Tag: Thriller

Kate’s Review: “Chloe Cates Is Missing”

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Book: “Chloe Cates Is Missing” by Mandy McHugh

Publishing Info: Scarlet, February 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: The disappearance of a young internet celebrity ignites a firestorm of speculation on social media, and to find her a detective will have to extinguish the blaze.

Chloe Cates is missing. The 13-year-old star of the hit YouTube series, “CC and Me,” has disappeared, and nobody knows where she’s gone — least of all ruthless momager Jennifer Scarborough, who has spent much of her daughter’s young life crafting a child celebrity persona that is finally beginning to pay off. And in Chloe’s absence, the faux-fairytale world that supported that persona begins to fracture, revealing secrets capable of reducing the highly-dysfunctional Scarborough family to rubble.

Anxious to find her daughter and preserve the life she’s worked so hard to build, Jennifer turns to social media for help, but the hearsay, false claims, and salacious suspicions only multiply. As the search becomes as sensational as Chloe’s series, Missing Persons detective Emilina Stone steps in, only to realize she has a connection to this case herself. Will she be able to stay objective and cut through the rumors to find the truth before it’s too late?

Told from multiple points of view including Jennifer, Emilina, and pages from Chloe’s lost diary, Chloe Cates Is Missing is a suspenseful novel of a child pushed to the brink, and of the troubled family that desperately needs her back.

Review: Have you ever been in a situation where you have a book on your radar that you are super interested in, and are super looking forward to, but once you do get your hands on it it just keeps getting bumped in favor of more pressing books? This is what happened with me and “Chloe Cates Is Missing” by Mandy McHugh. It seriously has so many tidbits and plot points that are my catnip. You have a missing girl, you have a ‘social media is a dangerous sea’ theme, you have an overbearing perhaps insidious mother figure, and you have a dour lady cop with baggage and a secret. Like, holy cats, so many things! So when I finally sat down and said to myself ‘IT IS TIME!’, I had high hopes due to building anticipation due to my own poor book time management and rambling promises of finally getting down to it.

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When all is said and done, I found “Chloe Cates Is Missing” to be an addictive read. I basically sat down and read it over a couple of nights, or during my kid’s nap time, becoming fully and totally immersed in the mystery and the layers and layers of drama. We follow multiple perspectives to tell the story of the missing influencer/blog personality, thirteen year old Chloe Cates, real name Abby Scarborough. The first is that of her mom/momager Jennifer, whose obsession with the blog and how it has made her daughter Internet famous has caused severe damage to her family relationships. The second is Jackson, Jennifer’s husband/Abby’s Dad, who has gone along with the blog due to not wanting to anger his wife, no matter how much Abby is being hurt by it. The third is Emilina Stone, the detective assigned to the missing child case, who also has a distant connection to Jennifer (and a shared secret they both want to keep hidden). And finally we also get the perspective of Abby/Chloe herself, through diary entries. It’s a tried and true device, but I enjoyed how McHugh would use it to jump a little bit through the timeline, either to a few minutes before where one perspective left off, or back years and years, and how that added to the breakneck pacing. It was also a good way to misdirect or distract the reader, as we’d cut off one moment and jump to a whole new one, and I liked that strategy.

The characters themselves are a bit familiar in terms of the archetypes they represent. Emilinia is probably the most fleshed out, as her job as a detective means she has to deal with a lot of bleak and dark things, which has made her question the goodness of the world around her, as well as whether or not she would want to foist the darkness of the world on those she loves and cares for. But there is also a whole other dynamic of her having this job, which comes back to her relationship with Jennifer. No spoilers here, but I will say that the two of them share a secret, and Emilina’s choice of work may be a way of trying to atone. Jennifer, on the other hand, is pretty over the top villainous here. At first it seemed that there may have been a little bit of nuance to her character, giving her perspective of how alienating and uncomfortable being a new mother can be, but that went out the window pretty quickly. I don’t have a problem with having an antagonist you love to hate, as it’s entertaining as hell and makes for even more addictive reading, so it worked for me in the end.

I will say, however, that there was another big twist right at the last minute, as has been seen in so many thriller novels and always bugs me a bit. This almost certainly comes down to personal preference in storytelling, but it still made the read end on a bit of a sour note just because it shifted things so quickly right before the last moments. We don’t need to have one final gotcha! There were plenty of satisfying gotchas!

So outside of an ending that frustrated me, I found “Chloe Cates Is Missing” to be a very quick and fun read. I waited so long, and it was worth the wait.

Rating 7: The ending was a little bit of a dime’s turn switch for me, but man was I along for the ride up until that point.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Chloe Cates Is Missing” is included on the Goodreads list “Mystery & Thriller 2022”.

Kate’s Review: “Like a Sister”

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Book: “Like a Sister” by Kellye Garrett

Publishing Info: Mulholland Books, March 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: A twisty, voice-driven thriller for fans of Megan Miranda and Jessica Knoll, in which no one bats an eye when a Black reality TV star is found dead in the Bronx—except her estranged half-sister, whose refusal to believe the official story leads her on a dangerous search for the truth.

When the body of disgraced reality TV star Desiree Pierce is found on a playground in the Bronx the morning after her 25th birthday party, the police and the media are quick to declare her death an overdose. It’s a tragedy, certainly, but not a crime. But Desiree’s half-sister Lena Scott knows that can’t be the case. A graduate student at Columbia, Lena has spent the past decade forging her own path far from the spotlight, but some facts about Desiree just couldn’t have changed since their childhood. And Desiree would never travel above 125th Street. So why is no one listening to her?

