suspense – Among the Authors

Waiting on Wednesday: The Cabin at the End of the World

Waiting on Wednesdays spotlights highly anticipated upcoming releases, and was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. Since Jill is no longer hosting, I’m now joining up with Can’t Wait Wednesday at Wishful Endings. Check it out, and leave a link to your “can’t wait” book of the week!

I read Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts last year and walked around for days afterward with the ultimate book hangover. It was incredibly suspenseful, twisted, and I just couldn’t stop talking about it to everyone I knew (or to total strangers). Seriously, if you haven’t read it yet, GET ON IT. You won’t be disappointed. Tremblay has a delightfully dark writing style that I’m hoping will also be present in his June release, The Cabin at the End of the World.

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RELEASE DATE: June 26, 2018

Summary (via Goodreads)

The Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Head Full of Ghosts adds an inventive twist to the home invasion horror story in a heart-palpitating novel of psychological suspense that recalls Stephen King’s Misery, Ruth Ware’s In a Dark, Dark Wood, and Jack Ketchum’s cult hit The Girl Next Door.

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault”. Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”

Why I’m Waiting

Tremblay has a habit of taking the played out horror tropes and reinventing them in new and creative ways. In A Head Full of Ghosts he took the idea of possession and combined it with the scary world of reality television. Now, in The Cabin at the End of the World, he pulls the suspense from a home invasion story and ups the tension by making it also a story of an apocalypse. I am really looking forward to seeing how those stories meld together in The Cabin at the End of the World. If it’s half as good as A Head Full of Ghosts, I can already picture myself reading Tremblay’s entire collection of work.

Click Here to add The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay to your To Be Read Shelf on Goodreads.

Waiting on Wednesday: The Perfect Mother

I’ve only recently discovered my deep love of thrillers, and I’m starting to think I can’t get enough of them. The darker, the better. When I saw the summary for The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy, I knew immediately that it would fit the bill. Even better, there’s a short wait for this one, as it’s releasing in just six days.

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RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2018

Summary (via Goodreads)
An addictive psychological thriller about a group of women whose lives become unexpectedly connected when one of their newborns goes missing.

They call themselves the May Mothers—a collection of new moms who gave birth in the same month. Twice a week, with strollers in tow, they get together in Prospect Park, seeking refuge from the isolation of new motherhood; sharing the fears, joys, and anxieties of their new child-centered lives.

When the group’s members agree to meet for drinks at a hip local bar, they have in mind a casual evening of fun, a brief break from their daily routine. But on this sultry Fourth of July night during the hottest summer in Brooklyn’s history, something goes terrifyingly wrong: one of the babies is abducted from his crib. Winnie, a single mom, was reluctant to leave six-week-old Midas with a babysitter, but the May Mothers insisted that everything would be fine. Now Midas is missing, the police are asking disturbing questions, and Winnie’s very private life has become fodder for a ravenous media.

Though none of the other members in the group are close to the reserved Winnie, three of them will go to increasingly risky lengths to help her find her son. And as the police bungle the investigation and the media begin to scrutinize the mothers in the days that follow, damaging secrets are exposed, marriages are tested, and friendships are formed and fractured.

Why I’m Waiting

The reviews coming out for this book tout it as a perfect binge read for the summer. Forget summer, I want to binge read it right now! The summary does make me wonder if it will be something like Jessica Strawser’s Not That I Could Tell (which I’ll eventually finish, but has sat on my nightstand for a few weeks now). Even though The Perfect Mother isn’t out yet, it’s already becoming a movie starring Kerry Washington, leading to more hype for this new release. Now, normally I don’t follow the hype, but I might have to for this one because I can’t help but judge a book by that gorgeous cover!

What are you waiting on this week? Let me know in the comments! 🙂

Click here to add The Perfect Mother to your To Be Read Shelf on Goodreads!

Off the Shelf: A Review of The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager

I have other reviews that I should be writing – BUT STOP THE PRESSES! We need to discuss The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager RIGHT. NOW.

It doesn’t come out until July, but I was fortunate enough to meet Riley Sager while attending PLA, and I snagged myself a signed ARC copy of The Last Time I Lied. His debut, The Final Girls, has sat on my to-read shelf since its publication. I’m wary of overhyped books though, so its initial popularity right out of the gate scared me off picking it up. Trust me, I will soon be correcting that mistake.

As I’ve been dealing with some health issues recently, I’ve had plenty of time to read, but any book I’ve picked up, I’ve struggled to get into. Either it’s not interesting at all, interesting but just not that great, or definitely interesting but not the kind of book that’s going to hold my interest right now. It’s been disappointment after disappointment.

