Meeting your in-laws for the first time is always a nerve-wracking event.
Toby and his son, Luca, are headed to Texas with Toby’s wife, a pediatricianMeeting your in-laws for the first time is always a nerve-wracking event.
Toby and his son, Luca, are headed to Texas with Toby’s wife, a pediatrician and heiress named Alyssa. Alyssa has given Toby every reassurance she can muster about her family, because Luca is starting to show signs of being queer and Toby doesn’t want him around bigots; and, well, Alyssa’s grandfather is a famous televangelist. Alyssa tells him her family is too rich to be bigoted. Well, you can see how well this is going to go.
I liked the idea of this book much more than I liked the book itself. I liked the individual story components more than the whole. I liked the tropes, but not how they were assembled. Does that all make sense? It was like the ingredients were all there but the measurements were wrong and it was baked wrong.
For one, it was baked too long. This book was too long by far. The third act of a thriller should be where you kick it up a notch, but I honestly thought the third act was the slowest of the entire book. I kept saying, “We’re not done yet?”
Second, the repetitiveness. By the end of the second act my eyes were starting to glaze over every time I read the term “mind palace”.
Third, the ending. I’m sorry, but I can’t vibe with the ending. It wasn’t good.
I am going to list off a few TWs for you: incest, “wilderness” camp, homophobia, internalized homophobia, transphobia, CSA, suicide. Those are the big ones.
In the end, it was a very average novel that was well-written for the most part but just didn’t vibe as a whole.
I was provided with a copy of this title by Netgalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Since this review is rated three stars or lower it will not be appearing on my social media. Thank you.
If there’s one thing you definitely can’t be if you want to be a saturation diver, it’s claustrophobic. You have to train even Are you claustrophobic?
If there’s one thing you definitely can’t be if you want to be a saturation diver, it’s claustrophobic. You have to train even the slightest amount of animal instinct to back out of too-tight spaces out of your system in order to be a saturation diver. You also have to quickly grow okay with the idea of being packed into a very tight space (smaller than a train car) with five other fully-grown adults under increased pressure and temperature while you’re all up in each other’s business for about a month.
Thank goodness we’re merely readers, so all we have to worry about is if these kinds of things trigger us before we read. If they don’t, then we just get treated to a suspense thriller about six saturation divers who go down in their chamber while in the North Sea and they start mysteriously dying.
This is advertised as a locked-room mystery, but it really isn’t. If you go into this expecting it to be a traditional locked room, you’ll be disappointed. It’s closer to a closed-loop, but it’s not even truly that because there’s almost an element of possible conspiracy to the mystery in this story. Every time it seems as if the field of suspects has narrowed, Will Dean creates opportunities for the list of suspects to either widen or to shift, changing the perspective and/or the motive.
That’s the largest part of the charm behind The Chamber: Divers, just like other people who live their lives on the sea and do their jobs based on a very strict set of rules and rituals, can be set very off course by ill omens and superstitions. One bad omen can shift a character’s (maybe more than one) entire point of view and it could roll into a completely unrelated event, tainting it with a seeming darkness that otherwise may not have colored it so. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Or maybe it’s not all in your mind. Or maybe it’s both.
Will Dean’s last two books have been absolutely bangers for me, but The Chamber left a little to be desired in the way of excitement for me. I felt the suspense. I felt the claustrophobia. I felt the paranoia and germaphobia. I felt the pressure, the heat, and the fear. For some reason, though, I didn’t feel engaged with the story or compelled to keep reading. The story lacked propulsion. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was while I was reading and I still can’t. I just felt like I could walk away from this book and it wouldn’t really matter.
Will Dean is a wonderful writer and this is a great book, so I totally recommend it. I just didn’t feel like I needed to finish this story in order to get on with my life. This is a wonderful story, though.
