My dad is in his last few weeks of a terminal illness and finding things to read has been a struggle. I don't want anything too happy and I also don't want anything too sad, so I've kind of just been starting and stopping books before leaving them in TBR limbo.
YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE COME HERE is the first book I've read in a while that I zipped through. I finished it in less than a day. It's dual-POV the story of Grace and Calvin. Grace is going to an AirBnB in rural Wyoming, looking for a little bit of a getaway. Calvin is attracted to her at first sight and doesn't think that the week she's booked is going to be long enough considering his instantaneous attraction. But both of them are hiding secrets, and neither of them are what they appear to be.
Did I guess the twist 10% in? Yes. Did I care? No. The vibes were vibing and there was a fun, almost borderline-sense of comedic timing that would crop up every now and then, making me smile in amusement. The idea of going to an AirBnB with no wi-fi where the male owner lives on the property really is a horror story and it's no surprise to me at all that a female author came up with that premise.
I found this in a little free library near my house. I loved the title and premise. TRULY DARKLY DEEPLY is about a mother and daughter who end up becoming enamored with her new boyfriend, the perfect man by all accounts: handsome, charming, and seemingly in love with them both. But then young women start dying in sinister and awful ways and it seems like the perfect boyfriend might be the killer.
The bare bones of this story were great but the execution left me wanting. I like mixed media when it's incorporated into a book, but here it felt more like filler rather than adding to the story in a significant and meaningful way. The confrontation that's talked about on the back of the book is dragged out, so the reader is forced to read to the bitter end, and while I did appreciate the twist... I also saw it coming. Which is partly due to good foreshadowing but also partly due to predictability and lack of any real red herrings.
I don't think this book is bad at all but it definitely gives airport thriller vibes in that it's something I'd read in an hour or two and then put aside and probably not remember later.
This is a strange, short, faced-paced thriller that kind of reminded me of some of the erotic thrillers from the 90s. Especially with the whole, "ooooh, BDSM is so fringe and weird" subplot that entered briefly.
I liked the writing style a lot. Eden and Olivia were both distinct narrators with flaws and quirks. I thought Eden was better rounded than Olivia, who fell into a literary stereotype trap that was a little hard to swallow. The first half of this book was great and one twist actually made me gasp out loud, although it didn't pan out the way I had hoped it would.
The second half of the book was a bit anticlimactic by comparison. I thought I knew what was going to happen and then when what I thought was going to happen didn't happen, I realized that I didn't like the actual ending better lol. It almost felt like the author wasn't sure how she wanted to end this book and drew random endings out of a hat.
I would read more from this author but man, this family needs a TON of therapy.
Whoa. The next time someone asks me for a book rec of a dude who actually does a good job writing female characters, I'm sending them this. THE CLIFF HOUSE by Chris Brookmyre is fast-paced trashy fun, about a group of women who go to an isolated venue in the Hebrides for a bachelorette weekend only for someone to be murdered. But there's a twist on the usual "oh no, murder party!" plot: every single one of these ladies has a dark and glaring secret.
This book was a little silly but the characters were amazing and the tension was SO well done. There were several twists that literally had me shocked, and I admired how everything came together full circle. It's been a while since I read a book that hooked me from the beginning, and had me engaged from start to finish, but this was it.
I'll have to check out more books by this author because this one basically ticked all of my boxes. Except the smut box. But honestly, there was enough scandalous behavior in here to make up for it.
Thanks so much to my friend Corvina for buddy-reading with me!
I loved the idea behind this: a girl leveraging social media to find the serial killer who murdered her mother? I'm happy to report that the execution was good, too.
Jess's mother was murdered by the Magpie Man when she was just seven years old, creating a wound that never healed. When the opportunity to be on a reality TV show with vlogs shows up, she thinks it might be a way to provoke the killer into doing something stupid and outing himself once and for all. Or, at the very least, a way to reach someone who knows something.
I liked this book a lot. It was fast-paced and tightly plotted. There wasn't a ton of substance to it but I was engaged the whole time. If they played up the romance a little more this would make a great CW TV show lol. There's even a bit of "is he the bad guy or just a hot man who's into me?" which is always my favorite trope.
