Tag: Thriller

Kate’s Review: “Missing White Woman”

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

Book: “Missing White Woman” by Kellye Garrett

Publishing Info: Mulholland Books, April 2024

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

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

Book Description: The truth is never skin deep.

It was supposed to be a romantic getaway weekend in New York City. Breanna’s new boyfriend, Ty, took care of everything—the train tickets, the dinner reservations, the rented four-story luxury rowhouse in Jersey City with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline. But when Bree comes downstairs their final morning, she’s shocked. There’s a stranger laying dead in the foyer, and Ty is nowhere to be found.

A Black woman alone in a new city, Bree is stranded and out of her depth—especially when it becomes clear the dead woman is none other than Janelle Beckett, the missing woman the entire Internet has become obsessed with. There’s only one person Bree can turn to: her ex-best friend, a lawyer with whom she shares a very complicated past. As the police and a social media mob close in, all looking for #JusticeForJanelle, Bree realizes that the only way she can help Ty—or herself—is to figure out what really happened that last night.

But when people only see what they want to see, can she uncover the truth hiding in plain sight?

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

Two years ago I really enjoyed Kellye Garrett’s book “Like A Sister”, as I found it tense, complex, and endlessly readable. Because it was such a win for me I was absolutely interested in reading anything new that she came out with, so of course “Missing White Woman” was going to make my must read 2024 list. Already enjoying the author is a huge plus, but the name alone carries promise of deconstructing certain problematic issues in media and the public when it comes to in real time true crime. Just icing on an already promising cake, really.

Approaching this as a thriller first and foremost, Garrett has once again crafted a really interesting mystery that not only has some solid twists and turns, but a perspective that has some greater weight due to the sad realities of systemic racism (and societal but more on that later) in the United States. Our protagonist is Breanna, a Black woman who is on a much needed short vacation at an Airbnb in Jersey City with her new boyfriend Ty. While it starts out well, the on the last day Breanna wakes up in the house to find not only Ty has disappeared, but there is a dead body in the house, who appears to be that of Jenelle Beckett, a missing white woman whose disappearance has gone viral online. Breanna is met with some suspicion by the cops, though their focus is mostly on Ty, who is missing. It’s a simple story about a woman trying to clear her name and also the name of her new boyfriend, with the help of her former best friend turned lawyer Adore, and it has a lot of good surprises, red herrings, and suspenseful moments based not only in Breanna perhaps being in danger, not only because of not knowing Ty’s involvement, or the public starting to gnash for blood, but also because of the fact she’s a Black woman who is a person of interest in a dead white woman’s murder. It doesn’t help that Breanna has a VERY traumatic history with law enforcement, as she was the victim of police mistreatment when she was a young woman and a police officer pulled her over and profiled her as a Black woman, which led to an unjust arrest and conviction that ruined her life. This means that it not only makes Breanna more likely to be cagey around law enforcement and make her seem more suspicious to them, but that we also have to worry about it happening to her again even though we know she didn’t do it. It’s a dynamic layer that really worked for me.

Garrett also does a fantastic job of tackling some pretty relevant issues in regards to the pitfalls of true crime as it exists on the Internet and on social media platforms. And she does it in a way that doesn’t feel ham fisted or preachy! The most obvious is the subplot of a beauty influencer named Billie Regan who has platformed the story about Jenelle and is blasting it on her TikTok to seemingly build up views and to bring attention to herself/get some clout on the back of someone else’s tragedy. I really enjoyed the transcripts of Billie’s lives as she puts on a huge performance about how worried she is about Jenelle, and how she is feeding the frenzy of her followers and true crime addicts who fancy themselves armchair detectives and whips them into a hysteria about this missing white woman. Add into the way that she does her own unethical and reckless investigating and blasts Ty and Breanna to millions of followers, and makes them targets of random people who are out for blood and it’s all the more upsetting. It combines the already insidious racist implications of the ‘missing white woman syndrome’ (see the title) and how that kind of case gets ALL the focus while victims of color are all too often ignored, with a misguided mob of people who take a real tragedy and try to make themselves a part of it for clout, attention, or to feel like they are doing SOMETHING by targeting two Black people. It would be SO EASY to make this kind of commentary about true crime and social media feel well meaning and correct but SO clunky and preachy that it’s just obnoxious, as we have seen this kind of thing before (looking at you, “Black Christmas” 2019). But Garrett nails the tone, captures the gravity of it, and finds the nuance and trusts her readers to be able to parse it out without having to spoon feed it. Apparently this is a fine line to walk for some, but Garrett succeeds.

One quibble that I will note because it probably explains the lower rating number after all the well earned praise: the ending. It’s not a bad ending by any means, but it did feel a bit rushed and anticlimactic because of it. I also would have perhaps liked a little bit more time to see some of the fallout of how it all shook out. I never like feeling super rushed in a thriller.

But that’s just a quibble! Overall I enjoyed “Missing White Woman” quite a bit. It’s engaging and addicting, and with summer coming up and a need for vacation reads about to skyrocket, this is a good one to keep in mind!

Rating 8: A twisty thriller with a really well presented message about racism, social media, and missing white woman syndrome is hampered a bit by an ending that feels a little underwhelming.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Missing White Woman” is included on the Goodreads lists “2024 Mystery Thrillers Crime To Be Excited For”, and “2024 Books By Black Authors”.