Despite the bitter truth that the two haven’t spoken in two years, torn apart by Desiree’s partying and by their father, Mel, a wealthy and influential hip-hop mogul, Lena becomes determined to find justice for her sister, even if it means untangling her family’s darkest secrets—or ending up dead herself.

Review: Sometimes a good book can be a balm during very trying times. That has become abundantly clear during these past two years, though sometimes a fresh hell will be a good reminder of that, since this pandemic hell can sometimes fade into the background because it’s been with us for awhile (ugh, how depressing). My personal fresh hell was one of my cats having a sudden health spiral, and at nearly 18 years of age (14 of which were with me and my husband) we had to put her down. As her health deteriorated over the course of a few days, when I wasn’t tending to her and wrangling my toddler, on my down time I needed an escape. Enter “Like a Sister” by Kellye Garrett, a thriller mystery I got from Book of the Month that had been on my radar for a bit. It kept me well distracted and entertained when I really, really needed to decompress.

Garrett has a great set up for her mystery. Lena Scott finds out that her reality show star half sister Desiree has been found dead, in the Bronx, in lingerie, with signs of a drug overdoes. Though Lena has been estranged from her, she is struck with grief, and also refuses to believe that Desiree OD’d. So she starts to investigate what could have actually happened to her. That is a hook in and of itself, and we follow Lena as she has to unpack and untangle the complicated life her sister had built in the past few years. Garrett does a really good job of creating a hook, but also carefully exploring all of the suspects that Lena comes upon, as well as many of the things that Desiree had been up to that give various suspects very clear motives of why they would want her dead. I really enjoyed the twists and turns, and while I called a few of them here and there, a lot of the time I was surprised or tricked. We also get the story told through Lena’s voice, as well as through descriptions of various social media posts that Desiree has made that give hints as to what is going on, and I like how both could be insightful as well as deceptive. Lena as a main character is enjoyable to follow, and while sometimes her voice was repetitive I thought that she had a very clear perspective (I really liked how Garrett used this to talk about a lot of pressures as racism she faces as a Black woman; from having to don a ‘Strong Black Woman’ demeanor at all times to preconceptions about who she is as a person due to her race and her family, these moments flow very well and feel very realistic.

But I also really loved the complexities between all of the characters in Lena’s family circle, not just that between her and Desiree, and how her deliberate distancing from much of her family has worked both as armor and also as grief. Lena is determined to find out what happened to Desiree, unwilling to believe the narrative that seems logical, but is also bogged down in societal ideas about race and wealth. But Lena also admittedly didn’t really KNOW Desiree anymore in the months leading up to her death, as their estrangement was bitter, and perhaps this guilt is what is driving Lena’s determination. The other relationship that is fraught (and had more interaction in the moment) is the one between Lena and her father Mel, the record mogul, who left Lena’s mother for Desiree’s mother, and seemingly left Lena in the dust. Lena resents Mel and tries to keep her distance, but resents him for respecting that distance, and the unsaid resentment about his public relationship with Desiree weaves in and out of Lena’s investigation. Mel is one of the more mysterious characters, who sounds a lot like Suge Knight, but who has many depths that Lena can’t, or won’t, acknowledge. These circumstances of the estranged father and daughters means we have more mysteries to unravel for Lena, and a lot of emotional baggage to go with the murder mystery. Which Garrett depicts very well.

I really enjoyed “Like a Sister”. It’s very entertaining and will hold your attention, and if you’re looking for a thriller with some well done family strife, this is a good pick. It certainly helped me get through a very difficult week due to how darn enticing it is.

Rating 8: A gripping mystery that has complicated family relationships at the center, “Like a Sister” is a compelling thriller.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Like a Sister” is included on the Goodreads lists “Can’t Wait Crime, Mystery, & Thrillers 2022”, and “Thrillers by ITW Authors”.

Kate’s Review: “The Turnout”

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Book: “The Turnout” by Megan Abbott

Publishing Info: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, August 2021

Where Did I Get this Book: The library!

Where You Can Get this Book: WorldCat | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: Bestselling and award-winning author Megan Abbott’s revelatory, mesmerizing, and game-changing new novel set against the hothouse of a family-run ballet studio, and an interloper who arrives to bring down the carefully crafted Eden-like facade.

Ballet flows through their veins. Dara and Marie Durant were dancers since birth, with their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, homeschooled and trained by their mother. Decades later the Durant School of Dance is theirs. The two sisters, together with Charlie, Dara’s husband and once their mother’s prize student, inherited the school after their parents died in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago. Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, back broken after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around each other, the three have perfected a dance, six days a week, that keeps the studio thriving. But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school’s annual performance of The Nutcracker, a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration, an interloper arrives and threatens the delicate balance of everything they’ve worked for.

Taut and unnerving, The Turnout is Megan Abbott at the height of her game. With uncanny insight and hypnotic writing, it is a sharp and strange dissection of family ties and sexuality, femininity and power, and a tale that is both alarming and irresistible.

Review: Megan Abbott is an author who I keep coming back to because of a couple good experiences. When I’ve liked her books, I’ve REALLY liked her books (titles like “The Fever” and “You Will Know Me” spring to mind), but when I haven’t they’ve clunked hard. And given that I have an undeniable love for ballet stories, especially if there is drama to be found along with the pas de deuxs, when I read the description for “The Turnout” I was absolutely down for giving it a go! Even if there was a bit of hesitation, wondering whether it would be landing more hot or cold, as with all other Abbott books I’ve read there is no in between.