This was a buddy-read with my friend Corvina. WALK OF THE SPIRITS has been on my TBR for a while because Richie Tankersley Cusick is one of my favorite horror/thriller books of all time. Most of her books are YA but she has two adult titles. Her adult titles are among her best work, I think because she had to dial stuff way down for her YA publishers. Even so, her older stuff tends to be wilder than her newer books. WALK OF THE SPIRITS is so mild that it could probably be on the Disney channel.
There's a lot about this book I did like, though. Nobody does atmosphere like this author. I also thought the heroine was bland but fine (surprised by how many people were calling her obnoxious in the reviews; she's almost ridiculously inoffensive). Also, one of the other girls talks about how she's had casual sex and the heroine is super unjudgemental about it, which is a rarity for the 00s. I also liked the Louisiana ghost culture elements and the fact that one of the love interests was a hot, dangerous Cajun guy.
Where this book fell apart was that it foreshadowed creepy stuff but then it didn't pay off. I had an idea of how this book would end and when I wasn't even close, I was mad, because I liked my idea better. The ending was ridiculous. Apparently, there's a sequel, so some of the open-endedness made sense, but my issues with the main storyline remain.
I still love this author but I won't be recommending WALK OF THE SPIRITS to anyone.
There's a Little Free Library near me that, I kid you not, is owned by someone with the best taste in books. I'll go there a couple times a week to do drop offs of my own cast-offs, and I'll find some really amazing thrillers and romance novels in there to take home. IT TAKES MONSTERS is one of those.
The premise intrigued me-- because who doesn't love the revenge fantasy of a fed-up woman who decides her husband must die for taking away her agency and turning her into a baby-maker-- and the cover seemed to promise some sort of sexy menage action... or maybe another man or woman, who maybe, idk, helps the heroine hide the body? (Or bodies? *wiggles eyebrows*) But no.
I don't want to say too much about this book because less is definitely more and I also don't want to spoil the ending (which I TOTALLY predicted, by the way, ugh). So first, here's what the book did well. This had a fun, almost retro, 90s horror/thriller vibe to it, and I liked that. The banter was also fun and sometimes quotable, and you know me, I love a female antiheroine (even if she's pretty stupid and is a little too attached to her emotional support murder tarp). Victoria was hilarious and fun.
IT TAKES MONSTERS didn't work for me in a couple ways. I feel like the premise and the cover promise smut, or at least some spice. This book had no spice. What KILLS me is that it would have been so easy to include some too, since one of the scenes literally takes place at a masked sex party, which the heroine goes to and does not have sex. RUDE. I also felt like the motive for the murders didn't make sense, and for me, that's the whole point of a murder mystery. Having it make sense.
This wasn't a bad book by any means and even though I kinda sorta skimmed the end a little bit, I would read more from this author. It's too gory to be a cozy mystery but if you are looking for thrillers that don't have spice or romance, but do feature female protagonists and a bit of a scare, this will definitely be your cup of tea. Thanks so much to Corvina for reading it with me!
Whoa. This was great. There seems to be a challenge to compare every Black horror and Black thriller novel to Get Out but this is one of the few cases where the comparison is totally on point. Sydney lives in a small Brooklyn neighborhood filled with beautiful brownstones that is slowly becoming gentrified. Her newer white neighbors are the yuppies you love to hate, and a biotech company is buying up property, ostensibly to be used as campuses for their employees.
Sydney, who grew up in this neighborhood, is suspicious of this so-called progress. Especially when long-time residents of the area begin to sell their homes in a panic and/or disappear. Theo, a white man in a tempestuous relationship with his not-quite wife, is one of the new buyers. However the house and his girlfriend are both proving to be unexpected nightmares, especially when he learns that Kim is a little too comfortable wearing her privilege like it's a new Anthropologie sweater. He's way more interested in Sydney, who is down to earth and real in a way that his girlfriend never was. When she asks for his help on a Black tourism project, it seems innocent.
But something dark is lurking in their small, idyllic neighborhood.
