I Found You is Lisa Jewell’s fourteenth novel, which published in 2016, and it is both extremely mystifying and very well done. The novel follows three narratives throughout the story as the reader tries to figure out who this mysterious man is and why he ended up on a beach not remembering anything about himself, where he came from, or why he is alone on a beach in the pouring rain. The story is told from four perspectives: Alice, the mystery man that Alice’s daughter names Frank, and Lily (which are told in the present), and Gray, who is telling his story from 1993. It’s apparent that these people are somehow connected and Jewell does a wonderful job at not giving away anything as she navigates between these character’s narratives.

Each of the four narrators in I Found You are each so unique and Jewell does a wonderful job balancing the overall plot between the four of them while also finding a way to connect them all. Alice is the first person that the reader will learn about. Alice is a single mother with three kids and a herd of dogs. She has a big heart which has led her to some questionable decisions in her life, but Alice means well and is such a loving and caring person, even if she is a little scatterbrained. The reader will then learn about Frank who ends up on the beach outside of Alice’s house. Alice originally goes down to give Frank a jacket and to offer him a warm place to stay overnight. What was supposed to be a one night of kindness turns into Alice helping Frank recall what has happened to him.

Lily is the next character that the reader gets to learn about. She is a brash Ukrainian woman who has recently moved to the United Kingdom to live with her husband she has just married. When Lily’s husband doesn’t return home from work one evening, she heads out on a frantic search to find him. Lastly, the reader learns about Gray who is telling his story in 1993. Gray is a teenager who is on a family trip with his parents and sister. The reader learns that Gray’s sister Kirsty ends up dating a young man who is not who he seems. All of these characters have some kind of connection to one another and the reader slowly unravels that connection as the story progresses.

Jewell is a huge fan of writing stories from multiple perspectives and points-of-view. She never disappoints on creating unique and well thought out voice for each of her characters and for her stories in general as well. While it’s apparent that each of the characters in I Found You are connected on some level, Jewell keeps the reader guessing right up to the point where everything is revealed. Personally, this is my favourite of Lisa Jewell’s work so far.

I found the story to be incredibly engaging, the characters were fascinating to learn more about, and the mystery was filled with suspense and I was stumped on who this mystery man was until Jewell revealed his identity near the end. Readers will also notice that I Found You ends on a happier note that some of Jewell’s other novels don’t necessarily end on. It was really nice to read a mystery novel that has some happiness to it after a very sad story overall. The more that I read Jewell’s work, the more I like her. I cannot wait to read more of her novels and see what she comes up with next.

I Found You is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.

Have you read I Found You? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

‘How long have you been sitting out here?’
‘I got here yesterday.’
‘Where did you come from?’
‘I have no idea.’

East Yorkshire: Single mum Alice Lake finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, no idea what he is doing there. Against her better judgement she invites him in to her home.

Surrey: Twenty-one-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed.

Two women, twenty years of secrets and a man who can’t remember lie at the heart of Lisa Jewell’s brilliant new novel.

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Robin Lockwood is a senior partner in a well-respected law firm and a highly skilled criminal defense attorney, who also was a Mixed Martial Arts fighter while she was in law school at Yale. Those looking for books with a female character who is written with a perfect balance of brain and brawn, need look no further. Robin is talented, and confident in her abilities, but she is also modest and well-liked in her professional circles.

In A Reasonable Doubt, Robin meets with a client who is actually looking for Robin’s former boss, and mentor, Regina Barrister, but upon finding that she has retired, he seeks Robin’s help with a unique situation. He wants to patent a magic trick. The client is well known magician Robert Chesterfield, who Regina had successfully defended against murder charges almost 20 years earlier. The first third of the book revisits that shocking story as Regina recounts all the details for Robin.

Though unable to patent his trick (The Chamber of Death), Chesterfield debuts it in front of a crowd, with unbelievable results. Though no longer serving as Chesterfield’s lawyer, Robin is tangled up in the case and must help put all the pieces together, sorting through Chesterfield’s long list of enemies, from mobsters to other magicians.

