maybe it’s the cold chill that makes you stop in your tracks or that feeling like someone’s just behind you that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It could even be the feeling that makes you feel like you’re suddenly some sort of prey. Most of the thrill comes from interlude scenes from the POV of the dead victims, who are present in some sort of spirit form, haunting the site where their bodies were found. To say more than that about those scenes, which range from poignant to gross, would be spoiler-iffic.
The separate and then woven together stories of Laura and Jean run parallel in that both women start out this book fighting off what they think is inevitable: Laura’s breast cancer has already taken so much from her and might eventually take more and Jean’s husband is dead set on her retiring in the next year or two, even though she is very clear that she’s not ready to give up her shield. But with her daughter about to give birth to her first child and the cold case bureau about to be cut down to part-time, Jean is starting to run out of time to close out this one case. But then Laura comes along with some new information, along with some new hope.
This is what I mean when I say this thriller is more about the journey than the destination. Of course we readers want to know who’s responsible for these crimes. Of course we want to know who was sick enough to do this. But that’s not the point of this book. The point of this book is about giving victims back their names and their voices. It’s about giving them back their families and their backgrounds. It’s about remembering the victims of crimes whose trails have long gone cold and no one seems to care about them anymore.
To an extent, this book is also about extolling the virtues of forensic genealogy, which has helped catch criminals like the Golden State Killer, but I have very conflicting feelings about this field on a personal level, so I’m not going to go into that here.
It’s a beautifully written book about a very brutal event and two women who just want to do something helpful with the years they have left in their lives. It’s terrific.
A copy of this title was provided to me by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: 5 Star Read/Crime Thriller/Ghost Story/Murder Thriller/OwnVoices/Suspense Mystery ...more
I don’t think I’ve read a book so obviously padded with unnecessary filler material before. This shouldn’t have been a novel–it should’ve been a novelI don’t think I’ve read a book so obviously padded with unnecessary filler material before. This shouldn’t have been a novel–it should’ve been a novella. There wasn’t enough story here to make a novel and it shows.
This book is filled with multiple POVs, and that’s fine, but there’s one POV that doesn’t fit and is so poorly written I ended up skipping every instance when it occurred after the first few times because it came across as evil villain monologuing. It was cheesy and that was where most of the filler sat.
As for the rest of the book? It was messy. It was unorganized. It felt like something that landed in a slush pile and I don’t know how any editor let it get this far. I don’t recommend it at all.
A copy of this title was provided by NetGalley and the author. Any thoughts, opinions, ideas, and views expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. Personal policy dictates that since this title has earned a rating of three stars or below the review will not appear on social media or any bookseller websites. ...more
The Professor is Nossett’s second novel after 2022’s The Resemblance (which I also rated five stars), the second to feature Marlitt Kaplan as the protThe Professor is Nossett’s second novel after 2022’s The Resemblance (which I also rated five stars), the second to feature Marlitt Kaplan as the protagonist, and so, of course, it follows the same genre feel as its predecessor: a murder/crime thriller with dark academia themes set on and around the University of Georgia campus. Where The Resemblance has a plot centering around sexual assault, rape culture, and Greek life; The Professor focuses on the mental health of both professors and students, how little colleges and universities do to help either party deal with these matters, and how hard it is for professors to maintain a healthy work-life balance with their workloads and pressure to publish or perish in order to gain tenure so they don’t have to work for peanuts.
It’s also a bit about setting boundaries, knowing when to say you’re sorry, acknowledging your failings, accepting the things you can’t change, and rebuilding your life from the ashes.
I am going to note that this book can be read as a standalone, but it’s a whole lot more enjoyable and easier to relate to if you read The Resemblance first. Telling you why would require a lot of exposition, and that’s not what reviews are for. But you’ve been warned.