I don't want to say too much else, but I REALLY enjoyed WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING a lot. The plotting is tight, the suspense is amazing, and it tells you so much about Black American history and redlining that really aren't taught in schools. Also, while not explicitly stated, there are certain events in this book that seem to be a direct reference to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. I know I saw some critics saying that the white people seemed too evil but honestly, I didn't think so. History says otherwise.
Get Out examined the literal commodification of Black bodies for coolness and clout. The Other Black Girl examined tokenism in the workplace and the weaponization of white guilt and "diversity" hires. NO ONE IS WATCHING, meanwhile, is an intense, no-holds barred call-out of gentrification and the literal erasure of Black people in history, both recent and distant.
I've been reading Cole's books since she was doing indie stuff and I just knew she was going to be big. She might actually be even better at thrillers than she is at romance, and when I saw that she had a gothic murder mystery as her up and coming effort, I nearly screamed.
The moment I heard the hook for this book, I knew I had to have it. It's told in dual POV. The first is Paula, a woman who blackmails a pop star for the return of his cell phone after finding out that he's having an affair. The second is Claire, a cop investigating a murder that occurs at a party where both Paula and the other woman were present.
Who died? And why??? The answer may surprise you.
So THE NIGHT IN QUESTION was super fun. I didn't guess whodunnit right away and I liked the two timelines. It was artfully done and kept me in suspense, wanting to find out what happened. The juciness of the murder and adultery plots was also quite fun. This had the vibes of a limited series, and I really enjoyed that.
Points off for a little bit of a lackluster ending and characters who occasionally fell flat. But overall, I'd say that if you like "beach read" style mysteries and morally gray FMCs, you'll probably love this!
I fell in love with this author's Jane Eyre retelling, THE SILENT WIFE, and immediately added a ton of her books to my TBR. Thank God most of them are on KU. UNMISSING sounded like the perfect book to launch into next: it's about a married couple whose lives are disrupted when the husband's missing wife, previously thought dead, returns unexpectedly one cool night.
Merritt and Luca have the perfect bougie life in Coastal Oregon. Until Lydia returns, after being held in captivity by a man she refers to as The Monster for nine years. But instead of going to the police, she gets a job with a crunchy new age woman and her crystal shop before confronting the husband and wife team directly.
This was a really fun story. It kind of felt like a soap opera. Was it the best written thriller I've ever read? No. But I really enjoyed it, and even though the twists didn't exactly surprise me (maybe I've read too many mysteries??) I really appreciated all of them.
HUSHED has been on my Kindle for a while but I wasn't in the right mental state to read it. Now that I've finished, I'm glad I waited, because this is one of those risk-taking books that kind of challenges the constraints of the genre its written in, and it does it for the best.
Archer is a stoic and damaged young man who is just starting college. He's incredibly withdrawn and depressed, and reads a little like an incel but without the sexism that goes hand in hand with that. He's desperately in love with his childhood friend, Vivian, an emotionally manipulative young woman who keeps getting into bad relationships where Archer ends up sidelined until she drops the guy and decides she needs him again. This is the forever cycle the two of them are locked into until Archer meets another guy named Evan.
This love triangle from hell would be toxic enough if Archer weren't also a murderer. Because he and Vivian basically grew up as brother and sister, and when they were still both kids, Archer saw Vivian's brother and all his friends sexually assault Viv. Now he's been slowly killing them off, one by one. And if Vivian-- or Evan-- ever finds out what he's been doing, there might be hell to pay.
HUSHED is a great book. It's one of the darker YA books I've ever read, which keeps the content from being darker than it probably would have been if it were an adult novel. The psychological elements are really well done and I was really impressed at how all of the characters were drawn. The whole thing is plotted like a movie, and I'm honestly shocked it doesn't have more ratings than it does. Any of the dark romance girlies who are also into M/M are going to LOVE this book. It has all the same beats.