“The Turnout”, in spite of the ballet drama, is bit more on the clunker side of things. But there are also aspects of it that I did like, and let’s start there. The first is that there is no doubt that Abbott knows how to create a deeply unsettling undercurrent with her characters. When we meet our trio of protagonists, sisters Dara and Marie and Dara’s husband Charlie, they are successful owners of a dance school that was founded by the sister’s mother. Immediately you get the sense that there is an underlying tension between all three of them, though the reasons why are hidden at first, and well tamped down in their minds and psyches. It gets under the skin, and it makes for a building tension, especially as things start to crumble, specifically when a contractor named Derek enters their lives after a fire and offsets the strained dynamic that they all have. I kind of figured what was going on, but I was surprised by some of the reveals that entered into the dynamic. And legitimately skeeved by it, without feeling like it was poorly done or melodramatic.

But on the flip side, there were elements that didn’t work for me. While I like that Abbott did some experimentation with the narrative, more telling the story in split paragraph chunks versus longer bodies of action, the construction felt a little disjointed at times. We would be in the same scene, the same moment, and really in the head of the same character, but we would have a jump on the page that didn’t feel like it was necessary. It would just take me out of the moment and make it feel jerky. Along with that, I didn’t feel like we got an even distribution of character development between our main players, specifically between the sisters Dara and Marie. Granted, this story is mostly from Dara’s third person POV, so we really got to know her (and I actually did find her compelling and interesting), but as for Marie, someone part of an arguably important pas de deux within the narrative (see what I did?), I really didn’t feel like we got enough insight into her character. It ended up feeling like her frustrating actions were more to drive the plot forward as opposed to being a foregone conclusion in terms of the choices that she would make based on what we know about her. Even by the time things did get expanded upon throughout various twists and turns, I STILL didn’t think that we got enough insight into Marie, and that made me more frustrated than anything else.

So “The Turnout” was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I think I retract my statement about it being a clunker, but it did leave me wanting more. So my relationship with Megan Abbott books continues to be a mixed bag, but mixed enough that I will probably keep giving her books a shot. If you have had a better experience with her work, this will probably click more with you than I.

Rating 6: Unnerving and brimming with unease, “The Turnout” is a suspenseful tale, but at times feels disjointed and strangely paced, and we didn’t get to know all the characters as well as I’d have liked.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Turnout” is included on the Goodreads lists “Can’t Wait Crime, Mystery, and Thrillers 2021”.

Kate’s Review: “Very Bad People”


This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Very Bad People” by Kit Frick

Publishing Info: Margaret K. McElderry Books, April 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: In this dark academia young adult thriller for fans of The Female of the Species and People Like Us, a teen girl’s search for answers about her mother’s mysterious death leads to a powerful secret society at her new boarding school—and a dangerous game of revenge that will leave her forever changed.

Six years ago, Calliope Bolan’s mother drove the family van into a lake with her three daughters inside. The girls escaped, but their mother drowned, and the truth behind the “accident” remains a mystery Calliope is determined to solve. Now sixteen, she transfers to Tipton Academy, the same elite boarding school her mother once attended. Tipton promises a peek into the past and a host of new opportunities—including a coveted invitation to join Haunt and Rail, an exclusive secret society that looms over campus like a legend. Calliope accepts, stepping into the exhilarating world of the “ghosts,” a society of revolutionaries fighting for social justice. But when Haunt and Rail commits to exposing a dangerous person on campus, it becomes clear that some ghosts define justice differently than others.

As the society’s tactics escalate, Calliope uncovers a possible link between Haunt and Rail and her mother’s deadly crash. Now, she must question what lengths the society might go to in order to see a victory—and if the secret behind her mother’s death could be buried here at Tipton.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

I had some pretty grand plans for myself nearing the end of March. I secured a solo trip up to the North Shore, bringing a book stack and my Kindle and thinking that I’d spend my days in nature and my evenings reading… Well, my faith in good weather was foolhardy, as that first day it was snowing and the wind chill made the temperatures outside feel like it was 18 degrees. I don’t know why I didn’t consider that, being Minnesota and all. But it DID mean that I got a LOT of reading done, and when I sat down with Kit Frick’s newest book “Very Bad People”, I found myself tearing through my eARC. The pacing was great! The mysteries were appropriately engaging! We had a secret society with some potentially nefarious members! Spending all the time inside was turning out okay for me…. Until we once again hit the dreaded ‘and it all falls apart in the last third of the book’ situation.

As per my usual strategy, I’m going to start with what I liked. And the potential for this story just oozes off the page. It has so many things that work for me on paper. I love boarding school thrillers, I love people who get in over their heads in frog in the boiling water situations, and I love moral ambiguity and questions. I also really liked Calliope as our main character, as she felt rounded and real and like someone who would be completely into being included in a secret society like Haunt and Rail. I also liked the school history and history of the secret society as a whole. On top of that, it was so fast paced and engaging that I was eager to see what was going to happen next, and how the connection of Haunt and Rail across the generations was going to come into play.

But I just didn’t like how a couple of the big arcs shook out. Like, at all. And I’m not certain if it had to do with the structure and set up feeling unbalanced with the conclusions, or straight up personal preference on my part and my own sore spots and biases coloring my judgement. I’m half tempted to go on a rant here, but am also kind of not wanting to spoil anything because I think that people would probably do better with it than I did…. What the hell, let’s just go half and half and throw in a

Skip to the next paragraph if you so choose (source)