Kate’s Review: “You Know What You Did”

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

Book: “You Know What You Did” by K.T. Nguyen

Publishing Info: Dutton, April 2024

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

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

Book Description: In this heart-pounding debut thriller for fans of Lisa Jewell and Celeste Ng, a first-generation Vietnamese American artist must confront nightmares past and present…

Annie “Anh Le” Shaw grew up poor but seems to have it all now: a dream career, a stunning home, and a devoted husband and daughter. When Annie’s mother, a Vietnam War refugee, dies suddenly one night, Annie’s carefully curated life begins to unravel. Her obsessive-compulsive disorder, which she thought she’d vanquished years ago, comes roaring back—but this time, the disturbing fixations swirling around in Annie’s brain might actually be coming true.

A prominent art patron disappears, and the investigation zeroes in on Annie. Spiraling with self-doubt, she distances herself from her family and friends, only to wake up in a hotel room—naked, next to a lifeless body. The police have more questions, but with her mind increasingly fractured, Annie doesn’t have answers. All she knows is this: She will do anything to protect her daughter—even if it means losing herself.

With dizzying twists, You Know What You Did is both a harrowing thriller and a heartfelt exploration of the refugee experience, the legacies we leave for our children, and the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters.

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

It’s been a little bit since I’ve tackled a straight unreliable narrator thriller on the blog, though that isn’t super surprising because of all the tantalizing horror novels that have been coming out this Spring. But we are finally firmly back in this genre, and this time with a debut that caught my eye awhile back! “You Know What You Did” by K.T. Nguyen has been patiently sitting on my NetGalley for awhile now, and like I almost always do with my NetGalley books this was because I wanted to read it closer to the release date. By the time I came to it it had been kind of simmering on my book back burner, and I was eager to dive in.

As far as a thriller and as a mystery, I generally enjoyed this one. It has a unique hook and a unique voice, as we follow Annie, the daughter of a Vietnamese refugee who has tried to maintain a complete control over her life and identity in the face of a difficult upbringing and OCD diagnosis. After her mother dies, Annie starts having a potential relapse of her disgust driven OCD, and starts to question her reality and the things that she is, or maybe isn’t, doing. It’s a pretty solid device that is meant to deepen the mystery of what is going on with Annie (more on that below), as well as what involvement she may or may not have when one of her clients goes missing, and her erratic behaviors ramp up. In terms of the straight up mystery of Annie’s role in the combustion of her sanity and her potential propensity towards violence that she can’t recall, I had a pretty good guess from the jump as to what was going on. That isn’t to say that Nguyen didn’t have a well thought out mystery, as she did. The puzzle pieces were placed very well and it all came together seamlessly. The suspense about Annie’s mental state was also well done, as I was definitely worried about her. But if you look past the various red herrings, the truth of it all was fairly easy to predict.

And while I am generally apt to kind of side eye thrillers that have mental illness as a plot device to propel the conflict, I thought that “You Know What You Did” did a VERY good job with these themes. It almost certainly helps that Nguyen has an author’s note about her own experiences with OCD, and how that helps contextualize the symptoms and the thought processes that Annie has which intrude upon her every day thinking, and adds to her unreliability. Her OCD makes her fixate on things and makes it so she has a hard time potentially knowing what is real and what isn’t, and as strange and at times violent things happen in her vicinity, it makes for questions about how much is due to her own actions, even if she doesn’t realize it. But it also never paints it as a grotesque caricature of the condition, which can be a trap when various mental illnesses are used to drive the conflict of a thriller. I also appreciated that this doesn’t just apply to Annie, but also as we peel back the layers of her emotionally distant and abusive mother. When we start learning about Annie’s mother, we see a woman who is a hoarder, who does little more but insult her daughter, and who has decimated her self worth to make her dependent on her and within her control. But we also explore what made her this way, by learning about the trauma and loss as a refugee in the years after the Vietnam War. It doesn’t make excuses, but shows how generational trauma and untreated mental illness can have far reaching consequences, and how we don’t always know the full picture of things, be it a person or a thriller novel.

I am definitely eager to see what K.T. Nguyen brings next, because “You Know What You Did” was entertaining as hell.

Rating 7: A unique and well plotted thriller that succeeds in using mental illness as a plot device without being exploitative, this mystery is entertaining, though perhaps easier to untangle than I was expecting.

Reader’s Advisory:

“You Know What You Did” is included on the Goodreads lists “Mystery & Thriller 2024”, and “Female Psychological Thrillers/Suspense Written by Women”.

Kate’s Review: “The House on Biscayne Bay”

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

Book: “The House on Biscayne Bay” by Chanel Cleeton

Publishing Info: Berkley, April 2024

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

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

Book Description: As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide in New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton’s atmospheric new novel.

With the Great War finally behind them, thousands of civilians and business moguls alike flock to South Florida with their sights set on making a fortune. When wealthy industrialist Robert Barnes and his wife, Anna, build Marbrisa, a glamorous estate on Biscayne Bay, they become the toast of the newly burgeoning society. Anna and Robert appear to have it all, but in a town like Miami, appearances can be deceiving, and one scandal can change everything.

Years later following the tragic death of her parents in Havana, Carmen Acosta journeys to Marbrisa, the grand home of her estranged older sister, Carolina, and her husband, Asher Wyatt. On the surface, the gilded estate looks like paradise, but Carmen quickly learns that nothing at Marbrisa is as it seems. The house has a treacherous legacy, and Carmen’s own life is soon in jeopardy . . . unless she can unravel the secrets buried beneath the mansion’s facade and stop history from repeating itself.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with and eARC of this book!

At the beginning of the month my family and I went to Florida so that my four year old could experience the joy and chaos that is Disney World, and the nostalgia factor for me (outside of being burnt out to hell by the end of all of it) was ample. Being back in the Sunshine State reminded me of my family trips there when I was little, specifically to, yes, Disney, but also to visit my family in Miami. While Florida is a state that I have a lot of opinions about, I do have a place in my heart for Miami thanks to the time spent there as a kid (as well as a trip in 2017 for my cousin’s wedding celebration). Because of this nostalgia, I was very interested in “The House on Biscayne Bay” by Chanel Cleeton. Not only was it touted as a Gothic mystery, it also had the setting of first half 20th Century Miami. What a combination! I went in with high expectations. And was somewhat disappointed.