I ~~wanted~~ NEEDED a page turner. So, I went to my to-read shelf, selected one book at random, and decided to see if the first line would hook me.

Enter: The Last Time I Lied.

And that’s how I found myself unable to put it down until I’d finished reading the very last line.

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Summary (via Goodreads)

RELEASE DATE: JULY 10, 2018

“Two Truths and a Lie. The girls played it all the time in their tiny cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis, the youngest of the group. The games ended when Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out of the cabin in the dead of night. The last she–or anyone–saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips.

Now a rising star in the New York art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings–massive canvases filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches that cover ghostly shapes in white dresses. The paintings catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale. When Francesca implores her to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor, Emma sees an opportunity to try to find out what really happened to her friends.

Yet it’s immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by memories from fifteen years ago, Emma discovers a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian left behind about the camp’s twisted origins. As she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past while facing threats from both man and nature in the present.

And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale, the more she realizes it may come at a deadly price.”

Things I Liked:

HOLY ROLLER COASTER RIDE, BATMAN! The number of twists packed into this plot left me dizzy. Just when I would think I was on the right track, this cart would jump the rails. It kept me guessing the whole way through, and the ending is one you will not see coming. When you think it’s over, it’s most definitely not.

I was never a summer camp kid. I don’t know if there just weren’t many camps around or if my parents didn’t want me out of their sight for that long, but either way, a sleep away summer camp is something that I’ve only ever read about. Goosebumps set me up from a young age to think of summer camps as inherently creepy (thanks very much, Welcome to Camp Nightmare, The Curse of Camp Cold Lake, The Horror at Camp Jellyjam, etc.), so Camp Nightingale really meets the mark for dark, spooky camps – haunting campfire stories, suspicious counselors, and s’mores! Pack this book on vacation, maybe take it camping…because I can guarantee it’s going to be one of the biggest books of the summer. I found myself falling in love with Sager’s writing style, and how much description was packed in to every last word. I could picture Camp Nightingale, particularly Lake Midnight and the ghost stories of its past, so clearly. Beautiful work.

I’ve said it time and time again, but if you give me a good, believable, unreliable narrator, that will sell the story for me every time. And boy, is Emma good. There were a few moments where I found myself annoyed with her, but overall, I found myself absorbed in her interactions with those at Camp Nightingale, past and present, particularly Vivian. Vivian and Emma bonded quickly when they first met at Camp Nightingale, and there a several moments in their conversations where they go beyond your typical “Mean Girls” teen girl interactions and Vivian delves into the true psyche of her behaviors to teach the life lessons she believes Emma needs. She’s twisted, enigmatic, and her motivations add to the mystery of her disappearance.

Things I Didn’t Like:

I don’t have much to report in the way of things that I didn’t like about The Last Time I Lied. There were times, like I said, that I found Emma annoying – she wouldn’t ask the questions that I thought would be natural to ask given the scenarios she was facing or she may say too much in parts where I felt it would be natural to hold back. Overall though, she was an interesting character and the story kept me guessing as to whether I should trust her or not.

I believe there was one red herring that got thrown out (and there are quite a few in this story that will have you wondering what the truth will really be), but was never resolved. However, this is a story I plan on rereading (it was THAT good) to see if perhaps I missed its resolution somewhere along the way. The story follows a crooked path, so it can be easy to get lost in the woods with all of the possibilities.

Overall Rating:

Without a doubt, this book is a 5/5 stars for me. It was everything that I needed it to be and more, and I couldn’t get enough. I raced through it in a matter of hours, and days later, I still can’t stop thinking about it. Go ahead and preorder it from your favorite bookstore or online retailer, because you are going to want to get your hands on this title the moment it hits the shelves. While you’re waiting, check out Sager’s debut novel, Final Girls.

Two Truths and a Lie:
1. I will definitely be picking up Final Girls in hopes that it’s even half as good as The Last Time I Lied.
2. The Last Time I Lied is one of the best books that I’ve read so far this year.
3. When I’m camping this summer, I doubt that this story will cross my mind.

Click here to add The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager to your To Be Read Shelf on Goodreads.

Off the Shelf: A Review of Silent Victim by Caroline Mitchell

First and foremost, I just want to thank the readers who have stuck around during my hiatus. It was really something to log in and see that there were so many visitors each day checking out my reviews even without me posting regularly. It was due to that confidence booster that I decided to upgrade a few things around the site, and I hope you like the new look! Once things calm down a bit, I’ll get back to posting regularly and more importantly READING regularly (*sigh* I can’t wait…). Now – on to the review!