Lauren Nossett has honed her protagonist, Marlitt, into a fine blade, and she knows exactly how to wield her. You can tell that Nossett must spend a lot of time living inside Marlitt’s head, just thinking and hypothesizing as to how Marlitt would react to any given situation, because Marlitt’s inner narrative and dialogue just flows so seamlessly throughout the pages. There’s not a single hiccough. Nossett also thinks every single plot thread through, leaving nary a string loose. She doesn’t rely on logical fallacies to hold up her plot: you won’t find any red herrings here. We are shown the exposition via the lens of those who experience it and those scenes inform the characterizations of the major players in a way third-person POV never could. It was a very effective tool to humanize characters we otherwise wouldn’t have gotten close enough to so we could empathize with their pain. Putting us right there with them helped us identify with their plights and struggles, letting us inside their heads where not even Marlitt could go.
It’s another brilliant effort by Nossett and I’ll need it in my bookcase ASAP. I have a feeling the next one will end up there too. I can’t get enough.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. In this case, I’d like to extend my thanks directly to author Lauren Nossett, who was kind enough to personally ensure a NetGalley widget made it to my inbox. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. This review was written without any offer or acceptance of compensation. Thank you.
The cover promises way more thrills than the book actually delivers.
The problem with The Followers isn’t the plot, because it’s actually a really gooThe cover promises way more thrills than the book actually delivers.
The problem with The Followers isn’t the plot, because it’s actually a really good plot. The issue is the characters. Not only does one of the two female protagonists not seem to know how to Google or have any semblance of common sense even though she’s an influencer with millions of followers, but I just couldn’t connect with any of the characters. I just didn’t identify with them and, as a result, I was just very bored.
I also didn’t care about (and was really annoyed by) all the snippets of chats or forums full of hate for Molly. They ripped me out of the story and were annoying. I’m seeing this method of exposition used in more and more books and I’ve ended up rating every book that uses this method lower than other books I read. An infodump is an infodump. Readers aren’t dumb.
So I’d like to say this book is terrific and groundbreaking, but it’s simply very average.
Thanks to Blackstone Publishing and Bradleigh Godfrey for sending me a copy of the physical ARC of this book for review. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Personal policy dictates that since this title earned a three star or lower rating this review will not appear on any of my social media channels or any bookseller websites. ...more
At 209 pages, this book is only a handful of pages longer than a novella, and the book truly suffers for it. Actually, the book just suffers from poorAt 209 pages, this book is only a handful of pages longer than a novella, and the book truly suffers for it. Actually, the book just suffers from poor research, clumsy writing, inelegant plotting, a truly predictable plot, and cookie cutter characters with no nuance to them whatsoever. I almost DNF’d it because I knew I could be spending my time reading the many other ARCs calling my name for April 4th’s release date.
Sure, I wax often and eloquently about the virtues of the novella and its ability to pack so much into so few pages, but that virtuosity depends on the economy of words and brilliant sentence structure. This book has neither. It’s clunky and runs like a carriage on cobblestones: rough and wobbly, starting and stopping, letting too many characters talk and get their voices in. There are too many players on the board for this to be anything but a tangle of threads that’s too conveniently cleaned up.
I wish Chad Zunker better luck in the future with his writing, because this read amateur, and I can see he’s no amateur.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, ideas, views, and opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. Due to personal policy, this review will not be posted on any social media or bookseller websites due to a rating of three stars or under.
File Under: Crime Thriller/Not For Me/Kindle Unlimited/KU/Short Story/Thriller/What Did I Just Read That Was Bad ...more
Finally, finally, a podcast-based suspense/mystery/thriller I could actually engage with and say I enjoyed! This has never happened to me before and IFinally, finally, a podcast-based suspense/mystery/thriller I could actually engage with and say I enjoyed! This has never happened to me before and I’m seriously pleased.
Every single book I’ve picked up in this genre that involved podcasts before has either been a DNF or has been an absolutely mediocre read. With a Kiss We Die, though, was an intelligent, well-plotted, believable, and engaging read that had the foresight to not follow the more pop-culture true crime podcasts that handle true crime like it’s a joke but skew more towards investigative journalism.