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 premise behind Tell Me Who You Are sounded very intriguing when I first read it and in the long run that’s not my issue with this book. The plot iThe premise behind Tell Me Who You Are sounded very intriguing when I first read it and in the long run that’s not my issue with this book. The plot is still very compelling and the book itself is well-paced and well-constructed. This book just didn’t vibe with me from the beginning in almost every other way: I didn’t enjoy the writing style, the narrative voice was rather annoying, and there seemed to be a few holes here and there that maybe could’ve been taken care of with another pass through with the editor.
I didn’t find it to be as sharp or propulsive as other reviewers have found it to be. While it does have some unpredictability in its favor the shock factor isn’t that great when the turn comes.
Sometimes we just don’t vibe with a book, and I think this is one of those times.
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. This review was rated three stars or lower, meaning it will not be appearing on my social media pages. Thank you.
I love comic thrillers. In accordance with family tradition, about 30% of my sense of humor is set aside specifically for dark and morbid humor. When I love comic thrillers. In accordance with family tradition, about 30% of my sense of humor is set aside specifically for dark and morbid humor. When an invite to read this book came along you can bet I accepted it right away. Come on, look at that cover! The title! Like I had a chance. I knew I was going to enjoy it, but enjoy it I did.
You’d Look Better as a Ghost walks down the middle of road somewhere between two of my favorite comic thrillers: Sascha Rothschild’s Blood Sugar and Katy Brent’s How to Kill Men and Get Away With It. Wallace’s writing is more irreverent and sly than Rothschild, but has more of a sense of self and less sociocultural satire than Brent. Wallace likes her humor drier than bones in a desert and dark as a cave, her inner narratives extensive and hyper-critical, her plotting full of little unexpected twists and turns, and her protagonist (Claire) is a delightful serial killer to read as she tries to play catch up with a tiny mistake, understand the process of grieving, and play the unexpected role of vigilante (even if it’s only a means to an end, really).
On a personal note: Even though I’m not a serial killer, I appreciated reading a book with a protagonist who doesn’t grieve in the manner which people are accustomed to, because I don’t and I never have. I don’t go to funerals or memorial services anymore because of the looks I get at my lack of grief when people pass away. Nothing happened to me or anything–I have Alexithymia, and the way in which it presents itself is that my sadness meter isn’t there most of the time. I’m either mildly sad or I’m having a complete depressive breakdown. There’s no in between. It’s either shallows or an abyss. I’ve been like this my entire life. It’s led to everything from me being called a sociopath or narcissistic to being accused of not loving those who have passed away or not missing them.
The protagonist in this book, Claire, is grieving her father. She’s just grieving him in her own way. The only way a person like her can. Just because she’s not crying her eyes out or drinking her nights away doesn’t mean she’s not grieving. Everyone grieves differently. Sure, she chooses to take out her grief with a hammer at first, but no one can accuse of her of not caring for her father in her own way.
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: Dark Comedy/Murder Thriller/Psychological Fiction/Serial Killer/Suspense Thriller ...more
You can really tell this book was originally published as an Audible Original. It’s a small blessing, but a larger curse.
YoReal Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars
You can really tell this book was originally published as an Audible Original. It’s a small blessing, but a larger curse.
Young Rich Widows is a multi-POV thriller set in 1985 just after a plane crash that kills all four partners of a law firm. The story itself is about the widows of the four partners and what they have to deal with in the wake of the unexpected disaster that takes a wrecking ball to all of their lives.
I’ve never read a book that was published as an audiobook first, and maybe that has a lot to do with how the book was transitioned to paperback and therefore how I received it as a reader. The reason I think the transition from Audible Original to paperback may be a larger curse than a blessing is because while the book is entertaining it feels rather flat. I didn’t get anything other than surface vibes and emotions from the pages. While the dialogue was well written it didn’t pack any emotion behind it. I just all read like cheap champagne when I imagine it could’ve read like Dom.
So while it’s a fun read, it just felt kind of empty at the end.
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.
While having various points of views and different angles of storytelling can be really interesting and really effective in some thriller novels, therWhile having various points of views and different angles of storytelling can be really interesting and really effective in some thriller novels, there is such a thing as too much. Watch It Burn is truly an example of too many and too much: too many POVs, too many angles, too much shifting, too many characters, and a major POV character I just wanted to glaze over every time she came on the page.
