Tag: Thriller

Book: “Catherine House” by Elisabeth Thomas

Publishing Info: Custom House, May 2020

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

Book Description: You are in the house and the house is in the woods. You are in the house and the house is in you . . .

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises its graduates a future of sublime power and prestige, and that they can become anything or anyone they desire.

Among this year’s incoming class is Ines, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, pills, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. The school’s enigmatic director, Viktória, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves and their place within the formidable black iron gates of Catherine.

For Ines, Catherine is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had, and her serious, timid roommate, Baby, soon becomes an unlikely friend. Yet the House’s strange protocols make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison. And when Baby’s obsessive desire for acceptance ends in tragedy, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda that is connected to a secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.

Combining the haunting sophistication and dusky, atmospheric style of Sarah Waters with the unsettling isolation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Catherine House is a devious, deliciously steamy, and suspenseful page-turner with shocking twists and sharp edges that is sure to leave readers breathless.

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

If you are going to market a book as a Gothic novel, I am most likely going to be interested based on that alone. The isolated creepiness of the average Gothic novel gets me amped, and I’m glad that more and more authors, both adult and YA, are paying more attention to this genre. And when you throw in a mysterious boarding school/university setting, that’s practically catnip for me! “Catherine House” by Elisabeth Thomas, therefore, caught my eye. I downloaded it from NetGalley, eager to dive into a Gothic boarding school thriller with twists, turns, and nefarious misdeeds. Unfortunately, “Catherine House” missed the mark for me, by quite a bit.

Starting with the positive, this book has a LOT of potential. As I said, it both aspires to be a Gothic read set in a mysterious school that serves as alternative to university, and it promises to give its graduates all sorts of power and keys to mysterious opportunities. It can make powerful politicians, business people, power players of all stripes, and all you have to do is master it’s odd and super secretive curriculum and devote your entire life to Catherine House for three years, with no contact to the outside world. Ines, our protagonist, is fleeing a checkered past in hopes of starting on the right foot and with huge advantages to a new life. It’s pretty standard fare for this kind of book, and that’s not to say that that’s a bad thing. I liked seeing the odd quirks to Catherine House, the little shifts from what one might consider a ‘normal’ college experience, from food to decor to class types. There is also the fact that students at Catherine, Ines included, are involved in strange rituals involving something called plasm, and pins that you can insert into your body that can help harness the potential of this so called plasm…..

I mean, I think. Honestly, this wasn’t very clear to me. While it’s very possible I may have missed something, it seemed to me that the sticking point of the mystery of this book was at the plasm storyline and what it does, and why Catherine House wants to mess with it. So the fact that I could have missed the big conflict resolution doesn’t really imply that there was much detail or due diligence paid to said conflict. There is also the plot line where Ines’s roommate Baby has tragedy befall her all in hopes of fitting into the strict and high standard mold that Catherine House has, but I didn’t really get the sense that Ines was terribly concerned with it. Sure, I was TOLD that Ines was concerned, it’s even in the plot description. But there is very little actual time devoted to Ines feeling guilty, or suspicious, or vengeful over Baby’s fate. When that is touted as a main plot point in the description, I expect it to be more at the forefront. It just felt like more time was put into describing the quirks and strangeness of this place than there was devoted to the actual main plot. Because of this, I was mostly confused and uninvested throughout the narrative. Which is a shame, because there were so many good ideas here that had a lot of potential.

Suffice to say, I was quite disappointed with “Catherine House”. Hopefully the next time I find my literary catnip I will have a better experience.

Rating 4: While this book had a lot of promise, ultimately I didn’t feel like it committed to any of the themes it set out to explore.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Catherine House” is included on the Goodreads lists “Dark Academia”, and “Black Heroines 2020”.

Find “Catherine House” at your library using WorldCat, or at your local independent bookstore using IndieBound!

Book: “Follow Me” by Kathleen Barber

Publishing Info: Gallery Books, February 2020

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Book Description: Everyone wants new followers…until they follow you home.