Perhaps best categorised as a legal-thriller or as mystery-suspense, A Reasonable Doubt does not go down the gory, dark path that some thrillers do. It is instead the kind of mystery put together with surgical precision. Full of thrills and excitement, the Robin Lockwood books from Phillip Margolin are perfect for those who loved Angie Kim’s Miracle Creek or Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent.

The surprises never end, making this a true page-turner, in every sense of the word, form beginning to end! Each Robin Lockwood book presents a truly unique case, which has obviously been created by (and solved by) a masterful hand.

As a side note, the audio-versions of all three of the Robin Lockwood books are read by Therese Plummer, who does a fantastic job.

A Reasonable Doubt is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.

Will you be picking up A Reasonable Doubt? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

A magician linked to three murders and suspicious deaths years ago disappears in the middle of his new act in New York Times bestseller Phillip Margolin’s latest thriller featuring Robin Lockwood, A Reasonable Doubt.

Robin Lockwood is a young criminal defense attorney and partner in a prominent law firm in Portland, Oregon.  A former MMA fighter and Yale Law graduate, she joined the firm of legal legend Regina Barrister not long before Regina was forced into retirement by early onset Alzheimer’s.

One of Regina’s former clients, Robert Chesterfield shows up in the law office with an odd request – he’s seeking help form his old attorney in acquiring patent protection for an illusion.  Chesterfield is a professional magician of some renown and he has a major new trick he’s about to debut.  This is out of the scope of the law firm’s expertise, but when Robin Lockwood looks into his previous relationship with the firm, she learns that twenty years ago he was arrested for two murders, one attempted murder, and was involved in the potentially suspicious death of his very rich wife.  At the time, Regina Barrister defended him with ease, after which he resumed his career as a magician in Las Vegas.

Now, decades later, he debuts his new trick – only to disappear at the end.  He’s a man with more than one dark past and many enemies – is his disappearance tied to one of the many people who have good reason to hate him?  Was he killed and his body disposed of, or did he use his considerable skills to engineer his own disappearance?

Robin Lockwood must unravel the tangled skein of murder and bloody mischief to learn how it all ties together.

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Angie Kim’s debut novel Miracle Creek published in April 2019 and it begins with the Yoo family and their business, Miracle Submarine in Miracle Creek, Virginia. Miracle Submarine is a hyperbaric chamber that is controversially used to “treat” the likes of autism, Cerebral Palsy, and infertility. There are various “dives” that take place during each day where groups of people head inside what looks like a submarine, wearing helmets attached to pure oxygen while the chamber is depressurised. During one fateful “dive”, there was chaos; protesters were at Miracle Submarine, a power outage occurred, and six people head into the submarine with only four to come out alive after a fire starts at one of the oxygen tanks.

Miracle Creek is a courtroom drama and a modern day ‘whodunnit’ that breaks down the trial of Elizabeth Ward who was arrested for murder and arson in connection with the explosion and fire at Miracle Submarine. On top of that, Miracle Creek brings up themes such as racism, ableism, sexism, immigration, male fertility, and family dynamics. The reader learns about what happened before, during, and after the explosion through six different sections: “The Incident”, the four trial days a year after the incident happened, and a section simply called “After”. In each of these sections, the reader learns about the events from seven different narrators: Elizabeth (on trial for murder and arson), Pak, Young, and Mary Yoo (South Korean immigrants), Matt and Janine (married and struggling to conceive; Matt survived the explosion), and Theresa (mother to Rosa, a young girl who has Cerebral Palsy; both survived the explosion). Kim flawlessly and intricately interlaces the past and the present of the seven main characters throughout the novel to really give a broader picture of what each character’s life was like before, during, and after the fire. Kim leaves no stone unturned as the reader learns the truth of what really happened on the night of the fire at Miracle Submarine.