The book opens with a recounting of the tragedy that has haunted Calliope for a few years: the car accident that killed her mother and nearly killed her and her two sisters. There has always been question as to what happened, as Calliope was asleep, and her two sisters either couldn’t remember what happened or was two young to do so. Calliope sees a man in town during a trek from the Tipton grounds, has her memory jumped, and is convinced she saw him the day of the accident. She starts trying to piece together who he was, as well as his connection to her mother, AS WELL AS her mother’s connection to the Haunt and Rail Society, which leads to the supposedly accidental death of another student during her mother’s time in the club. Calliope starts to surmise that perhaps the Haunt and Rail members had something to do with the student’s death, and her mother’s death was actually someone trying to shut her up. It’s a great premise….. But it isn’t the case. What IS the case is that Calliope’s mother was ACTUALLY LEAVING HER HUSBAND FOR HER HIGH SCHOOL BOYFRIEND AND TAKING THE KIDS WITH HER ON THE DAY OF THE CRASH. It’s all coincidence. And it’s awful. It immediately turned me off from the mother as a character who was, until that point, a formative and powerful drive for Calliope and her connection to the Haunt and Rail assholes. I get what Frick was trying to do, to say that some things are random and terrible (and it does have another connecting point, ultimately), but it left such a sour taste in my mouth. I don’t even think of myself as some kind of Puritanical scold, but once it was revealed how profoundly selfish the mother was being in wanting to uproot her kids from the life they knew with their father (with no indication that he’s a bad or even emotionally incompatible guy; HE SEEMS LIKE A REALLY GOOD LOVING GUY?), with NO actual exploration into her motivations outside of ‘oh, my high school boyfriend is back in my life and THAT’S EXCITING’, it wrecked that entire thread. Okay, I’m not going to elaborate further into the other reveals and twists and turns, but that was just too much. It derailed the emotional crux.

And then a lot of the other characters were frustrating and shrill in their characterizations, especially some of the Haunt and Rail members. It wasn’t even that their motivations and thoughts were things I disagreed with. I found myself quite sympathetic to the matter at hand, as a matter of fact! But I didn’t think that Frick did the due diligence to show enough complexity to their ‘arbiters of justice in their own minds’ themes until too far into the narrative. By then I had kind of stopped caring about their motivations and was more blinded by how their zealotry was damaging to those who didn’t deserve it, and I don’t think that it was properly grappled with.

Talk about running off the rails. There was so much promise with this book for the first two thirds. I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading it too much because it could just be a ‘me’ thing.

Rating 5: Lots of built up momentum and promise ends with a couple of clunker reveals.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Very Bad People” is included on the Goodreads lists “2022 YA Mysteries and Thrillers”, and would fit in on “Academia, Magic, and Secret Societies”.

Kate’s Review: “The Resting Place”

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Book: “The Resting Place” by Camilla Stem (translation: Alexandra Fleming)

Publishing Info: Minotaur Books, March 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: A spine-chilling, propulsive psychological suspense from international sensation Camilla Sten.

The medical term is prosopagnosia. The average person calls it face blindness—the inability to recognize a familiar person’s face, even the faces of those closest to you. When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer—a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, her anxiety mounts. The dark feelings of having brushed by a killer, yet not know who could do this—or if they’d be back—overtakes both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality.

Then a lawyer calls. Vivianne has left her a house—a looming estate tucked away in the Swedish woods. The place her grandfather died, suddenly. A place that has housed a dark past for over fifty years.

Eleanor. Her steadfast boyfriend, Sebastian. Her reckless aunt, Veronika. The lawyer. All will go to this house of secrets, looking for answers. But as they get closer to bringing the truth to light, they’ll wish they had never come to disturb what rests there. A heart-thumping, relentless thriller that will shake you to your core, The Resting Place is an unforgettable novel of horror and suspense.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

Last year I was really impressed with Camilla Sten’s horror novel “The Lost Village”, as it not only creeped me out throughout the narrative, it also felt like it was a fresh take on a story that’s been done before. I kicked myself for passing it by initially, and I told myself I wouldn’t do that again with Camilla Sten’s next novel. Which brings us to “The Resting Place”, the new thriller by Sten that has made it from Scandinavia to the U.S. I picked it up right as our Minnesota winter was starting the Great Thaw, and the thought of a new scary thriller with a snow storm element was detached enough from the doldrums of our eternal winters that I figured it would be fun (I’ve probably jinxed us with an April snow storm now, however). And I said that I wasn’t going to let Sten pass me by again, after all. However, “The Resting Place” probably didn’t need the urgency I assumed it did.

But what did I like? We will start there, as always. A few things to be sure! For one, the setting and atmosphere was awesome. I love me a Gothic thriller and mystery, and “The Resting Place” is bursting with that sensibility. I loved the isolation of the Swedish country home of Solhoga, which has the potential to be tranquil and peaceful but due to a poorly timed blizzard and a potential killer on the loose makes it far less inviting. The isolation tactics are well worn, but effective nonetheless, and I felt like I could see the snow, the old home, and the landscapes. I also did like the dual narratives, the first being Eleanor et als’ dangerous time at Solhoga and the second being diary entries of Anuska, a servant in the 1960s who knew Vivianne and her husband due to her employment and other, more secretive, ties. I thought that the slow unveiling of the mysteries, be it what Vivianne was hiding, or who is out to perhaps kill those who were left behind, was an entertaining plot that kept me reading. In terms of characters, I liked Eleanor enough as she grapples with the trauma of walking in on her grandmother’s murder, as well as the guilt that due to her prosopagnosia she couldn’t be of any help as a witness. The tension that is there not only within her inner self, but also between her and her boyfriend Sebastian, is just another factor in the tension that is slowly rising in this narrative.

But entertaining as it is, we aren’t really doing much new here. Outside of Eleanor’s face blindness, I guess, though even that is something that could be easily done away with with some tweaking and none would be the wiser. While it’s true that I didn’t really guess a few of the big reveals, I did guess others, and the big reveals I didn’t guess felt a little underwhelming because of how they felt like a bit of a cheat. It wasn’t so much farfetched as too easily explainable under kind of nutty circumstances. Ultimately, while I thought that “The Lost Village” did a lot of new and interesting stuff with the genre it was within, “The Resting Place” didn’t feel all that unique to me, and more like the kind of thriller I read once and then don’t really think about again. Serviceable for sure, but nothing that made me say ‘now THAT was a ride!’