Audrey Miller has an enviable new job at the Smithsonian, a body by reformer Pilates, an apartment door with a broken lock, and hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers to bear witness to it all. Having just moved to Washington, DC, Audrey busies herself impressing her new boss, interacting with her online fan base, and staving off a creepy upstairs neighbor with the help of the only two people she knows in town: an ex-boyfriend she can’t stay away from and a sorority sister with a high-powered job and a mysterious past.

But Audrey’s faulty door may be the least of her security concerns. Unbeknownst to her, her move has brought her within striking distance of someone who’s obsessively followed her social media presence for years—from her first WordPress blog to her most recent Instagram Story. No longer content to simply follow her carefully curated life from a distance, he consults the dark web for advice on how to make Audrey his and his alone. In his quest to win her heart, nothing is off-limits—and nothing is private.

Kathleen Barber’s electrifying new thriller will have you scrambling to cover your webcam and digital footprints.

Review: As you all know, I love the book “You” and it’s sequel “Hidden Bodies”. One of the creepiest aspects of those books is that we follow the stalker and creepazoid Joe Goldberg and get to root around in his head when he is obsessing over women, and going to violent lengths to get near them. As much as I LOVE those books, part of me has wondered how they would have been different if we’d been able to get a little more in the heads as his victims as much as we did his. So as I was reading “Follow Me” by Kathleen Barber, I was struck by the fact that that was basically what I was getting: insight into the stalking victim’s thought process and motivations.

“Follow Me” is another thriller novel that will make you want to double check your privacy settings on all of your social media, as the slow cat and mouse game of watching a mysterious stalker hone in on social media influencer Audrey is tense and freaky. Barber switches the perspectives between three distinct voices: ‘Him’, the stalker; Audrey, the ambitious and a little self involved social media influencer; and Cat, Audrey’s best friend from college whom she has reconnected with after moving to D.C. We get insights into each of the characters through these narratives, and while they aren’t always the most reliable, they all give key clues to the overarching mysteries at hand. I thought that all of them had distinct voices, and that Barber did a really good job of parsing out the pertinent clues between them. The pacing of their narratives really kept me interested, and the building suspense held a grip that kept me reeled in. Plus, at the beginning Barber has an author’s note that really lays out and explains some of the extra invasive and stalker-y tricks that some of these creeps will pull, like RAT software and spyware. This stuff is what nightmares are made of.

But what I appreciated most about this book was that it really humanized, but didn’t glamorize or infantilize, our stalking victim Audrey. Too often do we find narratives in the thriller genre in which women are either innocent and naive victims, or conniving bitches and/or whores who somehow deserve what is coming to them. Even “You” sometimes treads towards this, though I think that it ultimately doesn’t fall into this because EVERYONE in that book is horrible so it’s an even playing field (plus, what Joe does to Beck is horrifying). But in “Follow Me”, Audrey is given a lot of grace, even if she’s incredibly flawed. I was both hoping that everything would be okay for her, and also wanting to shake her because of her self involvement and mistreatment of those around her. I do wish that the same grace had been granted to Cat, as while we did learn a lot about of things about her past that explained her strange quirks, she felt a bit more two dimensional than I wanted her to be.

I will say that I thought that there were some hasty plot twists thrown in, and that the end fell apart by the time we got there. There were just some things that felt obvious and slapdash, and had the foundation been laid out a bit better it would have paid off more. But the journey getting to the end was so suspenseful and engaging that I didn’t really care about some of the ill conceived twists and turns.

“Follow Me” was a fun and unsettling read. Definitely pick it up if you want a suspenseful book, but also make sure you have something to cover your computer camera with once you are done with it.

Rating 8: A fast paced and suspenseful thriller that was enjoyable. It kind of fell apart at the end, but the time getting there was far too entertaining to discount.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Follow Me” is included on the Goodreads lists “Psychological Suspense for 2020 (U.S. Publications Jan-July 2020)”.

Find “Follow Me” at your library using WorldCat!

Book: “Little Secrets” by Jennifer Hillier

Publishing Info: Minotaur Books, April 2020

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

Book Description: From the author of Jar of Hearts, a mother driven to the edge by the disappearance of her son learns her husband is having an affair with the woman who might have kidnapped him. Four hundred and eighty seconds. That’s how long it took for someone to steal Marin Machado’s four-year-old son.

Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs his own company. They’re admired in their community and are a loving family. Up until the day Sebastian is taken. A year later, Marin is a shadow of herself. The FBI search has gone cold. The publicity has faded. She and her husband rarely speak. The only thing keeping her going is the unlikely chance that one day Sebastian reappears. She hires a P.I. to pick up where the police left off, but instead of finding him, she discovers that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman.

Kenzie Li is an artist and grad student—Instagram famous—and up to her eyeballs in debt. She knows Derek is married. She also knows he’s rich, and dating him comes with perks: help with bills, trips away, expensive gifts. He isn’t her first rich boyfriend, but she finds herself hoping he’ll be the last. She’s falling for him—and that was never part of the plan.

Discovery of the affair sparks Marin back to life. She’s lost her son; she’s not about to lose her husband, too. Kenzie is an enemy with a face, which means this is a problem Marin can fix. But as she sets a plan in motion, another revelation surfaces. Derek’s lover might know what happened to their son. And so might Derek.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for sending me an eARC of this book!

When I picked up a Jennifer Hillier book for the first time, I was completely enthralled by it. “Jar of Hearts” sucked me in and fucked me up, and I knew right then and there that I needed to add Jennifer Hillier to my ‘must read’ list. So when I saw that she had a new book coming out called “Little Secrets”, I was pretty damn hyped. I was hoping we’d get another soapy thriller that was infused with a little more darkness than you might see from other books within the genre. After all, I kept thinking of “The Silence of the Lambs” while reading “Jar of Hearts”, and I wondered if something similar would happen with “Little Secrets”.

While “Little Secrets” didn’t quite rise to the level of “Jar of Hearts” in terms of darkness, it still managed to serve a twisted and well plotted mystery that really had me on my toes during my read. Hillier mostly focuses on the perspective of Marin Machado, a woman who is still reeling over the disappearance of her four year old son Sebastian. Her relationship with her husband Derek is almost nonexistent, and her life is a string of just trying to survive each day. I thought that Marin was a great protagonist for the genre she exists within. She’s incredibly damaged and makes pretty questionable decisions, but I thought that Hillier did a really good job of showing us how her trauma has changed her and why it makes her do what she does. Even when she considers going to really dark and terrible places, Hillier has laid enough groundwork that while you may not approve, you still have a lot of empathy for her. I really liked Marin. It’s not uncommon for me to get irritated with these ‘damaged women’ protagonists, but Marin never took me there.

But then there is another perspective that we get to  see in this book, and it is that of Kenzie, the mistress that Derek has taken up with and the main focus of Marin’s ire. Kenzie, too, gets an in depth backstory with her own various moments of vulnerability and trauma. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like we got enough of it to make her truly sympathetic. I won’t go too much into detail with her, as she really is a cornerstone of the mystery at hand, but just know that I was solidly Team Marin. I don’t know if that was because Hillier wanted my sympathies in this place, or if she didn’t quite give Kenzie enough depth. Either way, she never really rose above the ‘perhaps conniving mistress or maybe not?’ trope.

The mystery, though, was great. Between the disappearance of Sebastian, Kenzie’s true intentions, and whether or not Marin is going to go fully to the dark side, we got a very intricate web of lies, jealousy, and deceit! You know that there are puzzle pieces laid out in the open, but you aren’t completely sure as to what they are. Red Herrings are present, but never overused, and by the time we got to the end of the story I was breathless and finally able to relax. The suspense builds at the perfect pace and I loved how it all came to a head. A well executed ending is always going to get props from me, as sometimes in this genre endings and plot points will overreach. Hillier never makes that mistake in this book.

Hillier is still one of the best thriller authors out there, and “Little Secrets” made certain of that. Cannot wait to see what she comes out with next!!

Rating 8: A twisty and suspenseful thriller about lies, jealousy, and trauma, “Little Lies” is another great read from Jennifer Hillier!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Little Secrets” is included on the Goodreads list “Crime, Mystery, & Thrillers, 2020”, and would fit in on “Popular Missing Persons Books”.

Find “Little Secrets” at your library using WorldCat!