First, of course, the things I did like. I absolutely adored the time and place in this book, as well as the descriptions of Marbrisa itself. I so rarely read stories set during the time period that is during or adjacent to World War I, so when it is a timeframe in a book I’m already interested because of the opportunities it opens. In spite of my family connections to Miami, my knowledge of its history is pretty limited, and I really liked the descriptions that Cleeton had about the town as it was growing and the challenges that presented the culture shock, the isolation, the alligators!). And when looking at the timeline that Carmen, Carolina, and Asher are in, I liked the way that the house had changed and transformed and had built up a reputation throughout Miami, and how that was affecting those living there. I also did enjoy our two protagonists across these two timelines we are following, Anna and Carmen. For Anna, I liked that she is a high society woman and wife of a New York businessman, Robert Barnes, and how she is expected to be grateful and thrilled about him building her this house, but instead finds herself trapped and stifled because of being plucked from her comfortable life and plunked down into a whole new community. Without any say. Seeing her have to grapple with this, as well as suspicions about her husband after a death happens at their estate, was really interesting. And for Carmen I liked the perspective of yet another woman being plucked from all she knows (this time her home in Havana after her parents die unexpectedly) and put in a whole new setting with sister Carolina, whom she has a contentious relationship with, and brother in law Asher, who is practically a stranger. And then when Carolina is murdered, she is suddenly alone with strangers in a strange house, possibly with a killer. I really enjoyed Carmen’s resilience and her verve.

But while I did like the melodrama and the way that both Anna and Carmen were maneuvering in their presents in Marbrisa, the two mysteries in both their timelines didn’t grab me the way I had hoped they would. For Anna, the death of a woman named Leonora at their first (and only) lavish party to show off the house has led her to wonder if the drowning was accidental, or something more sinister. For Carmen, there is not only the sudden death of her sister Carolina, but also the lingering question about what happened to Anna, who disappeared years prior. I wasn’t totally swept into the mysteries because, in the case of Leonora, I had a pretty good idea as to what happened from the jump, and in the case of Carolina, while the twists and surprises were well done, I just wasn’t invested in that outcome because I wasn’t as invested in Carolina. I WAS invested in Carmen and worried about her, but that would have been the case even without the mystery. I DID like the Anna Barnes mystery, but one out of three isn’t a resounding average.

“The House on Biscayne Bay” had some really well done historical beats and felt Gothic in all the right ways, but it wasn’t as thrilling as I had hoped it would be. That said, for historical fiction I will be looking into more Chanel Cleeton!

Rating 6: I liked the historical drama and I liked our two protagonists, but for whatever reason the mysteries at hand didn’t capture my attention.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The House on Biscayne Bay” is included on the Goodreads lists “Anticipated Literary Reads for Reader’s of Color 2024”, and “Mystery and Thriller 2024”.

Kate’s Review: “The Darkness Rises”

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

Book: “The Darkness Rises” by Stacy Stokes

Publishing Info: Viking Books for Young Readers, April 2024

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

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

Book Description: A gripping speculative thriller perfect for fans of Lauren Oliver and Ginny Myers Sain, about one girl with the power to see death before it happens–and the terrible consequences she faces when saving someone goes wrong.

SOMEONE WANTS REVENGE…

Whitney knows what death looks like. Since she was seven, she’s seen it hover over strangers’ heads in dark, rippling clouds. Sometimes she can save people from the darkness. Sometimes she can’t. But she’s never questioned if she should try. Until the unthinkable happens—and a person she saves becomes the perpetrator of a horrific school shooting.

Now Whitney will do anything to escape the memory of last year’s tragedy and the guilt that gnaws at her for her role in it. Even if that means quitting dance—the thing she loves most—and hiding her ability from her family and friends. But most importantly, no one can know what really happened last year.

Then Whitney finds an ominous message in her locker and realizes someone knows her secret. As the threats pile up, one thing becomes clear—someone wants payback for what she did. And if she’s going to survive the year, she must track down whoever is after her before it’s too late.

Review: Thank you to Kaye Publicity Inc. for sending me an eARC of this book!

I will forever and always be a complete sucker for a supernatural tale that involves a psychic character who is trying to cope with their powers. That has been my absolute jam for a VERY long time, and therefore if any book has a hint of that and ends up in my radar, I’m going to be on board. So it’s no surprise that I was totally in when “The Darkness Rises” by Stacy Stokes ended up in my mailbox. A teenage girl dealing with a psychic gift which has led to uncertainty and guilt, and has led to a mysterious stalker going after her for the perceived part she played in a tragedy. OH, YES PLEASE.

As a supernatural thriller, this very much falls into the category of Young Adult in a number of ways. Our main character, Whitney, is a teenager, and she has pretty expected teenage problems (a scummy ex boyfriend, an ex friend who has become an antagonistic rival, a strained relationship with her mother, the list goes on), but is also someone who can predict a person’s death due to being able to see a dark cloud over their heads that no one else is privy to. She struggles to keep this to herself, as she wants to help people, but it has bitten her in the ass a number of times. In more mundane ways it has made her seem weird and creepy when she tells someone to go to the doctor or not to drive a certain way, only to find an illness or to narrowly miss a car accident. But in the biggest way, she once stopped the school weirdo from jumping off a building… and a few days later he brought a gun to the school football game and opened fire, killing eight and wounding many others. When someone starts hinting that they know her secret, and that they are going to expose her, or worse. The mystery was pretty easy to figure out from the get go, and while I liked Whitney and liked how complex she was, her detective work, as well as some side plots involving her nemesis and a new boy at school that she has feelings for, were in a lot of ways pretty well worn territory for the young adult age group. This isn’t a bad thing by any means, and it works for the audience at hand. It just means that it wasn’t doing much outside of the box in the thrills department.