Kim’s writing style is both intense and effortless. She not only tells the reader what is going on, she uses gorgeous, rich prose that paints picture after picture for the reader as they make their way through Miracle Creek. Kim has written Miracle Creek in such a way that the reader has to peel back layer after layer to find out more to this mystery. Each character’s story bounces off of the next and propels the story forward at a smooth and steady pace. There is no rushing or redundancy to any of Kim’s writing and everything that she has written in this story has a place; Miracle Creek is extremely satisfying with no questions left unanswered when the reader closes the navy blue book for the final time.

Miracle Creek is not only an entertaining whodunnit, it raises many questions around our own morals and values; the bond and unconditional love we have for our children; and the way we perceive an event in comparison to someone else, even when it is the exact same thing. Kim has written an exquisitely unique piece of art that is to be cherished and praised. Miracle Creek cannot be compared to any other novel solely because it needs no comparison, this hasn’t been done before.

On a personal note, after finishing the novel, I reached out to Angie Kim to share with her a poem (that I had written years ago) about a woman and a weeping willow tree. In Miracle Creek, Mary finds solace in a grove of weeping willow trees, and this setting is brought up multiple times in the story. After sharing my poem with Angie, she told me the inspiration behind the weeping willow grove:

“Mary, in particular, finds the grove of the weeping willows to be her hideaway. That setting was inspired by these two gorgeous weeping willows we have in our backyard, which we planted when we first moved to our house in 1997! They’re now just gorgeous, and I love nothing better than lying on a hammock underneath one of the tree, half-hidden.” – Angie Kim

Miracle Creek is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.

Will you be picking up Miracle Creek? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

How far will you go to protect your family? Will you keep their secrets? Ignore their lies?

In a small town in Virginia, a group of people know each other because they’re part of a special treatment center, a hyperbaric chamber that may cure a range of conditions from infertility to autism. But then the chamber explodes, two people die, and it’s clear the explosion wasn’t an accident.

A showdown unfolds as the story moves across characters who are all maybe keeping secrets, hiding betrayals. Was it the careless mother of a patient? Was it the owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protester, trying to prove the treatment isn’t safe?

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Published in 2017, Lisa Jewell’s 15th novel Then She Was Gone follows the disappearance of fifteen-year-old Ellie Mack and her mother, Laurel Mack, as she learns to cope with life without her ‘Golden Girl’ and how it is okay to move on in life after a tragedy. Then She Was Gone is both a mystery and a domestic thriller that the author has broken up into five different parts with multiple narrators. Jewell manages to juggle each of the unique perspectives with different points-of-view while also bringing them together seamlessly to create a suspenseful storyline, but one that feels predicable. She takes themes such as grief and family dynamics and incorporates them well with various characters that provide some depth to the plot and help move the story along.

Jewell uses the disappearance of Ellie as a way to explore what happens to a family after a child goes missing and then not receiving answers for many years. She shows how differently people experience grief and how that impacts the family dynamic in a way that can become catastrophic to the family unit. Laurel Mack, mother of three, wife, and caretaker is portrayed as a typical mother who has lost her daughter and doesn’t have any answers. Laurel grieves intensely to the point where she pushes her aloof husband away because they are grieving differently and Laurel believes that they need to continue to be sad and not move on with their lives. She also damages her relationship with her other daughter, Hanna, because Laurel makes it clear that Ellie was her favourite and she admits that she wishes that it was Hanna that went missing all those years ago. There is also a third sibling, Jake, who is there but is a very forgettable character. The reader will learn that he is really only part of the story to move the plot along.

As the story progresses, Laurel slowly discovers how for so many years she wallowed in the disappearance of Ellie that she had basically forgotten about the relationships with her other children, and by the end of the novel she has rekindled a friendship with them all. At the end of the novel the reader will learn about Hanna’s wedding and how each of the family members in the Mack family come together and finally feel like a family again after years of being torn apart. Laurel also meets a love interest, Floyd Dunn, and allows herself to finally be happy after years and years of feeling the need to be constantly depressed. But are things too good to be true?