Some may call this book timely. I call it tired. It was really just below average on every level for me.
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. Due to a three star or lower rating this review will not be appearing on my social media. Thank you. ...more
Do you ever think about just getting in a boat and sailing away from it all? Living on a boat, just the water, wind, and s✨Real Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars✨
Do you ever think about just getting in a boat and sailing away from it all? Living on a boat, just the water, wind, and sky for your most dependable company as you hop from port to port all around the world?
If you loved Gone Girl but also the drama and suspense of at-sea thrillers, then I think you might love Rachel McGuire’s On the Surface (which has such a pretty cover, perfect for a summertime beach read). This releases on July 9th.
The first half of this book isn’t as solid as the back half, but I’m telling you that the back half practically flies by. I also had some issues with the character building of the law enforcement officers in this book because it seemed a little forced, as if McGuire didn’t completely believe in the veracity of her own characters, but when it came to the rest of the cast the character building was absolutely fascinating.
If Katy Brent writes a third brilliant book I’m going to declare her an auto-buy author, because I loved this book almost as much as I did her 2023 reIf Katy Brent writes a third brilliant book I’m going to declare her an auto-buy author, because I loved this book almost as much as I did her 2023 release, How to Kill Men and Get Away With It. Though the two books are as different as night and day, they’re both flavored with Brent’s distinctive feminist prose and sharp, satirical sociocultural commentary.
This book is smart, thoughtful, emotionally provocative, and morbidly funny. Molly Monroe wakes up one morning after a work party with a strange man in her bed. She doesn’t remember much of anything from the night before. The guy’s name is Jack and he tells her he rescued her after he found her crying and wailing but not able to tell him why somewhere near his house in Vauxhall the night before. He brought her home in an Uber and just stayed with her because he was afraid she’d choke on her own vomit. She’s fully dressed. So is he. She feels fine, except she feels mostly dead from a hangover. He leaves her his number in case she needs to get in touch with him and she reluctantly goes into work, despite the strange looks and weird name-calling she gets from people on the way.
But that’s just the start of a few weeks of the weirdest and most heartbreaking weeks of her life.
The sociocultural commentary is hard and fierce in this book: social media and how it automatically focuses on fetishizing and shaming females who obviously are out of it when they are unknowingly filmed or papped, wives who automatically go after the other woman when they should go after their husbands first, best friends who scream at one another over their habits instead of just automatically helping, and mostly all of the men who dismiss and deride women whenever they have the chance of taking an out.
Katy Brent has more talent in her little finger for straddling that fine line between satire and mockery than most authors in the business. It would be easy for her to dip a toe fully into blaming men for everything, but Brent fully acknowledges that women can sometimes be just as awful. Internal misogyny is a beast and sometimes even the best of women can succumb when they’re weak.
It was brilliant, quick-witted, and sharp. Watch out for TW/CWs, please.
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 wanted to read this book because I love stories about foster siblings and revenge, but I stayed because I fell in love with the characters.
I won’t I wanted to read this book because I love stories about foster siblings and revenge, but I stayed because I fell in love with the characters.
I won’t claim to know anything about the foster system, being a foster child, or being a foster parent. I’ve only known one foster kid (that I can remember( in all my life, and I met her right after she’d aged out of the system. I live in America, so I don’t even know how similar the systems between here and Australia are, but I don’t imagine being a foster child in any country is something I could come close to understanding. That didn’t stop me from absolutely falling in love with Jessica, Norah, and Alicia, the three foster sisters at the center of this novel. It also didn’t stop me from loving to loathe their foster mother, Miss Fairchild, who for some reason reminds me of a slightly younger (and non-magical) Professor Umbridge in many ways. Miss Fairchild is a memorable and loathsome antagonist in this complex book.