I am eager to see what Camilla Sten does next, as this was by no means a book that made me lose my faith in her talents. But “The Resting Place” didn’t have the oomph I was hoping for going into it.

Rating 6: Pretty standard thriller. Serviceable for sure, but nothing really wowed me.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Resting Place” is included on the Goodreads lists “Bring On The Creepy!”, and “The Most Anticipated Mysteries and Thrillers of 2022”.

Kate’s Review: “Nine Lives”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Nine Lives” by Peter Swanson

Publishing Info: William Morrow & Company, March 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: The story of nine strangers who receive a cryptic list with their names on it – and then begin to die in highly unusual circumstances.

Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. Nothing else, just a list of names on a single sheet of paper. None of the nine people know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke – until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list. First, a well-liked old man is drowned on a beach in the small town of Kennewick, Maine. Then, a father is shot in the back while running through his quiet neighborhood in suburban Massachusetts. A frightening pattern is emerging, but what do these nine people have in common? Their professions range from oncology nurse to aspiring actor.

FBI agent Jessica Winslow, who is on the list herself, is determined to find out. Could there be some dark secret that binds them all together? Or is this the work of a murderous madman? As the mysterious sender stalks these nine strangers, they find themselves constantly looking over their shoulders, wondering who will be crossed off next….

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC to this novel!

I’ve been reading Peter Swanson novels since 2016, in which “The Killing Kind” totally blew me away and kept me on my toes. I have come to expect him to find ways to bring in new twists and turns that are totally earned by also shocking and unexpected, sometimes even deconstructing what we have come to expect of the thriller genre as a whole. Because I have this knowledge and because I’m so familiar with his tricky little carpet yanks, one would think that when I went into his newest book “Nine Lives” that I would have figured all of this out. One would think that I would be expecting a twist and that when it came I would say ‘ah yes, I knew that was coming’. And hey, to be fair, there were a couple early on moments that I thought ‘well either that was the twist or perhaps there IS no big reveal this time just to keep me on my toes even more’.

And then this guy STILL manages to completely take me by surprise with a twist I didn’t expect AT ALL.

And it’s just one of a good few in this story! (source)

The thing that I like the most about Peter Swanson, beyond the ability he has to totally floor me, is that he always crafts mysteries that have just enough twists to be interesting without going into wholly farfetched territory. As each stranger on the list of names is slowly picked off one by one, the deaths are done in ways that are almost always matter of fact, totally believable, and in a finite and quick manner that makes the beat punch hard, but then go onto the next. We don’t linger on melodrama nor do we feel a need to explain until it’s fully time for explanations. The clues are placed here and there, and they all fit together once they start to near each other. And while it’s true that I caught a couple of them in advance, the lion’s share were truly surprising. It has definite allusions to the Agatha Christie story “And Then There Were None” without feeling like a direct lifting, and while acknowledging that there are some tweaks here and there. The mystery is strong, even if a lot of the characters kind of fall by the wayside. But I think that that is kind of to be expected in some ways, just because there are nine people on the list, and a limited amount of time that they are going to be alive given that they are all targets of a killer. But for a few of them I felt like we did get some pretty okay insight into who they were as people outside of this, even while others fell flat or into two dimensional tropes.

I have seen criticism of the motive behind what all is going on, and I can definitely get why the criticism is there. Ultimately the construction of the mystery is sound and it has very solid working parts, but the actual foundation of the motive was pretty generic and glossed over. It doesn’t really help that there had to be a huge ‘telling instead of showing’ component at the end, with a big letter that explains just about everything. That’s usually a huge splash of cold water on a book for me, and I remember thinking ‘ah jeeze’ when I realized what was happening.

But hey, I was still having a fun time as we barreled towards the end of “Nine Lives”. The motive may be eh, but the journey through a list of nine marked people is still really fun. Keep on catching me off guard, Peter Swanson! I always like being surprised!

Rating 7: A fun twist on “And Then There Were None” with a few good surprises, “Nine Lives” is another entertaining read from Peter Swanson, even if some of the details are glossed over or undercooked.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Nine Lives” is included on the Goodreads list “Mystery & Thriller 2022”, and would fit in on “‘And Then There Were None’ Trope Novels”.

Kate’s Review: “The Last Laugh”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “The Last Laugh” by Mindy McGinnis

Publishing Info: Katherine Tegen Books, March 2022

Where Did I Get this Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

Where You Can Get this Book: WorldCat | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: In the dark and stunning sequel to The Initial Insult, award-winning author Mindy McGinnis concludes this suspenseful YA duology as long-held family secrets finally come to light . . . changing Amontillado forevermore.

Tress Montor murdered Felicity Turnado—but she might not have to live with the guilt for long. With an infected arm held together by duct tape, the panther who clawed her open on the loose, and the whole town on the hunt for the lost homecoming queen, the odds are stacked against Tress. As her mind slides deeper into delirium, Tress is haunted by the growing sound of Felicity’s heartbeat pulsing from the “best friend” charm around her fevered neck.

Ribbit Usher has been a punchline his whole life—from his nickname to his latest turn as the unwitting star of a humiliating viral video. In the past he’s willingly played the fool, but now it’s time to fulfill his destiny. That means saving the girl, so that Felicity can take her place at his side and Ribbit can exact revenge on all who have done him wrong—which includes his cousin, Tress. Ribbit is held by a pact he made with his mother long ago, a pact that must be delivered upon in four days.