Then She Was Gone lacks themes that make the story feel very predictable and done before. This lack of depth has the reader guessing pretty quickly what is going to happen as the story progresses. Some of the characters feel slightly under developed as well which leads the reader to wonder why some characters are even part of the story. There are a couple of times that a character is solely there for one purpose which in turns brings the plot down slightly because there are some very well developed characters throughout the novel. Even though the story is pretty predictable, and there are some characters that lack complexity, Then She Was Gone is still a very entertaining story where the reader wants to know what’s going to happen even if they have an idea of what is going on. Jewell writes in a way that captivates the reader from start to end.

This is the second novel that I’ve read by Lisa Jewell and while I think she is a fabulous author, and I find her work entertaining, I’m finding that her stories in general can be a tad predictable and not as enriching as I would like. If you enjoy mysteries then you need to check out Then She Was Gone and other works by Lisa Jewell.

Then She Was Gone is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.

Have you read Then She Was Gone? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

THEN
She was fifteen, her mother’s golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone.

NOW
It’s been ten years since Ellie disappeared, but Laurel has never given up hope of finding her daughter.

And then one day a charming and charismatic stranger called Floyd walks into a café and sweeps Laurel off her feet.

Before too long she’s staying the night at this house and being introduced to his nine year old daughter.

Poppy is precocious and pretty – and meeting her completely takes Laurel’s breath away.

Because Poppy is the spitting image of Ellie when she was that age. And now all those unanswered questions that have haunted Laurel come flooding back.

What happened to Ellie? Where did she go?

Who still has secrets to hide?

The post Review: Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

“For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.”

If We Were Villains is the story of seven actors who are very close to graduating an elite college and achieving all of their ambitions when tragedy suddenly strikes. The thing I loved the most about this book is how art bleeds incessantly into reality. The characters are always so focused on their performances, so much that at times they are having a hard time distinguishing between their thoughts, their emotions, their motivations, and those of the characters they are playing on stage. Likewise, the reader has a hard time understanding what’s real and what is not. You could say that the novel is constantly trying to find an answer to the debate whether art imitates life or life imitates art more.

M.L. Rio has a vast knowledge on Shakespeare and it shows as he almost becomes omnipresent in the novel, orchestrating from behind the scenes everything that happens in the lives of these seven young actors. They live and breathe Shakespeare’s works, they even speak in Shakespearean-style which makes other characters find them odd and some readers might even consider them way too pretentious, but nonetheless, I enjoyed being a part of their world. Their performances always came alive on the page and the building tension made the story so thrilling and easy to follow. From the first college year to the fourth, the students are constantly selected and sifted out until only the very best remain which obviously creates a highly competitive environment. Taking this into consideration, there is no surprise that the last actors standing are very ambitious, easily envious and passionate about what they are doing.

The characters are all presented at first as archetypes (hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue and extra). They have been playing the same characters over and over again during their four years of college and as a consequence, they started to identify with those archetypes, but as James becomes interested in trying new things and getting out of that stereotype, the harmony within the group is forever disrupted. This and the fact that they are being forced in class to reveal their deepest insecurities and question who they really are propels them all into almost-existential crises. And as they try to navigate those and the shifting, explosive relationships between them, they start to realise that they are so much more than those roles they have been attributed.

I especially loved Rio’s take on the temptress trope – the woman who’s there to be beautiful and soak into the attention of men – I thought Meredith was so much more than that, her constant insecurities and hidden desires making her a complex character that was fascinating to read about. There was also Oliver, the main protagonist , the one who rather highlights the strengths of his counterparts instead of showing off himself and that becomes visible off stage as well. We constantly see the others through Oliver’s eyes and somehow, he always succeeds in bringing out those hidden parts, the ones that don’t necessarily play into the archetypes they’re supposed to fit into. He’s also the one that introduces us to the story as a confession to the one who brought him to justice years ago on the charge of murder. He asks for immunity to the ones involved, making it obvious from the very beginning that nothing is as it seems.