Book: “Salvation Station” by Kathryn Schleich

Publishing Info: She Writes Press, April 2020

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from Book Publicity Services

Book Description: When committed female police captain Linda Turner, haunted by the murders of two small children and their pastor father, becomes obsessed with solving the harrowing case, she finds herself wrapped up in a mission to expose a fraudulent religious organization and an unrepentant killer.

Despite her years of experience investigating homicides for the force, Captain Linda Turner is haunted by the murders of the Hansen family. The two small children, clothed in tattered Disney pajamas, were buried with their father, a pastor, in the flower garden behind a church parsonage in Lincoln, Nebraska. But Mrs. Hansen is nowhere to be found—and neither is the killer.

In St. Louis, the televangelist Ray Williams is about to lose his show—until one of his regular attendees approaches him with an idea that will help him save it. Despite his initial misgivings, Ray agrees to give it a try. He can’t deny his attraction to this woman, and besides, she’d assured him the plan is just—God gave her the instructions in a dream.

Multiple story lines entwine throughout this compelling mystery, delving into the topics of murder, religious faith, and the inherent dangers in blindly accepting faith as truth. While Reverend Williams is swept up in his newfound success and plans for his wedding, Captain Turner can only hope that she and her team will catch the Hansens’ cunning killer—before more bodies surface. 

Review: Thank you to Book Publicity Services for sending me an ARC of this novel!

There is one particular scene in “The Silence of the Lambs” where I find myself closest to relating to Hannibal Lecter (Go with me, I promise this isn’t creepy). When Clarice Starling visits him after finding a human head in a storage space, he is being punished for goading on a fellow inmate into committing suicide. His punishment is having to sit in the dark of his cell with a televangelist station on at full blast. I’m with you, Lecter, that sounds awful. When Book Publicity Services contacted me about “Salvation Station” by Kathryn Schleich, the aspect that really stood out to me was the televangelist preacher who may be putting his faith into the wrong person. So that angle was what compelled me to read and review the book, even if I didn’t know what to expect. I don’t know if it was my lack of other expectations or what, but I dove into “Salvation Station” and found myself completely taken in its web.

The first aspect of this book I liked is that from the get go, we know who the bad guy is. We know that this Susannah Baker character is assuredly the same woman who was married to the murdered Reverend that our protagonist is trying to catch. So instead of writing a thriller that’s mostly whodunnit, it is instead a cat and mouse tale in which you are desperate to know if Susannah is going to exposed as the conniving murderer that we know her to be. Schleich is pitch perfect in making the villain a character you love to hate. She is so venomous and so calculating that I found myself just ACHING for her to get what was coming to her. The pious woman of God act is both extra maddening, but it also rang super true in that unfortunately there have been plenty of con artists who have abused people’s faith in order to make them victims. We don’t get as much of an insight into Ray, the televangelist who is taken in by Susannah’s flattery and supposed born-again life, but that perhaps that was the point. At the end of the day he’s a guy who is devoted to the idea of devoted and pious wives, and so Susannah knew exactly how to play him like a harp. Perhaps it’s a greater commentary on the evangelical culture, but that’s not my business. Ultimately, Susannah is the center of this part of the story, and she is pitch perfect in her psychopathy. She is THE WORST.

On the flip side of this cat and mouse game is Linda, a tenacious Nebraska police captain who is on Susannah’s trail. Linda was horrified to find a local reverend and his two children buried in a garden, and has made it her mission to track down his wife, who they have deemed responsible. Linda was also a great character to follow, as she is the perfect foil to Susannah who is driven by the need for justice. You get the feeling that this case is a little personal to her, and as we get to see her own background and the things she’s been through she makes all the more sense in her choices and motivations. I also really enjoyed the steps that we take to see her investigate while we see Susannah laying out her new traps. It served as a satisfying juxtaposition, and made me want to read quicker and quicker to see how it was all going to play out. Plus, she has a fun relationship with another investigator that doesn’t overtake her story, but adds some fun spice to it.