But there is absolutely something that elevated “The Darkness Rises” from what could have been a run of the mill YA thriller, and that was the frank and realistic way that Stokes tackled the topic of gun violence in schools and how the trauma reverberates through everyone who is touched by it. While we have a clear conflict of Whitney feeling guilty for saving the shooter from suicide in the days before his rampage, we also have the conflict of how Whitney feels like she should have done more in the moment once it was clear what was happening, and her survivor guilt is couched in with the guilt of saving him as if doing so made the shooting and all the deaths her fault. At first I was thinking ‘oh come on, Whitney, he’s the one who pulled the trigger, he’s the one who killed these people’, but thinking about it, I imagine that trauma, survivor’s guilt, and grief would probably twist one’s perceptions in this way, even if you take the supernatural elements out. I liked that Stokes was able to address these themes without sounded like she was checking boxes of necessary things to say, and that it felt natural and flowed well, and grounded in the harsh realities of gun violence in this country. And as an author’s note she had a good section about resources, statistics, and facts about school shootings and gun control measures. I really appreciated the way she approached it as a plot point.

“The Darkness Rises” is a speculative thriller that makes darker subject matter easy to parse through without diluting it. Fans of YA Thrillers absolutely should check it out.

Rating 7: A pretty typical YA thriller is elevated with a stark and intense take on gun violence.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Darkness Rises” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of yet, but it would fit in on “Psychic Heroes in Mysteries and Thrillers”.

Kate’s Review: “The Reappearance of Rachel Price”

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

Book: “The Reappearance of Rachel Price” by Holly Jackson

Publishing Info: Delacorte Press, April 2024

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

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

Book Description: Lights. Camera. Lies.

18-year-old Bel has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mom’s mysterious disappearance. Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price vanished and young Bel was the only witness, but she has no memory of it. Rachel is gone, long presumed dead, and Bel wishes everyone would just move on.

But the case is dragged up from the past when the Price family agree to a true crime documentary. Bel can’t wait for filming to end, for life to go back to normal. And then the impossible happens. Rachel Price reappears, and life will never be normal again.

Rachel has an unbelievable story about what happened to her. Unbelievable, because Bel isn’t sure it’s real. If Rachel is lying, then where has she been all this time? And – could she be dangerous? With the cameras still rolling, Bel must uncover the truth about her mother, and find out why Rachel Price really came back from the dead . . .

From world-renowned author Holly Jackson comes a mind-blowing masterpiece about one girl’s search for the truth, and the terror in finding out who your family really is.

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

Holly Jackson is one of my must read authors, as I absolutely adored her “Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” series (note to self, pick up the novella based in that universe, it’s been on your shelf for far too long!). I also enjoyed her other standalone novel “Five Survive”. So I was, of course, super eager to get my mitts on her newest YA thriller “The Reappearance of Rachel Price”. NetGalley came through, and it’s no surprise that I read the book in about two sittings. Yep, we have another addictive thriller from Jackson on our hands!

Our cast of characters has a few to chew on, led by Bel, teenager whose mother Rachel Price disappeared sixteen years ago, and who has lived with her father Charlie and tried to cope with the feeling of loss and, in some ways, abandonment. Bel is not a likable character, but I imagine that it absolutely reflects the trauma and loss she has been dealing with ever since Rachel disappeared. And not only that, but being defined as the daughter of a notorious missing woman, and all the baggage that comes with it. So while she wasn’t exactly likable, I really did like her, and thought that she was a totally different voice from some of Jackson’s previous characters, and a convincing one at that. I liked how she interacted with those around her, whether it’s her fierce devotion to her family (especially her cousin Carter), or her flirtatious and snarky relationship with Ash, a young man on the camera crew of the documentary, or even her relationship with the newly re-appeared Rachel, as Bel refuses to accept that Rachel is just back and that is that. Her hostility towards her mother is very in character, but it also makes for a compelling reliability issue; after all, Bel feels a HUGE sense of abandonment and resentment towards Rachel (as until she reappeared it was unclear as to if she had just left or met with foul play), so it’s hard to know if her observations of potentially odd behavior are clouded by this. Rachel is also a fascinating character, as you are only seeing her through Bel’s perspective, and it’s hard to gauge what her deal is. Is it really Rachel Price who has returned? If it is her, is she telling the truth about her whereabouts, and if she is, why are there things that it seems like she’s hiding? I liked the weird cat and mouse dynamic that Bel and Rachel have in this book, as it makes the suspense that much higher. And I also have to shout out Ash, the quirky camera assistant whom Bel takes a shine to. He’s a goofy and kind ray of sunshine when she is an abrasive ball of resentment, and their dynamic is pretty cute.