As someone who adores the dark academia genre, I’ve predicted that I will love this book ardently, but I wasn’t expecting to get so invested in these characters, to see such a great analysis on what it means to be an actor – how you can lose yourself while trying to get into your character and what it means to be so passionate about something that you can let it destroy you willingly. Rio played so well with the darkness inside each of the protagonists, using jealousy and betrayal to build such intricate plot-lines. This close-knit group of friends slowly started to suspect one another, mistrust each other and it all became a terrific journey of ‘what happened? who did it? And most of all, are they going to get away with it?’ The mystery was very well crafted and I had a great time trying to figure out what really happened. The book is magnificently written and you will surely be drawn in the drama of these characters.

If We Were Villains is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.

Have you read If We Were Villains? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

Oliver Marks has just served ten years in jail – for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he’s released, he’s greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago.

As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.

The post Review: If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

The book opens with Rachel making dinner for her family, living a life where her primary concern is potentially burning a casserole. But everything changes in the blink of an eye when a terrible crime rips their world apart.

We immediately skip forward 7 years to the current storyline and we can tell right away that this Rachel is an entirely different person. She has changed herself inside and out, in every possible way: a new identity, new mindset, new physical abilities, and more. She has set her mind to the ideas that she will always protect her two children, and that she will never EVER be a victim again.

But even in this new town, crime seems to find Rachel. When a body is found at the base of a bridge, on a frozen river, Rachel realises that without her this case might not be solved. Inserting herself into the investigation doesn’t sit well with some of the officers on the case, leading to a tumultuous partnership/competition/adversarial setting. Sometimes helpful, sometimes overstepping boundaries, Rachel is eventually made to realise that she is putting her children in danger – the one thing she swore she would never do.

But by this point, Rachel has sunk her teeth into a target. She remembers times where she let go, with terrible consequences. This time she is determined to keep going until the killer is found and apprehended. She has seen too many criminals victimise too many people, and she is determined that, at least in this case, she is going to see that this killer will never hurt anyone else.

Early on, Rachel comes across as a little bit over the top. She seems a little too able to do absolutely everything, bordering into Batman-territory. But as you get flashbacks about what she has done and how hard she has worked to get to this point, you can’t help but get behind her 100 percent. She isn’t perfect, she is very human, and extremely well written.

The non-linear timeline might be frustrating for some readers (even though it’s one of my favourite storytelling devices) as there are quite a few events referred to in the book that the reader has to wait quite a bit for their reveal. But the reveals do come, and they are always worth the wait.

Hide Away is certainly a thrill ride, but it is also a story about overcoming victimhood, maintaining family bonds, growing stronger, and learning who and when to trust. Pinter has created a heroine who is mentally and physically capable of holding her own against just about anyone, and I am here for it!

Hide Away is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of March 1st 2020.

Will you be picking up Hide Away? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

From the bestselling author of the Henry Parker series comes a page-turning thriller about a vigilante who’s desperate to protect her secrets – and bring a killer to justice.

On the surface, Rachel Marin is an ordinary single mother, on the inside, she’s a fierce, brilliant vigilante.  After an unspeakable crime shatters her life, she changes her identity and moves to a small town in Illinois, hoping to spare her children from further trauma…or worse.  But crime follows her everywhere.

When the former mayor winds up dead, Rachel can’t help but get involved.  Where local detectives see suicide, she sees murder.  They resent her for butting in – especially since she is always one step ahead.  But her investigative genius may be her undoing: the deeper she digs, the harder t is to keep her own secrets buried.

Her persistence makes her a target of both the cops and a killer. Meanwhile, the terrifying truth about her past threatens to come to light, and Rachel learns the hard way that she can’t trust anyone.  Surrounded by danger, she must keep her steely resolve, protect her family, and stay one step ahead, or else she may become the next victim.