I’ve been a bit overwhelmed lately between work, my last semester of grad school, and planning a wedding, so I’ve been trying to sneak in a little stress-relief reading whenever possible. What’s my kind of stress-relief reading? Anxiety-ridden, high intensity thrillers, of course. I’ve read so many lately that I wish I had time to review them all. Pretty Girls Dancing by Kylie Brant kicked off my new year and my thriller-spree on a positive note with a creepy, dark suspense story set in my home state. The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn provided the pulse-pounding rollercoaster ride I’d been looking for and quickly became one of my most recommended titles to friends and fellow Rear Window fans (seriously, read it – NOW). The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor was an impressive debut that turned the creepiness dial up to eleven. All of these were worthwhile reads in my book.

And then we have Silent Victim…

A psychological thriller from former police detective Caroline Mitchell, Silent Victim was offered on KindleFirst as one of the February selections. With a summary that sounded right up my alley, I couldn’t wait till the March 1st release date, and so I jumped on getting to read it early. But did it live up to the other thrillers in my recent reading spree?

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Silent Victim by Caroline Mitchell
Release Date: March 1, 2018

Summary (via Goodreads)

Emma’s darkest secrets are buried in the past. But the truth can’t stay hidden for long.

Emma is a loving wife, a devoted mother…and an involuntary killer. For years she’s been hiding the dead body of the teacher who seduced her as a teen.

It’s a secret that might have stayed buried if only her life had been less perfect. A promotion for Emma’s husband, Alex, means they can finally move to a bigger home with their young son. But with a buyer lined up for their old house, Emma can’t leave without destroying every last trace of her final revenge…

Returning to the shallow grave in the garden, she finds it empty. The body is gone.

Panicked, Emma confesses to her husband. But this is only the beginning. Soon, Alex will discover things about her he’ll wish he’d learned sooner. And others he’ll long to forget.

Things I Liked:

The summary sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? I won’t lie, I got giddy the first time I read it. Dark Secrets? Dead bodies? Correction: MISSING dead bodies? I’m all about this, and I want to know MORE. Enter: Emma. It doesn’t take long to figure out that we are probably working with an unreliable narrator here. Is she actually crazy or is someone just making it look like she is? I LOVE unreliable narrators, so I should probably love Emma, but I just never made the connection with her. To be completely honest, she actually annoyed me. BUT – she’s only ONE of the three POVs that this story is told from. We also journey inside the head of her husband, Alex (he had potential, but I ended up not caring for him either…he comes across a little too self serving and just as secretive as his wife) and Luke, the teacher that seduced Emma when she was a teenager. To be honest, Luke kept me reading. His chapters were creepy and uncomfortable to read, but being able to see inside such a sick mind was like a train wreck – you just couldn’t look away. Probably not the best promotion of a book to say that the best chapters are from a pedo’s POV, but I will say that it kept things interesting, especially seeing the same scenes depicted from both Emma and Luke’s POVs.

I typically try to find a few things (however small they may be) that I like in books that don’t win me over. Maybe it’s just that it has been a couple weeks since finishing this book, but I can’t quite remember much that stood out as redeeming. I at least finished the book…that’s something, right?

Things I Didn’t Like:

Looking through some other reviews, I feel like there’s an elephant in the room. Anyone going to talk about it? Anyone? Ok, just me then.

*SPOILER ALERT*
I’m pretty sure I can’t be the only one out there who has problems with that particularly rape-y scene. So, get this… Emma is cornered by her abuser who offers to leave her alone forever, if only she will just have sex with him one more time. She even says she knows she should run, grab her phone, and call for help. But wait! An idea occurs to her – the sex will last only minutes, and it’s not like she loves Luke, so maybe some good can come of this situation! She could use her attacker as a means of impregnating herself with the child that she and her husband can’t conceive….wait….what??? Yep. You read that right. This chick is justifying her own rape. “Perhaps something good could be salvaged out of all this mess. It was not like I was being unfaithful. I loved my husband. A baby would make our marriage complete, and with Luke out of my life for good there would be nothing to threaten our happiness.” How can you read that and NOT find it problematic? It still makes me cringe.

There were several times I wanted to just put this book down and give up. That moment in particular was almost enough to seal the deal, but at that point I had to wonder if it could get any worse (ehhh, the ending is pretty contrived, but this is the part that stands out to me as I-Want-to-Throw-this-Book-Across-the-Room-Level-Bad).