The most prevalent themes in this book surround the trials of the foster system and how it can affect different children, depending on how they came to be in the foster system, the environment they lived in before the state had to take them in, how long they’ve been in the system, how many different homes they’ve been in, and what abuse they might have suffered during their time in the system. It gives what could’ve been another formulaic domestic thriller a really emotional base that caused me to really become invested in the outcome. I was really pulled in and willingly went along for the whole ride.
Well-paced with a great plot and cohesive storyline, I found I couldn’t put this one down.
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: 5 Star Review/Domestic Thriller/Murder Thriller/Psychological Fiction ...more
You know what they say: before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. One for your enemy and one for yourself.
Life in Puerto Rico is nevYou know what they say: before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. One for your enemy and one for yourself.
Life in Puerto Rico is never easy. It’s life in a liminal state. You’re technically American, but Americans never treat you like you’re one of them, and since you’re an American colony you’re not free to do as you please, either. Somewhat like living in a small town, you grow up either never wanting to leave or clamoring to.
Gabe and his friends are as tight as blood. You come for one of them, you come for all of them. Even though Puerto Rico is filled with grief, pain, and ghosts, these boys suddenly have their childhoods shattered when one of their mother’s is brutally gunned down while at work one night.
What if it were your mom? Of course they’ll all set out to take revenge on the people who dared to take a mother from her son too early. It just isn’t done.
The hurricane about to swoop down on Puerto Rico shares a name with the deceased mom: Maria. It’s as large, powerful, angry, and hungry as the fury of these young men.
It took me longer than usual to finish a book of this length because it was a heavy read, thematically. I could feel the weight of neo-colonialism’s effects on Puerto Rico’s people and environment. I felt my own guilt and complicitness in being an American safe and sound in California while Puerto Rico suffers year after year being treated like a developing country when they should be America’s 51st state or be allowed to be their own sovereign nation. I swallowed down how it felt to not understand sentences of the book because they were in Spanish and then sucked it up because I’m the non-native here. This book has sound and fury and I’m here for it, even if I had to split reading it into two chunks.
The theme that stands out the most here is pride: When you lose something, what will you risk or give away in order to get it back? There’s also grief: parental loss, loss of friendship, loss of a beloved, loss of innocence, and a longing for what once was. Anger is spread out over this book for so many reasons. I could probably write a whole essay about the part anger plays in this book. Let’s not forget the hurricane itself, which brings destruction and leave behind devastation.
In all of this you have these furious and damaged young men who have too little to look forward to and have had too much taken from them in their short lives. None of them think they have very much to live for except each other and none of them have too much hope or desire to leave the island they have a love/hate relationship with. It’s their home, heart, and prison. But it’s always better to go with the devil you know.
I highly recommend this book. It’s gonna knock you 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.
File Under: 5 Star Reads/Coming of Age/Found Family/Ghost Fiction/Murder Thriller/Paranormal Fiction/Paranormal Horror/Speculative Fiction ...more
Was there ever a time in your childhood when you just couldn't tell anyone what was wrong?
That’s Rose Barclay’s problem: She suffers from traumatic muWas there ever a time in your childhood when you just couldn't tell anyone what was wrong?
That’s Rose Barclay’s problem: She suffers from traumatic mutism after witnessing the death of her nanny. With her parents both angling for sole custody, the court appoints Rose a BIA (Best Interest Attorney) in order to make the best recommendations on her behalf. Stella Hudson became a BIA partly because at one time she suffered from traumatic mutism after finding her mother’s dead body. Rose is a little younger than Stella’s usual clients, but no other BIA is as uniquely qualified to represent her.
House of Glass is a really entertaining novel with a lot of page-turning fun. The front half of the book is really engaging and compelling, but the back half felt a little messy to me. It didn’t feel as suspenseful or as compelling. The pacing was also tidier in the front half than the back.
I enjoyed most of the characters. There were a few that came across as a little transparent in their motives, but that could possibly be due to it being close to the end of summer and it’s thriller season. Rose and Stella were especially fun to read, especially when they were in a scene together on their own. I also enjoyed Charles as a character, especially earlier in the book.