With time ticking down and an enemy she considers a friend lurking in the shadows, Tress’s grip on reality is failing. Can she keep both mind and body together long enough to finally find out what happened to her parents?

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

I’ve been awaiting “The Last Laugh” by Mindy McGinnis since the moment I finished “The Initial Insult”. If you recall, that novel took Edgar Allan Poe tales and turned them into a modern small town setting involving grudge and secret holding teenagers, and did it in a way that worked fairly well. It also ended with a bit of a cliffhanger, one that had my head spinning about where it could go next. I had some theories, and while I was on the money in some ways, in other ways “The Last Laugh” surprised me.

Somehow “The Last Laugh” was even darker than “The Initial Insult”, which is saying something given that the last book ended with a teenage girl being bricked up in a coal shaft and left to die (though in Tress’s defense, she had had a change of heart, but thought that Felicity had died before she could reverse her plan and just left her there… even though Felicity wasn’t actually dead yet. BLEAK!). We are now following Tress again as she deals with her guilt for Felicity’s demise, and we now have two new perspectives to engage with since Felicity is out of the picture and the Black Panther is free. The first is Ribbit, Tress’s cousin who was humiliated via an online video where his classmates got him drunk and filmed it. The second is Rue, the gentle orangutan at Tress’s grandpa’s animal sideshow, who adores Tress. Tress’s story goes the way you think it would: she’s severely injured due to the panther mauling her arm, and is feeling immense guilt. But Ribbit’s perspective was interesting. I knew that he had a part to play given his “Hop-Frog” analog, but getting into his mind shows sides to him that we couldn’t see before that reflect darker things going on not just in his life, but also the entire Usher/Allan/Montor Family Tree. I greatly enjoyed seeing how all of this would come together in terms of its own unique story, but also through the Edgar Allan Poe works that gave it direct inspirations. And the things that McGinnis reveals this time around were deeply, deeply unsettling, and presented in ways that made this book creepy as hell. And Rue’s perspectives were a bit more of a mixed bag, in that I got why we had the Panther in the first book, as the Panther plays a key role in that book in terms of the plot. In this, Rue’s role felt a little more shoehorned in, in that there needed to be symmetry with the poetry animal perspective, but ultimately wasn’t really needed. The thing that does happen (I’m being vague purposefully) didn’t really feel like it needed to happen. But I liked her affection for Tress.

This time around I didn’t feel as if we were as deluged with Poe references, and that was to the benefit of the story. I think that this is probably because so much was set up for this book in “The Initial Insult” that the references were already well established and could flourish a bit more. This time around the biggest influences were that of “The Tell Tale Heart”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and, as started in the previous book, “Hop-Frog”. But like with the last book, and I think even a little more son, McGinnis subverts the influences and themes and makes them fit a modern setting. A heart buried beneath a floor is now a friendship necklace. A cruel royal court is now less about monarchy and more about Homecoming. And there are far more metaphors at work rather than literal outcomes. It flowed better this time around, and that made for the follow through to be incredibly satisfying as a conclusion to a tale that was set up in the previous volume.

And the gore. OH THE GORE. While I felt that “The Initial Insult” was more akin to the psychological thrills of Poe’s works, “The Last Laugh” falls way more into the horror side of things. And it’s not just because of the gore (but there is a good amount of it). It’s also because of the creeping feeling that something really bad is going to happen before it’s all over. It isn’t just a suspense that builds, it’s true dread.

I was very pleased with “The Last Laugh” and how it wrapped up this love letter to Edgar Allan Poe. McGinnis doesn’t mess around when it comes to dark thrillers, be they for Young Adults or people my age.

Rating 8: A satisfying and unsettling conclusion to a Poe-rich thriller, “The Last Laugh” takes on more Poe themes and will unnerve you.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Last Laugh” is included on the Goodreads list “Books Influenced by Edgar Allan Poe”.

Previously Reviewed:

Kate’s Review: “The Night Shift”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “The Night Shift” by Alex Finlay

Publishing Info: Minotaur Books, March 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat |Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: It’s New Year’s Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey, four teenage girls working the night shift are attacked. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect who flees and is never seen again.

Fifteen years later, in the same town, four teenage employees working late at an ice cream store are attacked, and again only one makes it out alive. Both surviving victims recall the killer speaking only a few final words… “Goodnight, pretty girl.”

In the aftermath, three lives intersect: the survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who’s forced to relive her tragedy; the brother of the original suspect, who’s convinced the police have it wrong; and the FBI agent, who’s determined to solve both cases. On a collision course toward the truth, all three lives will forever be changed, and not everyone will make it out alive.

Twisty, poignant, and redemptive, The Night Shift is a story about the legacy of trauma and how the broken can come out on the other side, and it solidifies Alex Finlay as one of the new leading voices in the world of thrillers.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

On paper, “The Night Shift” by Alex Finlay was complete and utter catnip for me. There’s a time jumping mystery, there’s a whodunnit murder element, there are multiple characters who may or may not have secrets, and there is a healthy does of 90s nostalgia. I remember that going to Blockbuster on Friday night was an EVENT! I also saw all the hype surrounding this book, so I jumped in really hoping for a home run. And we didn’t quite get there.