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The Family Upstairs, which published in 2019, is written by well-known British author, Lisa Jewell. The story follows three different narrators: Libby Jones, Lucy Lamb, and Henry Lamb. Libby’s point-of-view is written in third person and in the present where the reader learns that on her 25th birthday, she inherits the house of her biological parents. Libby knows nothing of her birth family and sets out on a journey of self-discovery to find out who she really is and what happened in the home she was born in.

Lucy’s point-of-view is also written in third person and in the present where the reader learns about how and why Lucy, her children, and her dog are homeless and are trying to get out of France and back to England. The reader learns that Lucy intends to go back to England because of “the baby’s” 25th birthday. Henry Lamb’s point-of-view is told in first person and in the past, explaining what happened in the house that Libby has now just inherited. Near the end of the novel, Henry’s point-of-view changes to second person as he starts to tell his story as if the reader is Libby herself. It was easy enough to go between the three different narratives and keep track of each character’s story without feeling lost. What was interesting was Jewell’s choice of writing only one point-of-view in first person while the other two were in third person point-of-views.

While The Family Upstairs is considered a thriller, the plot felt more like a coming-of-age story and a family drama. Each of the three main characters experience and describe events happening to them, in their respectable timelines, which help shape them into the people they are at the end of the novel. Jewell is able to do this by using her incredibly detailed writing to have each of the main characters transform using the characteristics they each lack the most at the beginning, to become the thing that enhances them by the end. She does take the reader on a path of twists and turns that, may be slightly predictable, tell a dark and twisty story using the plots main theme: family dysfunction. One thing the reader will notice is the lack of other themes in The Family Upstairs. Throughout the novel, family dysfunction is focused on significantly and it becomes a tad predictable because of that. The story would’ve been enhanced if Jewell focused on some other themes to help tell the story. There are a few times in the novel where the reader may feel lost as there are some loose ends that never seem to be resolved, which in turn leads the reader to believing some parts of the plot could have been left out altogether, or done in a way that made a little more sense to the plot. Jewell’s writing paints a picture for the reader, however this picture lacks fluidity at times and feels choppy because she goes into such detail that some points become moot.

The Family Upstairs kept me interested enough to want to know what was going to happen in the end, but overall I was not thrilled by this thriller and felt it fizzle as the story went on. I was yearning for something more sinister to take place, and while there were a lot of sinister things that do happen throughout the plot, they never really hit the mark as unpredictable or jaw-dropping. Jewell does a great job of telling a story about a family using family dysfunction as her main theme, but lacks other themes in the story that could’ve enriched the plot further. If you enjoy coming-of-age stories or stories that focus on family drama, then The Family Upstairs should be on your to-be-read list.

The Family Upstairs is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.

Have you read The Family Upstairs? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone and Watching You comes another page-turning look inside one family’s past as buried secrets threaten to come to light.

Be careful who you let in.

Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.

She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.

Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.

In The Family Upstairs, the master of “bone-chilling suspense” (People) brings us the can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.

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Disclaimer: There is mention of self-harm throughout this review, as well as in the novel.

Published in 2006, Sharp Objects was written by the then 36-year-old Gillian Flynn and while this was Flynn’s debut novel, she is most known for her equally gripping novel, Gone Girl. Sharp Objects follows the story of Camille Preaker, a newspaper journalist in Chicago, Illinois living her life away from her semi-estranged family in Wind Gap, Missouri. Camille is given the daunting task of returning to Wind Gap to cover a brutal murder and a second missing child, as well as having the equally uncomfortable chore of visiting her emotionally high-strung mother, Adora, spoiled half-sister, Amma, and aloof step-father, Alan. While reporting the brutal murder and missing child, Camille is also forced to relive parts of her life that continue to create turmoil inside of her head.