This book feels like a cruel trick because it does a lot of things right but in combination they don't really work. IN THE CUT is an edgy thriller that kind of feels like Dangerous Minds if it was written by Andrew Vachss. The heroine, an inner city high school teacher in New York, collects slang the way other people collect coins and has suspect relationships with her low-income students. When a woman turns up murdered in her area, she also starts having kinky and equally suspect sex with the Irish cop on the case. Because a girl in her hoe phase has to be in her hoe phase.
IN THE CUT feels like a very mean book. The non-ending doesn't give closure, it throws around slurs and racial stereotypes like rice at a wedding, and the heroine makes all kinds of foolish choices for no apparent reason. Also, someone just straight up gets their nip sliced off, and it's just another day in the park as far as this book is concerned.
I feel like I have whiplash and not in a good way.
I found this in a Little Free Library and decided to pick it up on a whim since it was a Goodreads Choice Award. I wasn't sure how I would feel about it when I first picked it up, but it ended up being kind of like if SUCH A FUN AGE were written by Harlan Coben. So, basically an intimate dissection of privilege, racism, generational pain, and culture shock-- with thriller elements!
There are two narrators in this book: Jasmine and Rebecca. Jasmine has come here from China illegally and is struggling to support herself while seeking the daughter who was stolen from her years ago. Rebecca is a white woman who works at a publishing firm that used to be her father's. She's trying to acquire the hottest new book written by a woman of color, but there are dark secrets dogging her past.
I liked how the two stories intertwined. I guessed most of the twists but I really liked how the author did them and I think this would translate well to the screen. My only qualm is that the last act felt rushed and a little messy, but the ending made me tear up.
I really tried to stick with this one because the writing style is very good. This is basically a gender-swapped AMERICAN PSYCHO, with a shallow and sociopathic sorority girl as the killer. One day, she decides that she just really wants to kill the guys in her life, and embarks upon a stabby, slashy spree.
One thing I didn't see anyone talking about is that the heroine has an ED, and calorie restriction and purging feature pretty heavily as themes in this book. I feel this is supposed to be juxtaposed against her feral appetite for killing and savagery, as well as the consumerist LA culture she lives in. If you're reading deeply into this book, I think you could say that Tiffany is a violent rebellion against the patriarchy and the societal standards that said patriarchy has imposed upon women.
I probably would have liked this more if I hadn't read so many other female serial killer-fronted books that took this concept and ran with it slightly better. Would recommend this to people who enjoyed books such as SWEETPEA, HOW TO KILL MEN AND GET AWAY WITH IT, and BOY PARTS.
So I almost DNFed this in the beginning because I wasn't sure that I liked the writing style, but once I got used to the ornate and flowery prose and the slow beginning, I couldn't put this book down. THE END OF EVERYTHING is quietly devastating and absolutely heartbreaking to read. It's a coming of age story about grooming, girlhood, toxic masculinity, and the viciousness of first friendships. For almost the entire book, dread sat like a hot coal in the pit of my gut, and I feared so much for these poor, poor girls.
I don't want to say too much, but basically this book is set in a small town in the 1980s. Lizzie is friends with two sisters, Evie and Dusty, but Evie is her best friend. Dusty, the older sister, fills Lizzie with awe, because she's older and beautiful and in a way, aspirational. But Evie is her ride or die, and she spends as much time at the Verver household that she does at her own.
Then one day, Evie goes missing and everyone suspects it was an older man. A pervert with a taste for young girls. Lizzie decides to look into her best friend's disappearance, but the closer she gets to the Verver family, the darker and more convoluted the evil truth becomes.
I'm a little shocked that the ratings for this book are so low. I have to figure it's either the writing style (fair) or because people didn't understand that all of these girls are unreliable narrators. I see the same problem in books like LOLITA or MY DARK VANESSA, where if you don't have media literacy and take everything those narrators are saying at face value, you could read those books and think that they're actually defending the abuse of children. But that is REALLY not the case here. I feel like THE END OF EVERYTHING is a cautionary tale more than anything: not against girls needing to be more careful because fuck victim blaming, but about the desperate need for society to protect girls who, in their innocence, might conflate abuse with love.
God, this was heartbreaking. I feel like I need a hug. That ending. Woof.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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