There were, however, things to like, and I will start there because I do want to highlight the positives. For one, we have a pretty well thought out and well connected story, told through the perspectives of interconnected characters. The first is Ella, a therapist who was the sole survivor of a multiple murder at her high school workplace, Blockbuster, in which her coworkers were killed and she was not. The second is Chris, a public defender whose brother Vince was the main suspect in the Blockbuster murders, but disappeared off the grid after he was released from custody before he could be tried for the crime. The third is Special Agent Keller, an FBI agent who is trying to connect a new multiple murder scene at an ice cream shop to the Blockbuster murders, as there is, once again, one survivor named Jess, and the perpetrator said the same phrase to her as he said to Ella. I liked how these three characters were separate at first, and then slowly converged into the big story and overarching mystery as they are trying to handle their own baggage and mysteries, and it really kept me engaged and interested as I read. I especially liked Keller’s POV, as she is determined and gritty and had the scenes that I found myself most invested in, since she was doing a lot of the investigating that felt like it was getting somewhere (I have more to say on Ella and Chris in a bit). AND she is doing all of this while eight months pregnant with twins, which was kind of a fun tidbit and felt very Marge Gunderson from “Fargo” (especially since her husband is SUPER doting, much like Norm was in that movie).

Speaking of couples goals. (source)

But that kind of segues into the things that didn’t work for me as much in this book. Firstly, many of the other characters outside of Keller felt pretty two dimensional and not super explored. Ella is a pretty typical and standard examination of trauma, in that she has devoted her life to trying to cope by compartmentalizing, and has completely messed up her personal life because of it (when we meet her she is meeting up for a hook up in spite of the fact she has a fiancé, because wow look at what a mess she is, right?!). Her connection with Jess, the newest victim, is based of her skills as a therapist as well as the fact she’s been there before, but Jess is tragic and precocious and hiding her own issues that only serve to muddy some waters. Since we don’t really get into her head she is, once again, pretty standard fare that we’ve seen before. And then there’s Chris, whose story is tragic in its own ways as he clings to the hope that his brother Vince is innocent, and has been thinking he has perhaps found him via the Internet. This was, admittedly, an interesting plot line, but Chris himself is also pretty two dimensional. And on top of all of that, the mystery itself becomes glaringly obvious in terms of conclusion pretty quickly. There were a few ‘mini’ mysteries here and there that kept me kinda guessing and invested, hence the engaging aspect of this book, but the big one wasn’t shocking, and the journey getting there on that outcome alone wouldn’t have been as compelling. And frankly, the big mystery should be compelling.

I think that I will go back and read Finlay’s previous book, as there is definitely potential in “The Night Shift” that has glimmers of a thriller I’d enjoy. But as a final product and full package it was a little ho hum.

Rating 6: Admittedly super engaging, but the big reveal isn’t very surprising, and most of the characters are pretty two dimensional.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Night Shift” is included on the Goodreads list “Can’t Wait Crime, Mystery, and Thrillers 2022”.

Kate’s Review: “All Her Little Secrets”

Book: “All Her Little Secrets” by Wanda M. Morris

Publishing Info: William Morrow, November 2021

Where Did I Get This Book: The library!

Book Description: Everyone has something to hide…

Ellice Littlejohn seemingly has it all: an Ivy League law degree, a well-paying job as a corporate attorney in midtown Atlanta, great friends, and a “for fun” relationship with a rich, charming executive—her white boss, Michael.

But everything changes one cold January morning when Ellice goes to meet Michael… and finds him dead with a gunshot to his head. And then she walks away like nothing has happened. Why? Ellice has been keeping a cache of dark secrets, including a small-town past and a kid brother who’s spent time on the other side of the law. She can’t be thrust into the spotlight—again.

But instead of grieving this tragedy, people are gossiping, the police are getting suspicious, and Ellice, the company’s lone black attorney, is promoted to replace Michael. While the opportunity is a dream-come-true, Ellice just can’t shake the feeling that something is off.

When she uncovers shady dealings inside the company, Ellice is trapped in an impossible ethical and moral dilemma. Suddenly, Ellice’s past and present lives collide as she launches into a pulse-pounding race to protect the brother she tried to save years ago and stop a conspiracy far more sinister than she could have ever imagined…

Review: I have honestly been eying “All Her Little Secrets” by Wanda M. Morris since last November when it was about to come out. It made a few lists that I came across on social media, and while I wanted to add it to the pile I had a huge stack. By the time it came out I had left it on a mental hold list, and I didn’t seek it out until after the new year. It took a little bit for my hold to come in, and when it did I had a ‘oh yeah!’ moment. I sat down one day and started it, thinking that I would probably get through it in a few days time… And then I read it in two big sittings, basically being snared from the get go. “All Her Little Secrets” gets right down to business, and doesn’t let up until the last pages.

As someone who enjoys conspiracy thrillers if they don’t get too cloak and dagger or overly twisty, I thought that “All Her Little Secrets” executed all the twists and turns without getting too lost in the weeds. It felt like a pretty good progression as we follow Ellice, our protagonist who gets tangled in a dangerous web at her high powered corporation after her longtime boss and secret lover, Michael, is found dead in his office (by Ellice, actually, though she rushes out and doesn’t tell anybody, and it becomes very clear why). I enjoyed watching Ellice start to realize that a personal loss but professional boon, as she is almost immediately promoted to Michael’s position, is far more insidious than anticipated. But what makes it all the more sinister are the themes of racism and misogynoir that Morris weaves throughout the story, as Ellice isn’t just an unwitting pawn, she is an unwitting pawn who also has to deal with the very real racist corporate environment she has been working within. From the overtly racist interactions she has with coworkers to murkier microaggressions to just being the only Black person in her department, “All Her Little Secrets” finds intensity and dangerous outcomes in Ellice’s life even before it’s all turned upside down when Michael is killed. The themes fit into the story perfectly and make the conspiracy all the more ruinous and upsetting. I loved the mystery as it unfolded, and while I figured out a couple of things, for the most part there were lots of surprises and interesting plot twists.