Flynn’s writing is something to be admired and respected. She takes the time to create an intricately sewn story with complex characters, a gripping plot, edgy themes, and she manages to rope you in from the very beginning. Flynn writes exquisitely about uncomfortable themes such as self-harm, family dysfunction, and mental health throughout this psychological thriller. Sharp Objects does a gorgeous job at slowly unravelling Camille’s past while also tying up loose ends in the present. As the story progresses, the reader learns more about Camille’s past instead of finding out all of her background information at the beginning of the novel and this is a wonderful way to be introduced to a character because you get to know her organically and find out shocking parts of Camille’s life in the same way molasses spills off of a spoon, drawn out beautifully to keep you wanting more.

Sharp Objects goes beyond crime and suspense and dives into three main branching themes: family dysfunction, self-harm, and mental health. All three of these themes parallel the main plot and are all important to the story. The relationship between Camille, Adora, and Amma are the main relationships Sharp Objects and Flynn uses these characters to explain and discuss family dysfunction, she even throws in a step-father who occasionally speaks up, but usually turns away from all of the drama in their life. The three women have an intensely complicated relationship with one another and as the story progresses their relationships evolve, intensify, and become even more dysfunctional.

The next big theme that is brought up time and time again is self-harm. Without giving too much away, Camille and her mother, Adora, both suffer from different afflictions which cause them to self-harm in different ways. What is fascinating about this theme is that is tends to be taboo in that it is a sensitive thing to discuss. Flynn takes this uncomfortable theme and writes about it in such an elegant way without making the reader uncomfortable. Of course this is a theme that should not be taken lightly, and any reader who finds the talk of self-harm triggering should be wary of this theme throughout the story.

The final topic that Flynn focuses on is mental health. In 2006, talk of mental health was still a stigmatised topic, and one that was not discussed as much as it is today. Even with that in mind, Flynn uses mental health as a firm theme that is brought up repeatedly throughout the novel. All three of these themes: family dysfunction, self-harm, and mental health all play off of each other creating twists and turns that escalate towards the climax of the story where they all end up colliding together to form some exceptional revelations.

I remember getting to a part in the story and thinking that I had it all figured out, but Sharp Objects twists and turns so much that the reader never knows where Flynn is taking them next. Flynn uses the themes of family dysfunction, self-harm, and mental health to bring her characters and the plot come to life. She is constantly ten steps ahead of the reader, even if the reader believes that they have it all figured out.

For a debut novel that came out 14 years ago, Sharp Objects not only holds up to other books in its genre today, but it still stands up there with Gone Girl as the books other authors want their novels to be compared to. If you have not had the chance to read this stunningly spine-chilling novel, then do yourself a favour and pick up a copy; you will not want to put down Sharp Objects until the very last word (and then stare into nothing with your mouth ajar as you process everything).

Sharp Objects is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.

Have you read Sharp Objects? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | 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.

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Those who enjoyed her previous book, The Broken Girls, will immediately remember the ghost-story vibe that she expertly imbues into her work. There are other similarities between the two novels, including the dual timelines running throughout, with each timeline populated by members of the same family. In both books, the main character of the current-day timeline is seeking answers to some family mystery that no one can, or will, provide.

But the characters in The Sun Down Motel feel more dynamic, more memorable, and more vivid than in her previous book. The story driving the book forward is clearer and more exciting, as well.

Written in a very cinematic way, in that I was already picturing this as a movie before I had finished chapter two, this is a story about an out-of-the-way motel in upstate New York where Viv Delaney disappeared in 1982. It’s now 2017 and her niece Carly, who has always been fascinated by the mystery of her Aunt Viv, is at a point in her life where she thinks it’s the right time to get the answers she has always longed for. She soon finds herself following in her Aunt Viv’s footsteps, literally, in hopes of solving this disappearance that has always haunted their family.

Carly quickly finds out Viv was trying to solve some mysteries herself, and as the chapters alternate between these two women we see just how strong the parallels of their two lives have become. St. James unravels the story at just the right pace to keep you turning pages late into the night.