The podcast format used in With a Kiss We Die actually reminded me of my favorite true crime podcast, To Live and Die in L.A., which runs in that same “we’re going to start here, with this rough outline, but after that it’s going to be out of our hands where the case takes us but we’re going to follow this to the end of the road” vein.
Even so, the podcast aspect of this book is the weaker aspect of this book for me. The stronger aspect is the story is Jordan and Victoria, their relationship, and the suspense of whether or not they committed the crime they’re accused of. Slightly less strong but still compelling than watching these two charismatic chameleons is spending time with the determined and persistent podcaster and investigative journalist Ryanna Raines, who is invested in these people, in this case, in her podcast, in the truth, and in justice for the victims.
Is this book full of surprising twists and turns that will make you gasp and gawp? In my opinion, no. I wasn’t surprised at all. Sometimes the twists and turns felt like they were coming straight out of an episode of “Law & Order”. The beauty was in the way they were written and presented in the text.
So, while With a Kiss We Die doesn’t break new ground, it’s still a really enjoyable read.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All opinions, thoughts, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
This one is going to sit with me for a while. I’m sitting here trying to digest the many layers this book has that help to breathe life into the plot This one is going to sit with me for a while. I’m sitting here trying to digest the many layers this book has that help to breathe life into the plot and the characters. The dangers of not teaching young women about their bodies and how to listen to them. The injustices of the juvenile detention system. The myriad ways in which white, cisgender males of any age can get away with nearly anything with just a wink and a smile and after all this time women still fall on their knees to please them. How women and couples have to constantly justify their decision to remain childless time and again. The ways in which we sometimes don’t know the people we love and trust the most until we’re forced into spending all of our time with them. The ways in which some people can be changed by time and others can’t. The ways in which some people just can’t stop: they need to be stopped.
You have to be ready for the pacing in this book because it moves fast. Not only does it switch between May of 1997 and the “present day” of the book (which is between September 2019 and May 2021), but in the present day events of the book the POV switches between the three main characters: Amber (the titular “Prom Mom”), Joe (the boy who took her to prom who is now a commercial real-estate salesman and married to a plastic surgeon named Meredith), and Meredith (said plastic surgeon). Not only that, but page time isn’t wasted by easing in and out of POV transitions; Lippman simply drops in and out of each character with a solid paragraph shift. The shift is always defined enough that you definitely know which character you’re with, but I love that no time is wasted with trying to make the shift more gentle for the reader, because this book isn’t gentle in any way at all. This book is jarring. The reading experience matches.
Part of the appeal of this book is that it takes place over COVID quarantine and into the 2020 presidential election. This forces the characters in these books to ask ethical, moral, political, and cultural questions both of themselves and others and to come clean about how they feel about certain issues. It shows the definite divides between the three main characters and what their priorities are in life. It makes all of them more interesting and multifaceted while forcing them into tighter and tighter corners as the plot progresses.
It’s a brilliant book that had me ravenously turning pages from start to finish.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
If there’s one fusion of genres I’ve come to appreciate a great deal in the last couple of years it’s science fiction and noir. It’s not a new genre, If there’s one fusion of genres I’ve come to appreciate a great deal in the last couple of years it’s science fiction and noir. It’s not a new genre, having roots going back 30+ years, but it’s new to me. The first novel I read with this kind of flavor to it was last year’s The Paradox Hotel, which I absolutely couldn’t put down (just like this book), rated five stars (just like this book), and which occupies a well-deserved spot on my crowded bookshelves (which this book does as well, thanks to Knopf and Penguin Random House). There’s something about the cold, implacable march of science with its empirical laws and rules of evidence and the cool, calm facade of a detective who has their own laws and rules of evidence to follow that simply creates a fascinating, mutually beneficial relationship that can result in some of the most fascinating stories about the human condition. Titanium Noir is a story that has a lot of story to tell and most of it isn’t pretty, but all of it is about some kind of love.