As for the mystery elements, Jackson really knows how to keep her readers guessing. I have a terrible habit of trying to figure out the twists in any book that I’m reading instead of just going along for the ride, but in “The Reappearance of Rachel Price”, I found myself trying to guess and never quite getting it right. At first, when the documentary crew starts to film and we are learning about Bel and Rachel and the rest of the family, we find out that Bel thinks Rachel just ditched her, while the community thinks that Charlie had something to do with her disappearance (even though he was exonerated by a jury), so when Rachel reappears, and seems to be hiding things, we get a whole new level of mystery. She lays the puzzle pieces throughout the narrative and has enough misdirection throughout that for me the answer was just out of reach, and I while I was somewhat on the right track I was still surprised by elements of it. She also builds up the suspense in a very well paced way, and I found myself questioning and getting nervous in the same ways that Bel was as the story progressed. And while one of the final pieces and explanations/solutions didn’t QUITE fall into place for me and felt a little too easy (I won’t be spoiling it however), one small stumble is easily forgiven because everything else was so earned and meticulously planned for. I love a tightened up thriller that seems to cover everything, it makes it all the more satisfying once you reach the end.

“The Reappearance of Rachel Price” is another triumph from Holly Jackson! She is a powerhouse in Young Adult Thrillers, and I am already very much looking forward to whatever she comes up with next. I can hardly wait.

Rating 8: A suspenseful mystery with some really well done twists, “The Reappearance of Rachel Price” is another great thriller from Holly Jackson!

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Reappearance of Rachel Price” is included on the Goodreads list “2024’s Most Awaited Books”.

Kate’s Review: “The Monstrous Misses Mai”

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

Book: “The Monstrous Misses Mai” by Van Hoang

Publishing Info: 47North, April 2024

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher.

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

Book Description: A determined young woman in 1950s Los Angeles walks a darker city than she ever imagined in a spellbinding novel about the power to make dreams come true―whatever the sacrifice.

Los Angeles brims with opportunity in 1959―though not for aspiring fashion designer Cordelia Mai Yin, the first-generation child of Vietnamese immigrants, who finds the city unkind to outsiders and as dispirited as her own family. When Cordi rents a cheap loft in an old apartment building, she quickly warms to kindred souls Tessa, Audrey, and Silly. They also want better things and have pasts they’d rather forget. That they all share the same middle name makes their friendship seem like destiny.

As supportive as they are of each other, it’s a struggle just to eke out a living, let alone hope to see their wishes for success come true. Until an ever-present and uncannily charming acquaintance of the landlord’s offers a solution to their problems. He promises to fulfill their every dream. All it takes is a little magic. And a small sacrifice.

As one surprisingly effective spell leads to another, their wishes get bigger. But so does the price they must pay. Amid the damaged seams of her life so far, Cordi must realize her own power in order to rip free, without losing everything she’s worked so hard to achieve.

Review: Thank you to 47North for sending me an ARC of this novel!

I love it when I am surprised by book mail in any form, but love it even more when I am surprised by book mail that I already had my eye on. This happened to me with “The Monstrous Misses Mai” by Van Hoang, as I had seen it on my various social media feeds as well as NetGalley, but hadn’t yet taken the plunge to try and get my hands on it. So when it arrived in my mailbox unprompted, I was pretty excited to see it! Between the cover and the idea of women making a magical bargain that they perhaps won’t be able to cash, the entire concept really intrigued me.

The strongest point of this book was our protagonist Cordi Mai Yin, a young Vietnamese American woman who has found herself on her own and estranged from her strict family in 1959 Los Angeles. She moves into an apartment with three other Asian American women, Tessa, Audrey, and Silly, who all also have the middle name of Mai, which feels like fate. As they all struggle due to their class, race, and gender, they meet a mysterious man who claims he can help them make their wishes come true with magic and a sacrifice. We see the story and trajectory of this decision through Cordi’s eyes, who is so desperate to succeed away from her family and as a fashion designer, and whose meek nature is bolstered through the success after the ritual. I liked Cordi a lot, as I found her complexity believable and sympathetic, and she was explored and fleshed out enough that I was invested in what happened to her as well as totally convinced of her choices and storyline beats. Her anxiety about making it on her own after being so dependent on a less than supportive family, mixed with the constant racism and misogyny she has to face in her day to day life, are also laid out in a convincing and realistic way.

The magical system in this book, known as lura, is a well thought out idea that was vague enough to be flexible but felt unique in enough ways that it didn’t feel run of the mill. I felt like there was a lot of “The Craft” in it, with four powerless women coming together to find their power, only to realize that it may have more consequences than they can actually fathom. While this is probably a solidly dark fantasy story, there are also some pretty nasty body horror elements that come from the lura spells taking their toll, with fingernails falling out, or hair shedding in clumps, or even just some gross transformational stuff that made the story have some definite horror elements. I also quite enjoyed the metaphors at hand with various luraists who have accrued power through indirect means, but still feel entitled to the lavish (if not hard to keep up) lifestyles that they have in front of them, and how that doesn’t necessarily apply to four Asian American women who have societal roadblocks due to racism and misogyny.

Overall, I enjoyed “The Monstrous Misses Mai”! It scratched all my dark fantasy and historical fiction itches, and I will certainly be seeing what Van Hoang brings next!

Rating 8: An engrossing dark fantasy with elements of body horror, “The Monstrous Misses Mai” has a bite, both in mythos and in metaphor.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Monstrous Misses Mai” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of now, but it would fit in on “Coven Book Club”.

Kate’s Review: “Murder Road”

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

Book: “Murder Road” by Simone St. James

Publishing Info: Berkley, March 2024

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

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

Book Description: A young couple find themselves haunted by a string of gruesome murders committed along an old deserted road in this terrifying new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Cold Cases .

July 1995. April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They’re looking for the small resort town where they plan to spend their honeymoon. When they spot what appears to a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barreling down Atticus Line after them.

When the hitchhiker dies at the local hospital, April and Eddie find themselves in the crosshairs of the Coldlake Falls police. Unexplained murders have been happening along Atticus Line for years and the cops finally have two witnesses who easily become their only suspects. As April and Eddie start to dig into the history of the town and that horrible stretch of road to clear their names, they soon learn that there is something supernatural at work, something that could not only tear the town and its dark secrets apart, but take April and Eddie down with it all.