I will also issue a word of caution for anyone who feels triggered by depictions of eating disorders. I was not prepared for that subject to come up and play such a prevalent role in Emma’s life throughout the story, and perhaps if I had known that, I would have selected a different Kindle First book. I won’t comment on how it’s portrayed, but it was a struggle for me to read those parts. Fair warning.

Overall Rating:

I guess I’m just the odd man out on this one, because as popular as it seems to be, Silent Victim was not a winner for me. I’d give it 1.5 stars, and that’s mostly because there was at least enough of a story to keep me wondering how it all would end (and boy, did I keep wishing for it to end). Spoiler alert, even the ending is disappointing. I’m sorry, folks. I just don’t get the appeal to this one. I didn’t care about any of the characters, the “twists” were eyeroll inducing, and it just really missed the mark of being suspenseful to me. The only thing killed by this book was my thriller reading spree. Oh well, guess it’s time to switch to something different…

Off the Shelf: A Review of Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

There are two things out of the ordinary about this review:
1) It’s not a Young Adult book.
2) It’s not a new or upcoming release.

So why would I write a review about a thriller that was released in 2006? Because I’m late to the party, and I simply can’t stop recommending it to everyone I come in contact with.

Let me start by saying this – I have always assumed Gillian Flynn was a hack. I tend to avoid books or authors that get a lot of hype because too often they end up being a disappointment. I watched the movie of Gone Girl and wasn’t impressed; however, I do remember thinking “this probably made a better book”. Even if it did make a better book, I still didn’t plan on reading it. Didn’t seem like the sort of book I’d be into. Then, my best friend (who also expected Flynn to be some over-hyped hack) picked up Sharp Objects on a whim and immediately had to recommend it, saying that it was a must read and that the author’s writing was vastly better than what she had imagined. She was so surprised by how much she liked it, that she actually wanted to read all of Flynn’s other works as well. “Meh,” I thought, “Maybe I’ll read it if I get some time.” Knowing full well that my to-be-read list was and is getting a little out of hand. Then, by chance, I stopped by a warehouse book sale while out of town, and Sharp Objects became one of several books purchased that day. It looked fairly short, and we had a long drive home, so I figured why not?

I was pages away from finishing the book by the time we got home.

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Summary (via Goodreads)

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows, a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.

Things I Liked:
At the most recent meeting of my writing group, I recommended this book as one of the best books I’ve read recently in regards to characterization. I was almost worried at how easy it was to slip into the mind of Camille Preaker, which is a rather dark and unsettling place to be. She will leave you feeling raw, having experienced the unravelling of both the mysteries behind the murders and Camille’s own secrets. And it’s not just Camille that is a crystal clear character. This was one of the books where you can easily see it play out like a movie (and I believe it is starting filming for a tv series this year), and I couldn’t help but cast a few of the characters in my head. My personal cast would have included Ellie Kemper as Camille, Jessica Walter as her mother, and Dakota Fanning as Amma (Camille’s sister). While two of the three mostly do comedic roles, for some reason they just fit the image of what I wanted the characters to look like. I’d love to hear who you think fits each role!

You might be waiting for me to tell you about some positive, uplifting thread to this story. Instead, I’ll caution you that, if you’re looking for something happy, look elsewhere. There’s really no place for it in this book, and I think if the author had tried to add anything positive it would have felt forced and out of place. For example, a lot of mysteries and thrillers might include a romance to lighten things up. While there is a little bit of flirtation and sex in Sharp Objects, through Camille’s eyes it feels more like she’s using the other person – whether it’s for information or just a momentary bit of comfort. If you’re like me and enjoy a truly dark and disturbing read, this book will definitely live up to that.

Things I Didn’t Like:
The only thing that I disliked is that there’s a bit of a time jump at the end that feels disjointed from the rest of the story. The big reveal comes in two parts, and it’s obvious that time needed to pass between the two events. Unfortunately, once the author makes the time jump, her writing becomes a bit choppy, as if she’s racing through the ending, tossing out details, and trying to make the big reveal come full circle. I enjoyed the ending immensely, but this is one part of the story where I found the author’s writing to be a bit lacking.

Overall Rating:
5/5 I finished this book a month ago, and I have a million reviews I need to be writing right now for ARCs I’ve received. Instead, I HAD to tell you about this one. That’s how you’re going to feel when you close the final page – like you need to talk to someone about this book. I find myself still thinking about all of the complexities to the story and just how much I truly enjoyed Flynn’s writing style. I would go so far as to say that this is the best book that I’ve read so far this year, and having already read a couple other Gillian Flynn titles in the month after reading Sharp Objects, I’d be willing to say that Sharp Objects is her best work overall.

Add Sharp Objects to your To Be Read Shelf on Goodreads