No noir novel is complete without a socioeconomic divide (in this case, a river and lake divide one side from the other–the rich and the not-rich). In the world of Titanium Noir, money doesn’t only mean you live in nicer houses and have better healthcare. It also means you might just make enough money to become a Titan. Not a titan of industry, but one of a select number of people who can afford to be injected with a genetic therapy formula called T7, which will rewind and repair all damage time or injury has inflicted on you. A literal bodily reset. The monetary cost is astronomical. Changes to your body? Yeah, there’s some of those too. You won’t ever be the same again and people will never look at you the same way again. You’re a Titan now, and there’s power in merely being you. The power exchange is too great to overcome now.
Our protagonist, Cal Sounder, is a private detective on paper. In reality, he walks the thin line between the police and the Titans. He looks into things on the Titan’s side of the fence for the police from time to time and he looks into things on the poorer side of town for the Titans from time to time. This time around, he’s been retained by the police as a consultant on a case a little too hot for them to handle: A Titan has been murdered.
The worldbuilding in this book is simply great. Take the gritty, icy streets of Chicago in winter and marry it to the neon city you’d see in an anime like Ghost in the Shell or Akira, and that’s the feel I got from the book. Crazy nightclubs, dirty dive bars, weird socialist social clubs, fusion restaurants, an elite university, a multinational conglomerate, apartment buildings, and a pig farm. This book visits a great many locales, all different from one another and fascinating in their own way given the landscape.
Cal has that same cool, implacable facade of a practiced detective, but with far more leeway than a badge. His morals are a lot more flexible, too. That’s why he’s good at his job. He’s an enigmatic and charismatic character. He’s far more than he seems and capable of far more than you’d be able to discern, but it’s not until the book puts him into a situation that you get to see that Cal Sounder is a man of quick reflexes, wit, resources, and more. He has the trademark cynicism and wariness that comes from being surrounded by criminals and death as a profession, but he has one bright thing in his life and he keeps going, knowing she’s still around and waiting.
The dialogue in this book is amazing. It’s all over the place in tone, just like human conversation should be, but you can read the shifts in tone as if they were being spoken and not written. It has razor-sharp wit, barbed sarcasm, tired musings over cups of bitter coffee, weary late-night conversations, exasperated arguments in hallways and alleyways, demented and dislocated words and phrases uttered under pain and duress, words softly spoken by soft lamplight in the late hours, and pessimistic rants from exhausted cops expressed at all hours of night and day.
The plot is engrossing from the start, leaving the book an absolute page-turner you can’t put down. It absolutely feels like you can’t stop reading, because you never know when something bonkers, bloody, revelatory, or just plain interesting is going to happen. The book just keeps moving because Cal just keeps on moving. Unless he’s hurt. Then he stops for a minute.
The ending might surprise you. It might not. I loved the ending, even though I guessed who the killer was. Keep in mind that the ending and the killer are two separate things. This is a story about love, after all. It’s just about different kinds of love. The killer and the ending are not about the same kinds of love. No matter what, though, this book is absolutely a killer read.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. I also received a physical early review copy of this book from Knopf and Penguin Random House as part of their influencer program (thank you). All opinions, thoughts, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
In theory, I love noir mysteries. In reality, I need to be in the mood and have enough patience for them, because a good noir mystery can’t be rushed In theory, I love noir mysteries. In reality, I need to be in the mood and have enough patience for them, because a good noir mystery can’t be rushed and I’m very impatient and prone to distraction.
I will tell you it took me a lot of patience for me to read this book, because it definitely isn’t a book you will want to rush through and it isn’t one that will allow you to do so anyway. I will also tell you it took me almost two whole days of off and on reading to finish the book, which is a long time for me (just me, I know I’m weird and everyone thinks I must be a robot for being able to read more than one book a day) and I still loved the book, so that means it was really worth taking my time with this terrific neon-noir murder mystery.