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

I’ve been reading and reviewing thrillers from Simone St. James since this blog was founded eight years ago, and my track record with her has been pretty stellar. I really enjoyed “The Sundown Motel”, “The Book of Cold Cases”, and “The Broken Girls”, and when I saw that she had a new book called “Murder Road” coming out I KNEW that I had to read it. The description was tantalizing, as a married couple stumbling upon murders and urban legends on a stretch of lonely road is SO up my alley, and my expectations were pretty high given my enjoyment of her past stories. So imagine my shock when “Murder Road”, after being so promising, was a bit of a disappointment.

But first the good stuff. Character wise, “Murder Road” had some standouts. The first and most obvious is our protagonist April, who is on the way to her honeymoon with new husband Eddie when they run into trouble in a small Michigan town when a injured hitchhiker they try to help ends up dying, and the local police set their eyes on them as suspects. April and Eddie soon learn that many people have died on that same stretch of road, and take it upon themselves to clear their names and solve the mystery of The Lost Girl, an urban legend of a ghostly hitchhiker who may have malevolent intent. April is telling this story through a first person perspective, and we know from the jump that she is trying to start over and leave a dark and mysterious past behind her. I liked slowly getting to know her and seeing her try to solve this, if only so she and Eddie can try and go back to the anonymity she needs to survive and let go. There were also some people in the town that I greatly enjoyed, whether it’s the no nonsense Rose, who takes April and Eddie in and has a combative and complicated history with the police that are hounding her boarders, or the Snell sisters, two teenage amateur sleuths that are plucky and weird Nancy Drew wannabes.

But I think that what hindered it for me, ultimately, was that the supernatural aspects and the suspense never really took off. I love the premise of a cursed stretch of road that has numerous strange deaths associated with it, and I really love the urban legend of a vengeful ghost picking off hitchhikers that are unlucky enough to spot her. But I feel like we didn’t REALLY get a good expanded deep dive into what was going on with this ghost for a LONG time, and by the time we did it started to feel kind of rushed, with lots of twists and reveals stuffed in and very few of which made me go ‘ah, yes, I can see how we got from point A to point B with these reveals’. I’m being vague because I don’t want to spoil it, but I definitely felt like I needed more explanation as to what was going on, and I needed there to be more build up to the solution to the mystery because when we got there it fell flat. Even incongruous at times. And as I said, it felt rushed at the end, but at the same time there was a good chunk of the story where I felt like it was spinning its wheels a bit. And while St. James is usually really good about holding cards to her vest, one of the big surprises was telegraphed SUPER early, and took the wind out of those sails almost immediately.

I was sad that this newest Simone St. James novel didn’t connect for me. “Murder Road” had a strong main character and some fun supporting ones, but the thrills and chills fell flat.

Rating 5: This was a surprising miss from an author I usually really enjoy.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Murder Road” is included in the Goodreads article “Reader’s Most Anticipated Mysteries & Thrillers 2024”.

Kate’s Review: “Blood Sisters”

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

Book: “Blood Sisters” by Vanessa Lillie

Publishing Info: Berkley, September 2023

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

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

Book Description: A visceral and compelling mystery about a Cherokee archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who is summoned to rural Oklahoma to investigate the disappearance of two women…one of them her sister.

There are secrets in the land.

As an archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Syd Walker spends her days in Rhode Island trying to protect the land’s indigenous past, even as she’s escaping her own.

While Syd is dedicated to her job, she’s haunted by a night of violence she barely escaped in her Oklahoma hometown fifteen years ago. Though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling.

When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home. She refuses to let her sister’s disappearance, or the remains, go ignored—as so often happens in cases of missing Native women.

But not everyone is glad to have Syd home, and she can feel the crosshairs on her back. Still, the deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing indigenous women cases going back decades. To save her sister, she must expose a darkness in the town that no one wants to face—not even Syd.

The truth will be unearthed.

Review: During the holiday season, I took a Saturday where I spent the whole day doing shopping for my loved ones, and while I was wandering around Target trying to find gifts that would stand out as winners, I saw the book “Blood Sisters” by Vanessa Lillie. While I was supposed to be finding gifts for others, I bought it for myself, which I acknowledge is ironic but what are you gonna do? It took me a bit to get to it (as that tends to go with books I own), but I did eventually get to it at the start of the month, not sure what to expect. This was definitely one of those roll of the dice reads, but it was a gamble that mostly paid off!

I really loved the mystery of this book. It was part procedural, part social commentary, part family drama, part self discovery, and Lillie mixed it all together and balanced all of the elements pretty handily. There is a fairly straight forward hook for our investigator Syd Walker, a BIA archaeologist who has left her hometown in Oklahoma for the East Coast, but is called back when a skull is found in her hometown and she is recruited to go investigate. But when she does return home, a place where she herself was almost murdered along with her sister Emma Lou, she not only has to face the trauma she left behind, but also the fact that Emma Lou is now missing. This would already be enough to go with, but Lillie adds in the past violence, in which Syd has blamed herself for her friend Luna’s death, who was also at the sleepover in which Syd and Emma Lou were nearly killed, as well as the very true and bleak truths about small town poverty, systemic oppression of Indigenous people and how that is seen in communities, missing and murdered Native women, meth, and the beginnings of legalized drug abuse in the form of pill mills and the opioid epidemic, as Oxy is being prescribed quite a bit in Picher (as this takes place in 2008). It’s a lot, but Lillie strings it all together and connects the dots pretty well, setting up motives, red herrings, suspects, and an undercurrent of violence while people are trying to survive. There were lots of surprises that caught me off guard, and it really kept my interest.