I also really loved Ellice as our main character. The title and summary let the reader know that Ellice has a lot of secrets that she’s been keeping, from her relationship to her boss to some of the things she’s omitted from her life story to those around her. But finding out all of these secrets really gives us a good sense of who she is as a character, and it makes her very complex and someone who I found myself caring a lot about as the story kept speeding towards danger. We slowly learn some of the things she’s been hiding through the modern day narrative, as well as glimpses into her past, when she first took a step towards her big dream reality by leaving her small town behind to attend a prestigious private school… and therein leaving everyone who cared about her, and the guilt that has manifested because of it. The various struggles that made her want to escape are unfolded and devastating, and it all ties into how she has approached life as this story begins in the modern day. It just fits together so well. It’s an enjoyable character study as well as a taut conspiracy thriller.

“All Her Little Secrets” kept me reading and kept me guessing. If you like conspiracy thrillers this is one you definitely need to check out!

Rating 8: An intense conspiracy thriller with well thought out themes on race and corporate elitism, “All Her Little Secrets” will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Reader’s Advisory:

“All Her Little Secrets” is included on the Goodreads lists “Mystery/Thriller/Detective Books Featuring and Written by Black Women Part 1”, and “Great Noir and Noirish Novels Written by Women”.

Find “All Her Little Secrets” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Kate’s Review: “This Might Hurt”

Book: “This Might Hurt” by Stephanie Wrobel

Publishing Info: Berkley Books, February 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Book Description: Welcome to Wisewood. We’ll keep your secrets if you keep ours.

Natalie Collins hasn’t heard from her sister in more than half a year.

The last time they spoke, Kit was slogging from mundane workdays to obligatory happy hours to crying in the shower about their dead mother. She told Natalie she was sure there was something more out there. And then she found Wisewood.

On a private island off the coast of Maine, Wisewood’s guests commit to six-month stays. During this time, they’re prohibited from contact with the rest of the world–no Internet, no phones, no exceptions. But the rules are for a good reason: to keep guests focused on achieving true fearlessness so they can become their Maximized Selves. Natalie thinks it’s a bad idea, but Kit has had enough of her sister’s cynicism and voluntarily disappears off the grid.

Six months later Natalie receives a menacing e-mail from a Wisewood account threatening to reveal the secret she’s been keeping from Kit. Panicked, Natalie hurries north to come clean to her sister and bring her home. But she’s about to learn that Wisewood won’t let either of them go without a fight.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

Given that Stephanie Wrobel’s first book “Darling Rose Gold” took inspiration from a notorious true crime case, it’s probably not too shocking that her second book “This Might Hurt” took inspiration from another one. I, for one, am a-okay with such things, as I really enjoyed “Darling Rose Gold” because of the twisty dramatization that Wrobel created from the real life event. When I read the description of “This Might Hurt” I immediately thought ‘oh this is NXIVM’. I mean, an isolated self help community in the Northeast, and family members wondering what is going on with their loved ones? NXIVM was all over the pop culture consciousness these past couple of years, so I wasn’t surprised and was definitely interested.

I liked the narrative structure of this book. It has some of what you would expect, and then an aspect that I wasn’t expecting but ended up liking the best of the three perspectives. But in terms of the more obvious choices, we have both Natalie and Kit providing us with first person perspective chapters, separated into sections. Natalie is rooted firmly in the present, so we get to see Wisewood in the moment and how unnerving and creepy it is as a self help island disguising a cult. For Kit we get some past perspectives, seeing what made her decide to seek out Wisewood in the first place, and how she has adjusted to living there (as well as how she has ascended up the ranks to become a pet of the leader, ‘Teacher’). They eventually come together to play out the story, and it meshes well, even if the way that it all parses out isn’t super surprising or unique.

It does, however, build at a pace that slowly raises the tension and suspense, as Natalie looks for Kit on this isolated island where people are seemingly trying to keep her at arm’s length. Throw in the fact that Natalie has her own secrets and you have double the mystery going on, though that, too, isn’t terribly shocking once we get to it. I think that part of the problem is that neither Natalie nor Kit are interesting enough as characters to me, so I wasn’t super invested in their outcomes. Sure, in the moment the malevolence of Wisewood is definitely unsettling, and the tension in that regard is well done. But since I didn’t really care about Natalie OR Kit, it never felt super high stakes to me.

But it was the third unexpected component that I liked the most and lifted this story up beyond a run of the mill thriller. These were perspective chapters from a mysterious third person, whose childhood with an abusive father and passive mother and older sister sets her onto a path dealing with magic tricks, self control, and eventual thirst for power and dominance. It becomes pretty clear that we are, indeed, seeing the story of Rebecca, the leader of Wisewood, and it was her moments that I was most looking forward to, as she felt like the most complicated character in the book. Certainly more complicated than Natalie and Kit, whose archetypes we have seen in this kind of book many a time. With Rebecca, while we do see characters like her from time to time, the way that Wrobel lets us see the slow and full transformation is the most chilling aspect of this book, and the one that worked the best for me as I read it.

“This Might Hurt” is a solid thriller. Some beats are familiar, while others are surprising, and it is certainly very, very addictive, and fairly disturbing when all is said and done. Wrobel knows how to make a setting feel dangerous, and seeing how a spider catches flies in her web was the biggest success of this book.

Rating 7: “This Might Hurt” is an entertaining book about cults and the relationship between sisters, though it’s the examination of a cult leader’s transformation that is the most interesting part.

Reader’s Advisory:

“This Might Hurt” is included on the Goodreads list “The Most Anticipated Mysteries and Thrillers of 2022”.

Find “This Might Hurt” at your library using WorldCat, or at a local independent bookstore using IndieBound!