There is also a great cast of characters that will keep you guessing who to trust, who to be wary of, and who just might save the day.

And I absolutely have to mention the dedication St. James included in this book. “For the odd girls, the nerdy girls, and the murderinos. This one is yours.”  I have never felt more recognised.

The Sun Down Motel is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of February 18th 2020.

Will you be picking up The Sun Down Motel? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

The secrets lurking in a rundown roadside motel ensnare a young woman, just as they did her aunt thirty-five years before, in this new atmospheric suspense novel from the national best-selling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.

Upstate New York, 1982.  Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel.  Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better.  Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets.  Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City.  But so9mething isn’t right at the Sun Down, and before long she is determined to uncover all of the secrets hidden…

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Many hearing-impaired inhabitants of Scunthorpe, England, find friendship, respite, understanding, and solace in the weekly deaf club. When disaster strikes and one of their own is murdered, an innocent little girl, deaf club is rocked to its core. With everyone suspecting one another, no-one feels safe and everyone seems to have a motive. Overprotective mother? Neglectful father? Distracted stepmother? Violent brother? Or was it simply a stranger and a crime of opportunity? The police don’t seem to have a clue, so police sign-language interpreter Paige and her little sister, Anna, take it upon themselves to solve the crime, stepping into a world full of dark revelations, twists, turns, and mortal danger.

Author Nell Pattison studies relationships within a small and close-knit group of people where everyone knows everyone; with gossip and rumours are rife. Love triangles, abuse, and adultery take place tinged with the realistic ‘messiness’ of real life. With all the secrets, comes a plethora of ethical and moral questions around relationships, parenting, crime, and right and wrong. Even our protagonist Paige has her own dilemmas, should she tell police that she knows more about the family involved that she’s letting on? Should she share her suspicions or has her investigation implicated her in her own crimes? Pattison invites us a question our own morals and ethics when we think, ‘what would I do?’ and is making the right decision as easy as it seems?

One of the main themes explored within The Silent House is hearing impairment and inclusion. As a hearing person, I felt that the novel gave a window into a different world and increased my understanding of the experience of those with a hearing impairment and the struggles faced in a predominantly hearing world. It prompted me to question how I myself can be more inclusive of others with different life experiences than my own. How can society as a whole become less ableist and more understanding of everyone. It added an inclusive layer to the book and will hopefully start a revolution of more diverse characters with a range of backgrounds and disabilities within crime-thrillers and murder mysteries.

The book is a little slow to start after an initial sinister short murder-scene and at times is seemed that some of the characters were a little two dimensional and could have used some further development. A past event also including the death of a child is alluded to throughout the book but when finally explained, it felt very disconnected with the rest of the story and didn’t seem to really add anything to the main storyline. If you are in it for a creepy, detailed description of the murderer tiptoeing around the house with the family sleeping soundly, unaware of their incoming doom, the book unfortunately lets us down on this front. It’s more a build up to the incident and the interviews in the aftermath, but this still makes for a sinister read in its own unique way.

Overall, The Silent House is a strong and terrifically terrifying debut novel from Pattison. The multiple red-herrings thrown in led me to question ‘who dunnit’ right up until the last few pages. I was actually panicking that there weren’t enough pages left to resolve the story! Luckily all is resolved in a satisfying and neat ending, leaving us only to wonder whether Paige resolves her own love triangle!

The Silent House is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of March 5th 2020.

Will you be picking up The Silent House? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

If someone was in your house, you’d know. Wouldn’t you? But the Hunter family are deaf, and don’t hear a thing when a shocking crime takes place in the middle of the night. Instead, they wake up to their worst nightmare.

The police call Paige Northwood to the scene to interpret for the witnesses. They’re in shock, but Paige senses the Hunters are hiding something.

One by one, people Paige knows from the Deaf community start to fall under suspicion. But who would kill a little girl? Was it an intruder? Or was the murderer closer to home?

This mystery will keep you up all night – perfect for fans of The Silent Patient and Cara Hunter

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