I also liked how complicated Syd’s background was due to the aforementioned trauma, as well as other factors of growing up in Picher and the difficulties that came from that. Syd is a serious and driven investigator, who is more than happy to call out the bullshit of people, but is also hindered by her own single mindedness in some ways. She is also plagued by her own insecurities, and it comes through in her relationship with her wife Mal, who is newly pregnant right as Syd has to go back home. I tend to have a hit or miss reading experience with female protagonists who have a tortured background that has continued to affect them and affects their storyline in a book I’m reading, especially thrillers, but I thought that Syd was compelling and earned her complexity and the bad decisions that come out because of it.

There is a bit of a flip side with the character of Syd, however. While I liked her background, and I liked how complex she was due to her trauma and disconnection with her family and identity, I found the first person voice to be pretty simplistic. At times it read more like a YA protagonist with how she would always be explaining exposition or spelling out implications that could have stood on their own for the reader. This doesn’t necessarily apply to the details that were about Indigenous culture and history, as there are many, many people in this world who are completely unfamiliar with those themes (as someone who used to do interpretation of the history of the Dakota in Minnesota at Fort Snelling, I can assure you MANY people don’t know or don’t care to know this stuff), so spelling it out in simpler or blunt terms is warranted. But other things, like Syd’s anxieties about parenthood, or frustrations with Emma Lou and her assumptions about that, or even just thoughts about what is going on mystery wise, didn’t read like a seasoned BIA archaeologist/investigator, but like a total greenhorn. It made for more telling rather than showing, and I much prefer the latter, especially in mysteries.

“Blood Sisters” was a solid thriller mystery. If Vanessa Lillie were to continue the adventures of Syd Walker, I would definitely keep going. At the very least I will pick up Lillie’s next novel to be sure.

Rating 7: A really well done mystery and an interesting perspective and main character is hampered a bit by a narration that does a lot of telling and not as much showing.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Blood Sisters” is included on the Goodreads list “52 Book Club 2024: #46 Featuring Indigenous Culture”.

Kate’s Review: “Almost Surely Dead”


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

Book: “Almost Surely Dead” by Amina Akhtar

Publishing Info: Mindy’s Book Studio, February 2024

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

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

Book Description: A psychological thriller with a twist, Almost Surely Dead is a chilling account of how one woman’s life spins out of control after a terrifying—and seemingly random—attempt on her life.

Dunia Ahmed lives an ordinary life—or she definitely used to. Now she’s the subject of a true crime podcast. She’s been missing for over a year, and no one knows if she’s dead or alive. But her story has listeners obsessed, and people everywhere are sporting merch that demands “Find Dunia!” In the days before her disappearance, Dunia is a successful pharmacist living in New York. The daughter of Pakistani immigrants, she’s coping with a broken engagement and the death of her mother. But then something happens that really shakes up her someone tries to murder her. When her would-be killer winds up dead, Dunia figures the worst is over. But then there’s another attempt on her life…and another. And police suspect someone close to her may be the culprit. Dunia struggles to make sense of what’s happening. And as childhood superstitions seep into her reality, she becomes convinced that someone—or some thing —is truly after her.

Review: I was such a fan of Amina Akhtar’s “Kismet” when it came out, and I knew that I was going to be waiting on pins and needles for her next thriller novel to make its way to my book pile. And the time has finally arrived, as “Almost Surely Dead” has finally been released! I preordered this book for my Kindle, as between my love for her previous book, the description, and the cover, it was a hugely anticipated release for 2024 for me. And much like “Kismet” before it, once I sat down with it, I basically devoured it in about two sittings.

As a thriller mystery, Akhtar has a lot of the twists, turns, and slow build of suspense that I like to see in the genre. When we first meet Dunia, she is being attacked in the subway by a man she has only seen in passing, and when his attack fails, he throws himself in front of a train, saying that he ‘had to’. This kicks off a strange and unnerving mystery about who wants Dunia dead, and what lengths they will go to to make it happen, with a narrative told from her perspective as she grows more and more paranoid, as well as a podcast transcript that fills in the gaps that she can’t see after she has gone missing. We also get flashbacks to her childhood, and see her family life that consists of her cold mother, her caring (but not long for this world) father, and hot and cold older sister Nadia, as well as an overall fear that she was being haunted by something as a child. Through all of these perspectives, we see a woman who has endured a lot of trauma in her life, and whose recent victimization and subsequent disappearance has a lot of reveals that worked well for me. Some things were a but more obvious than others, but then there would be a huge twist that did, in fact, catch me off guard, and made for a gripping read that I could hardly put down.

And I really, really liked the dark fantasy and horror beats that are whispering throughout this novel. Akhtar does a good job of weaving in the jinn myth and showing how sinister this creature can be, and the ways that it can mess with a person’s perception of reality while pulling them into a devious web. I liked the ambiguity of some of this, while also knowing that SOMETHING supernatural is going on, and that Dunia’s childhood interest in jinns may have had something bigger going on besides just a general fascination. While it’s clear from the jump there there is SOMETHING supernatural going on, Akhtar still manages to effectively blur the lines between otherworldly and all too worldly threats (obsessive exes, toxic parental relationships, trauma), which makes for a suspenseful tale that kept me guessing. I also liked how it was so tied to Dunia’s culture, and how the thing that she may be experiencing isn’t going to be wholly comprehended properly through a Western lens without the cultural context.