Heck, even simply calling it a “neon-noir murder mystery” seems like shortchanging it. It’s closer to “neon-noir murder mystery conspiracy thriller suspense novel”. There’s a genre mashup for you.
Jordan Harper writes like he’s an architect: He builds this book using bricks made up of some of the most striking and sharp sentences I’ve seen in quite some time. I stopped more than once to re-read some of the sentences or to read them aloud because they were just that hot. And then those amazing sentences helped to make up well-structured paragraphs that housed this heavy, sordid, dark story of people who have enough money that humanity means nothing to them anymore, the people who are employed to make sure secrets stay secret, and a race to both try and save the day and see if there’s such a thing as redemption after a certain point in your life.
If you’re looking for levity in any way, don’t look here. While there is humor in this book, it’s the humor borne of cynicism and seeing too much bad in the world. It’s gallows humor, heavy sarcasm, and sometimes even crude. It’s all right in line with the tone of the book and the characters, but this book isn’t written for the laughs–it’s written for the tragedy and sins of the rich, the famous, and the people who take out the trash.
I’m trying to think of everything I could say about this book, but keeping in mind the genre, I don’t want to spoil anything. Let’s just say it’s a long ride, but it’s a wild one, and at the end you’re not going to regret taking your time with this one.
Mulholland Books provided me with access to this title. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. Thank you.
File Under: Crime Fiction/Noir/Mystery/Thriller/Crime Thriller/5 Star Reads ...more
It’s there in the title and you should take it as a warning: This book is savage. It’s a painful, visceral, heartbreaking read that reached right intoIt’s there in the title and you should take it as a warning: This book is savage. It’s a painful, visceral, heartbreaking read that reached right into my stomach, womb, heart, and brain with long fingers filled with beautiful words, ugly secrets, horrific scenes, and nauseating characters in a way no book has for a good long time now.
I don’t get book hangovers that often, but I’m telling you that after I closed this book I felt like a deflated balloon, a crushed soda can, or maybe even a flattened cardboard box. I feel drained, dried out, and just worn at the seams.
Tiffany McDaniel has weaved a spell on this book that I don’t think will allow any reader to escape unscathed. You might try your hardest to harden your heart, but I can guarantee that between all the dark, dirty, sad, and desperate things that occur during this book you will definitely find yourself feeling something, and McDaniel’s writing will pierce you deeply.
I found myself thinking of my review for Erin Kate Ryan’s release from last year, Quantum Girl Theory, where I said: “Is every missing girl the same as every other missing girl, or do some missing girls count for more?…When do people just give up on missing girls, and when does a missing girl stop being just a missing girl and becomes more of a distant memory?” This book’s thesis is rightfully on the side of some missing girls counting for more, but the book is also clear in pointing out that no one cares about missing girls much at all, no matter who they are or what they do for a living–not as long as men make all the rules and enforce them. As long as men hold the reins, we will be under their hooves.
McDaniel’s prose is bewitchingly beautiful, even when what’s happening is horrible and depraved. This book has the most melancholy and lovely passages told from the POV of the river, and even as the river describes matters such as the decomposition of the human body, there’s something poetic and naturally calming about these passages, like the river is trying to reassure us readers that she is taking care of the bodies that find their way into her waters, that the breaking down of their physical bodies is something natural and nothing to be afraid of. It was what happened before those bodies entered her currents that’s to be feared. What’s simultaneously gutting and healing are these quasi autopsy reports that crop up periodically throughout the book, which you would have to see for yourself to understand what I’m talking about.
There is not a single character in this book who is even close to whole. They’re all broken into pieces, but how many pieces differ from character to character, and varies depending on where each character is in their life as the book goes on. The way McDaniel writes them, though, you could think that even the most shattered people are the most lovely and the people who seem like they might actually be living a more complete life are carrying the ugliest secrets.