The story is a good one, but I felt like the ending could’ve been done better. I felt like the motive behind the murder was there but was still pretty murky when Pekkanen could’ve made it a clearer point. I also didn’t like the ultimate ending too much. Overall, this is an entertaining summer thriller with a lot of themes around stolen childhoods, grief, absent parents, surrogate parents, childhood advocacy, deceit, and the dissolution of marriage.
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 you decided to try and pick Under the Palms up without reading Beneath the Surface first then you need to rethink that deReal Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars
If you decided to try and pick Under the Palms up without reading Beneath the Surface first then you need to rethink that decision right away, because you’ll be totally lost trying to read this book without reading BtS first. That’s the first thing I need to say.
The second most important thing I need to say is: While I was happy to hear and see that The Kingsleys were getting another book (because why not have another book full of rich, unscrupulous people doing more unscrupulous things?) I was kind of disappointed with the story Kaira Rouda chose to tell.
Under the Palms takes place roughly a year, maybe two, after the events of Beneath the Surface, and company President Paige Kingsley has organized a company retreat at a luxury retreat in the hills. This corporate retreat is more than it seems, of course, because everyone at Kingsley is gunning to oust Paige as President and she’s pulling everyone together (including some surprise players) in order to stop this coup in its tracks.
I don’t mind that in a lot of ways it echoes the bones of the first book’s plot. In a way, that’s in line with how the characters in these books work, using each other’s tactics and weapons against them. What did bother me was how the female characters in this book ended up relying on males to get them out of their bad situations. I’m not a fan of female characters who are supposed to be strong willingly letting men lead them around and make decisions for them when they had previously spent pages declaring they’d never do that again.
So while it was a fun read, it didn’t do the Kingsleys justice. They deserved more depravity.
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/Domestic Thriller/Murder Thriller/Psychological Fiction/Suspense Thriller ...more
You gotta love Washington. It’s a great place to set thrillers. This time Cate Quinn has used the upper northwest portion of the state as the setting You gotta love Washington. It’s a great place to set thrillers. This time Cate Quinn has used the upper northwest portion of the state as the setting for an isolated ultra posh rehab center where a female celebrity has suddenly passed away from an apparent overdose. You might want to tell that to her estranged younger sister, though, because Meg’s convinced her sister wouldn’t have injected herself with heroin and she’s determined to enter the same rehab center herself to find out what really happened.
This isn’t exactly novel (ha) territory when it comes to thriller plotlines, but I really liked what Quinn did with it. I think the fulcrum of this book was the characters. Nobody in this book is a good person and that makes this book work. There’s something about people who haven’t always made the best judgment calls in life but somehow make the best judgment calls they can at the most pivotal times that always speaks to me as a very imperfect person. I’ve made a ton of imperfect calls in my life and I hope I have it in me to make the right calls when it counts.
Is the book kind of out there, in terms of reality? Maybe. I did have to suspend my disbelief some. I don’t doubt at all that some luxury rehab spots are just as absurd as the one in this book in terms of amenities. I had a harder time dealing with the police/law aspect of this book in terms of believability. I know we’re supposed to just chalk it up to the isolation of the locale, but I don’t truly think anywhere in that section of Washington is as isolated as described in the novel anymore and I don’t think the law could be skirted in the manner it was in this book.
In the end, it was a really solid read and a lot of fun. I enjoyed it.
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.
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.
I suspect had I not already read several COVID-era novels and so many other novels that shared one or more of the plot elemeReal Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars
I suspect had I not already read several COVID-era novels and so many other novels that shared one or more of the plot elements of this book already this year (save the dinosaurs–that’s unique) that I might have enjoyed this book more. Maybe it’s a case of wrong time, right book. Maybe I’ll give this book a re-read in a few years and find it to be a better read than I do now. Right now, however, I found this book to be derivative, clunky, and very predictable.
Is it entertaining? Yes…in places. I didn’t enjoy it at first: I actually thought I was going to DNF it (I give novels up until the 15-20% mark to make enough impression before I DNF because life is too short to waste on mediocre books), but then it started to pull me in, bit by bit. It wasn’t total absorption, but it was enough to keep reading.