I did have one small quibble that I wanted to note, however. I mentioned the podcast transcript device earlier, and I overall enjoyed that choice and how it made it so we could see other sides of the mystery that Dunia herself couldn’t see or portray in a first person perspective. I also just love ‘found media’ and epistolary tropes. But the one thing that took me out of it a bit was how two dimensional the two podcast hosts, Amanda and Danielle were, and how they really just felt like personifications of the criticisms of ‘true crime appeal’ as a whole. Whether they are simpering over the mystery in a disingenuous way, or hawking products in a gauche manner, or being clueless and distasteful in how they present the case (or in how they have taken it on as a podcast), it felt a BIT like a not at all subtle ‘true crime is gross’ take that has been done a LOT in the past few years when it comes to using true crime as a plot point. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily fully disagree with this take (and this is coming from someone who listens to true crime podcasts), and do think that some platforms DO tread a bit into a distasteful and exploitative area. But as a take it’s not really a new one, and in this case it was ham-fisted and more about statement versus driving the plot forward. If it had been less obvious about it I’d probably have enjoyed it more.

But that’s merely a drop in a sea of a really fun and entertaining thriller! “Almost Surely Dead” was a breezy and suspenseful read, with dark fantasy and horror elements that meshed well with the story. Another win from Amina Akhtar!

Rating 8: A fast paced and suspenseful thriller tale with solid horror elements, “Almost Surely Dead” is another fun and gripping read from Amina Akhtar!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Almost Surely Dead” is included on the Goodreads list “2024 Mystery Thrillers Crime To Be Excited For”.

Kate’s Review: “The Night of the Storm”

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

Book: “The Night of the Storm” by Nishita Parekh

Publishing Info: Dutton, January 2024

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

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

Book Description: Hurricane Harvey is about to hit Houston. Meanwhile, single mom Jia Shah is already having a rough week: her twelve-year-old son, Ishaan, has just been suspended from school for getting in a fight. Still reeling from the fallout of her divorce—their move to Houston, her family’s disapproval, the struggle to make ends meet on her own—now Jia is worried about Ishaan’s future, too. Will her solo parenting be enough? Doesn’t a boy need a father?

And now their apartment complex is under a mandatory evacuation order. Jia’s sister, Seema, has invited them to hunker down in her fancy house in Sugar Land, and despite Jia’s misgivings—Seema’s husband, Vipul, has been just a little too friendly with her lately—Jia concedes it’s probably the best place to keep Ishaan safe during the hurricane. With Jia’s philandering ex scrutinizing her every move, all too eager to snatch back custody of Ishaan, she can’t afford to make a mistake.

When Vipul’s brother and his wife show up on Seema’s doorstep, too, it’s a recipe for disaster. Grandma, the family matriarch, has never been shy about playing favorites among her sons and their wives. As the storm escalates, tensions rise quickly, and soon someone’s dead. Was it a horrible accident or is there a murderer in their midst?

With no help available until the floodwaters recede in the morning, Jia must protect her son and identify the culprit before she goes down for a crime she didn’t commit—or becomes the next victim. . . .

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

Even though Minnesota has some pretty brutal cold and snow events in the dead of winter, I know that I would prefer this over hurricanes. I know people who have been in pretty intense situations surrounding hurricanes, and have even had relatives flee up to Minnesota to escape danger during particularly bad ones. But I do love the idea of a hurricane being a situational factor in a murder mystery, so when I read the description of “The Night of the Storm” by Nishita Parekh, I knew that I had to read it. I went in with high hopes, wondering how a combustible family and extended family unit would fare coming face to face with a potential murderer during Hurricane Harvey, and while I chugged along through it, it didn’t quite meet said high hopes.

But first the good! One of the most important things about a thriller, for me, is if it keeps me reading and keeps me questioning what is going on, especially if it has some outside the box elements. “The Night of the Storm” is a locked room mystery, but the locked room aspect is the fact that this family is trapped in a house during Hurricane Harvey, and they can’t leave due to the dangers and can’t contact anyone very well due to the power issues and the general chaos during a natural disaster. If you find a creative way to isolate people in a story like this, I am automatically going to have to give it some props. I also liked that in this thriller, a genre that can be pretty white, we have an Asian Indian American family at the heart of it, and how some aspects of the culture Jia and Seema were raised in brings other conflicts that could potentially exacerbate the dangers in the moment (Jia’s divorced status making her seen as less than or unreliable by family, the tension between a judgmental mother in law and her daughter in law, the narrow definitions of what success can look like for sons). It makes for a bit of a fun family drama on top of the very pressing ‘trapped in a hurricane with a murderer’ situation.

That said, I think that a way that this book stumbles is that outside of Jia the other characters weren’t as fleshed out as I would have liked them to be. I like that we got insight into their back stories through Jia’s perspectives, but I would have liked to see more depth to a few of them. As it was, I wasn’t as invested in them as characters, and that makes the stakes not as high as I would like them to be in a thriller. I really liked Jia, and I was worried about her and her son Ishaan (and even on an existential level, as she is in the midst of a divorce from a toxic husband whom she thinks wants to take Ishaan away from her), but as more danger cropped up for everyone I wasn’t super nervous about the outcomes of the actual mystery and more about whether or not Jia would maintain custody of her son after all was said and done. Add into that a thrill ride that doesn’t tread too far from what is usually expected from the genre and familiar tropes that aren’t too unexpected, and it’s solidly okay, but not something that blew me away too much.

“The Night of the Storm” is fine. I am curious to read more thrillers by Nishita Perekh in the future. There is lots of promise that she can wow me down the line from glimmers in this book, even if as a whole it was average.

Rating 6: It’s a perfectly serviceable thriller, but pretty familiar tropes and pretty flat characters make for a generic read.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Night of the Storm” is included on Goodreads list “2024 Mystery Thrillers Crime To Be Excited For”.