A special toast to McDaniels for the courage she showed not only in writing this book, but in the way she chose to write it. It couldn’t have been easy to make the choices she did, but she made them all the same. Not only was I close to gobsmacked, but I couldn’t think of a more perfect ending.
I was provided with a copy of this book by NetGalley and the author. All views and opinions expressed in this review are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: General Fiction/Literary Fiction/Psychological Fiction/Mystery/Thriller/Suspense/Crime Thriller/Murder Thriller/OwnVoices/5 Star Reads/Crime Thriller/Genre Mashup ...more
This review won’t be one of my long ones, because I simply can’t find many positive things to say about Claire Douglas’ latest (which is an unusual anThis review won’t be one of my long ones, because I simply can’t find many positive things to say about Claire Douglas’ latest (which is an unusual and highly disappointing thing in and of itself), and I can’t refuse to be one of those reviewers who writes a review that’s comprised of nothing but negative remarks.
I am usually a fan of Claire Douglas. I may not think she’s the best writer in her genre, but I don’t pass up any of her releases either. I love the focus on females in her books, as the victims, heroes, and villains. She writes striking scenes, memorable characters, and some sinister plots. In “The Girls Who Disappeared”, the female focus was there, but I was, to put it rather bluntly, very bored.
The beginning of the book, like all Claire Douglas books, is set up to sink its hook right into your brain to drag you into the book. You find yourself needing to know what happened. It’s almost like a compulsion, because the set-up is so enticing. In the case of this book, I wasn’t hooked. It didn’t seem like anything new. It felt a bit like a 90’s horror film. It had that distinct feeling of having been done before. The podcast thing has been done innumerable times in the genre in the past three years, and I’m tired of it… especially when it doesn’t feel like the writer has done their homework on how a podcast meant to be aired on the BBC would be researched, recorded, written, produced, and how all the legal minutiae would be handled along the way. I found myself having to suspend far too much of my disbelief.
Mostly, though? I was simply tired of it. It wasn’t anything new, it wasn’t fun, and it bored me.
NetGalley and Harper Perennial Paperbacks provided me with access to this title. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. Thank you. As per my personal policy this review will not appear on social media or any bookseller website due to the 3 star or lower rating.
I spend a lot of time whining about predictability in thrillers, about how you know exactly when each turn or twist is going to be, and how I often guI spend a lot of time whining about predictability in thrillers, about how you know exactly when each turn or twist is going to be, and how I often guess who the murderer or criminal is very early on and usually right about it in the end. I often say I wish there were more surprises, more suspense… just a little more ambiguity here and there to shake the tree, if you will.
But there is such a thing as too many twists, too many turns, too many suspects, and too many moving parts to the puzzle. You can, it seems, shake too many nuts down from the tree when you shake it. Thus is the case with “One of Those Faces”. This book is a classic case of “Too much going on”.
Now, I rated this book 4 stars because I actually did greatly enjoy it to some extent, and I think that’s because I enjoy most books where the protagonist has issues with sleep and missing memories. Since I have issues with both those things myself, reading about it is a morbid curiosity of mine. I liked Harper’s personality: snappish, wounded, paranoid, traumatized, introverted, and often an utter cow. Yet she is beautiful and creates beautiful things. She’s a beautiful tragedy, walking around the frozen, windy streets of Chicago, with no idea of what to do with her life.
But right there is where my singular joy of the book ends. All the male characters I could chuck in the lake. Erin, her supposed BFF? Chuck her in the lake. The cop investigating the murders central to the plot? Chuck him. You can chuck almost the whole murder “investigation” into the trash anyway, considering how inept it’s portrayed on the page.
Yet, there it is, 4 stars on the page. This book is yet another instance where a book can be average in writing, and even downright annoying at times, but there’s just something singular about it that saves it from mediocrity.
Thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for granting me access to this title.
Loading...