That’s the issue, though: I wasn’t absorbed by this book. I had to fight to keep focused on it. It was a little like that Taylor Swift refrain, “I think I’ve seen this film before…,” because I felt like I knew exactly where this book was headed all the time. It didn’t help that Simon, our protagonist, wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. I spent half of the time reading this book rolling my eyes at him.
For some reason I had hoped there would be a little more of a horror element and a little more of a paranormal element to this story. By the end the whole thing felt rather anticlimactic. I don’t know if that says more about me than the book, but there it is.
I’d say you’ll likely enjoy this if you aren’t sick of novels that take place during COVID, if you’re a huge dinosaur fan, and if you enjoy your horror very mild and leaning toward the metaphysical. If you’re a person who usually needs TW/CWs about stuff involving kids or animals, then please find them before you read.
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. This review was provided without any recompense. Thank you.
Eenee, meenee, minee, mo…Which one of the people closest to Mia Anderson is hiding a massive amount of secrets from her? WhiReal Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars
Eenee, meenee, minee, mo…Which one of the people closest to Mia Anderson is hiding a massive amount of secrets from her? Which one is secretly turning her whole life upside down? It was nice to be seen a little bit, for a little while, but then admiration turns into control and all Mia wants to do is to go back. Only she’s no longer in control of her own life.
You Look Beautiful Tonight was an okay read: it was diverting and engaging in a lot of ways, but the ending was one of the worst I’ve read recently in a thriller and a lot of the characters (including Mia, our protagonist) were written either too flat or problematically.
The most entertaining aspect of this book was the way Mia (and by extension, us readers) constantly examines the motivations, honesty, actions, and words of everyone in her life out of the paranoia created by a man she met online who seems to know everything about her even though they’ve never met. She can’t figure out how he’s getting all this information about her and her life. Is it her bestie? Is it her closest co-worker? Who knows?
It’s the characterizations, character development, and the ending that bring the book down to a 3.5 star rating and make the book just an okay read. Mia is treated like a dowdy librarian who, if she removes her glasses, lets her hair down, and starts wearing pretty clothes she’s all of a sudden worth attention and is taking control of her life. That’s problematic to me. Having her male co-worker and good friend approach her more than once about maybe trying dating again during work hours is problematic. Portraying her as a spoiled brat when she doesn’t get the promotion she was up for instead of maturely filing a complaint with HR is problematic.
The characters are all just a little problematic.
Would I say I recommend this book? Not really, but I’m not going to tell anyone not to read it. Like I said, it’s engaging enough, but be ready to suspend disbelief.
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.
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 liked this novel more than I did Markert’s previous effort, The Nightmare Man, by a small margin, because I believed The Nightmare Man suffered fromI liked this novel more than I did Markert’s previous effort, The Nightmare Man, by a small margin, because I believed The Nightmare Man suffered from a rather shaky, poorly-paced beginning, while Mister Lullaby doesn’t suffer from the same weakness. Instead, this book pops off right from the beginning, hooking the reader in and flinging them right into a disturbing, shaky, troubling situation that only gets more disturbing, shakier, and is downright off-the-wall nightmarish by the time act three hits.
It’s hard to describe the plot without spoilers, but you’ll get a clearly demarcated good versus evil storyline, questions about humanity, feelings of guilt and shame, reminders of how lullabies and nursery rhymes are about monsters and not happy things, questions about where you go when you’re in a coma, and when does a killer go from simply being a killer and become a living nightmare.
I don’t know if anyone else noticed this while reading the book, but Markert also did quite a bit of work with color theory and imagery in this book. There's a lot of yellow, red, white, and black used in this book in descriptions regarding the “evil” side of things in this book, and all of these colors can be correlated with conflict, rot, and death. The vivid colors of animals that come from the other side in this book is also a clue they aren’t quite right, as we can see in one scene in act three. Don’t even get me started on the symbology of the seashells and what you hear when you hold one to your ear.