There was one issue that I had with this book, though it’s a nit pick to be sure as it’s just a single moment. Still, it left enough of a bad taste in my mouth that I wanted to address it here. At one point Linda is musing about the kind of woman who could kill her own children, and she draws comparisons to both Susan Smith and Andrea Yates. Smith is apt to be sure, but I really wasn’t happy that Yates was mentioned, as she was in a post-partum psychotic break when she drowned her five children in the bathtub. She wasn’t a psychopath, she was severely, SEVERELY mentally ill. As horrific as her actions were, and they were HORRIFIC, it wasn’t a fair comparison.

Overall, I really liked “Salvation Station”! Fans of the hunt in a thriller novel really need to give it a go, I think you will find lots to like!

Rating 8: A fun and complex thriller that addresses the dangers of blind faith and the lengths greed will go, “Salvation Station” was a great read.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Salvation Station” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of yet, but I think that it would fit in on “Con Men, Gamblers, and Hustlers”.

Find “Salvation Station” at your library using WorldCat!

Book: “You Are Not Alone” by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

Publishing Info: St. Martin’s Press, March 2020

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

Book Description: You probably know someone like Shay Miller. She wants to find love, but it eludes her. She wants to be fulfilled, but her job is a dead end. She wants to belong, but her life is so isolated.

You probably don’t know anyone like the Moore sisters. They have an unbreakable circle of friends. They live the most glamorous life. They always get what they desire.

Shay thinks she wants their life. But what they really want is hers.

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

Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen are a dynamic duo in the thriller writing world, as their previous novels “The Wife Between Us” and “Anonymous Girl” were both buzzworthy books that got a fair amount of attention. I enjoyed both of those books, enough so that I figure that any time they come out with another novel I’m going to be interested in picking it up. Hence, I requested “You Are Not Alone”, their newest thriller/mystery, from NetGalley. I expected an entertaining and very readable thriller, as that has what has been delivered in the past. I am happy to report that not only did it live up to those expectations, it is also their best work yet.

Like their other two novels, “You Are Not Alone” is told through multiple perspectives and multiple time periods. Our main focus is on Shay Miller, an insecure and high strung, lonely woman who witnesses another woman commit suicide by jumping in front of a moving subway. The other perspectives are generally from that of the Moore sisters, Cassandra and Jane, as well as the occasional chapter from the POVs of their friend group. The wide breadth of POVs gave us a very large and detailed picture of the story, and also of the various motivations that each character had that added to the mystery over all. We know that Cassandra and Jane want something from Shay, but we aren’t certain as to what that may be. I thought that all of the women had well done characterization, and that I got a good sense for all of them and why they were doing what they were doing. Shay is the kind of protagonist that we see in thrillers like this in that she’s incredibly flawed and neurotic, but she’s written in such a way that I really liked her and was genuinely concerned for what she was slowly being pulled into. And then there are the Moore Sisters, and how they are both incredibly engaging and gregarious, as well as being terrifying in how they know how to manipulate and insert themselves into Shay’s life without her knowing it.

The mystery was also very enticing, and it kept me guessing and completely enthralled the entire time. As I said, you know that the Moore Sisters want Shay for something, and Hendricks and Pekkanen slowly peel back all the layers, leaving breadcrumbs of clues within all of the perspective chapters. It was laid out and woven together intricately enough that I was genuinely surprised by almost every twist, and all of the twists were well earned by how they were set up sometimes hundreds of pages before. I found myself slowly building up in anxiety, my heart beginning to beat as I got closer to the end and the tension just kept building with little sign of release. By the time it had all come to a head, I felt the deep paranoia that Shay was feeling and completely believed it. I bought in to just about everything, and while I did feel like it wrapped up a little neater than it probably should have (as well as quickly; the ending felt hasty even if it came together well), overall I was definitely satisfied.

“You Are Not Alone” is the best story that Hendricks and Pekkanen have come up with yet, and they will remain a high reading priority for me in the future. If you haven’t read anything by them yet, this is where you should start.

Rating 8: An anxiety inducing and twisty thriller that barely lets up on the tension. “You Are Not Alone” will make you more than a little nervous about who may be keeping their eyes on you.

Reader’s Advisory:

“You Are Not Alone” is included on the Goodreads lists “Female Writing Teams”, and “Can’t Wait Crime, Mystery, & Thrillers 2020”.

Find “You Are Not Alone” at your library using WorldCat!