My only two complaints are the ending (I wasn’t totally sold) and that the timing on the two POVs (us versus them) didn’t line up a little closer to one another. Other than that, it was a great novel.
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. This review was written without compensation.
You know what they say: Go big or go home. Clemence Michallon, who hasn’t written a thriller before or a novel in English before, certainly seems to hYou know what they say: Go big or go home. Clemence Michallon, who hasn’t written a thriller before or a novel in English before, certainly seems to have taken that saying to heart by writing this absolutely riveting, heartbreaking, intense, page-turning thriller that will now make me look as closely at white trucks as I did white vans when I was a child and remind readers that sometimes we don’t even truly know the people closest to us. The people we love and who love us.
This book is so carefully crafted by Michallon. You can tell this was a passion project for her. It’s mainly the story of the everyday life of a serial killer named Aidan who’s also a recent widower (cancer) and a single dad who’s having a hard time keeping his carefully constructed life under control since his former in-laws decided to sell the house he, his wife, and their daughter used to live in and he was forced to move everything closer to town–including the woman he had been keeping captive in a secure shed on the old property for five years he insisted on calling “Rachel”. Meticulous in nature, Aidan needs to be in control of everything and everyone, and living too close to the city allows for too many variables. The story of Aidan’s carefully constructed facade and how he loses control of all of it is told mainly from the POV of three women in his life: “Rachel” (who is moved into the new house, given a room and can move around, but has a GPS tracker she can’t removed and is chained to her radiator or bed every night even as Aidan continues to assault her in various ways), his daughter Cecilia (who loves her dad but doesn’t like him and is angry at him for not seeming to grieve her mother more), and a local restaurant owner named Emily who’s had a crush on Aidan since she was a teenager and since it looks like he’s finally giving her the time of day she’s going to go for it and shoot her shot. Little does she know Aidan’s been watching her for a while now. Slotted in here and there are little vignettes told from the POV of Aidan’s victims, their names disappearing just like their bodies do.
There is so much hopelessness and helplessness in this book when it comes to the triangle between Aidan, “Rachel”, and Cecilia. They say you have to find something redeeming about the antagonist in the story for it to truly work, and I actually did find myself sympathizing with Aidan a little bit. It was the control freak in me recognizing the control freak in him. I have to be in control of everything, mainly because that’s been my essential function for most of my life. If I’m not in control, or if I’m in control and something happens to upset the apple cart, I lose it. I certainly don’t need to do what he does to regain control, but there’s no doubt I’ve had panic attacks when everything starts to even feel like it’s not going to plan. The anger at putting so much planning and time and consideration into something only to have it only go to pot? Yeah, the anger, frustration, and feeling of genuine helplessness is real. Of course “Rachel” feels helpless and often hopeless, being held captive for all this time. She doesn’t even recognize herself when she looks in the mirror. She doesn’t know what combination of words will set Aidan off on one day and make him not horrible the next. Then there’s Cecilia, who feels helpless because she can’t make friends at her new school and hopeless because she can see her dad is going to move on and she can’t believe he’d do that. He doesn’t like to talk about her mom or let her look at her mom’s things. She’s still grieving and can’t understand why he isn’t.
The pacing is so nice and organically tense. There’s no artificial propulsion to this story. There is a little give here and there, but it’s just enough to let you take a breath because most of the time while you’re reading this book you’ll find you’re holding it. You’re not going to want to put it down, because you might even not think to. I know I didn’t. I picked it up and only put it down long enough to put together cheese and crackers for lunch to eat…while I kept reading.
The climax of this story will make your heart race and will have your eyes glued to the page. My heart was even racing a little. It’s a serious case of life or death and will she? Will she? Can she? Can she?
I feel utterly spoiled by this book. I’m officially a Clemence Michallon fan girl and I need more from her.
I was provided a copy of the eARC of this title by NetGalley and the author and provided a finished copy by the folks over at Knopf Publishing. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: 5 Star Review/Kidnapping/Murder Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Serial Killers/Suspense Thriller/Thriller ...more
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
Loading...
