This Little Family by Ines Bayard

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher 4th Estate in exchange for an honest review.

Occasionally you read a book that will haunt you forever. This is one of those books.

This Little Family is not really the book I expected going in and I think the blurb is actually fairly misleading. This is not really a psychological thriller or horror, except in the sense of it being a real-life horror. This is the story of Marie, a poor woman who is raped by her boss and then through a series of circumstances, forced to give birth to the child. She then goes through some of the worst postpartum depression I've ever read about, all depicted and described in heart-breaking detail.

This is not the kind of book someone 'enjoys' but I absolutely could not put it down. The writing is superb and there is a kind of car-crash fascination with the constant barrage of bad luck and psychological trauma Marie goes through. I kept reading hoping something would work out better for her, knowing from the prologue that it wouldn't. At the same time, this book is incredibly honest and sensitive in the way it portrays Marie (in my opinion at least). Nothing is gratuitous or unnecessary, and it all feels like a very real portrayal of someone's pain.

If you're looking for a reading experience that might profoundly change you as a person or a deep exploration of a truly awful situation, then this is the book for you. If you want a typical thriller with twists and turns and psychological tension, then ignore the marketing. Thankfully this book ended up appealing to me anyway, far more than most thrillers can, but I do wonder how many people will be mislead and unfairly rate the book due to the poor choice of marketing. It really does deserve better

Overall Rating:

Little Darlings by Melanie Golding

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Crooked Lane Books in exchange for an honest review.

Ooh. Normally I am not a fan of thrillers where you don't know whether something mystical is happening or not. However, with Little Darlings it really works. This is the story of new mum Lauren who, after giving birth to twins, starts to really struggle with motherhood and finds changeling stories filling her mind. Her husband Paul is not as helpful as she'd hoped he would be and it culminates in Lauren being convinced her babies have been swapped with fairy alternatives. To get them back though, she must make a dark decision...

This is a fairly straightforward story for a thriller but honestly that is one of the book's greatest strengths. The whole time you are guessing whether there is a mundane explanation for Lauren's beliefs or whether perhaps something magical has occurred. The book never loses focus of this key element and as a result, it is a tightly-wound and atmospheric read. You're kept at a slight distance from most of the characters but again, it really works. Can you trust Lauren's perception as our narrator? Is her husband just selfish or is he up to something more sinister? The detective character adds a much-needed outsider viewpoint and her thoughts mirror that of the reader's. It all adds up to a great reading experience and Golding clearly has writing talent.

I will not give anything away about how the story ends or whether the book crosses into full-fledged fantasy or not, but rest assured that the ending is both satisfying and excellently built to. This is a fantastic debut novel from Golding and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for her future work. If you enjoy thrillers that slowly suck you into their world and deal with some harsh aspects of reality at the same time, I highly recommend checking this out.

Overall Rating:

Hunting Annabelle

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Harlequin-Mira in exchange for an honest review.

It is so hard for me to pin down how I felt about this book. On the one hand, I felt it was fairly well-written and I was definitely engaged throughout most of it. On the other hand, I absolutely hated the ending and felt like it got very rambly and repetitive about 50% of the way through.

One thing I would like to make clear is that this should definitely be considered a YA thriller. Hunting Annabelle is about a teenager named Sean with severe mental health difficulties (labelled schizophrenia but as a psychologist, I'm not entirely convinced). Sean meets a girl called Annabelle, goes on a date with her and then sees her get kidnapped in front of his eyes. He goes straight to the police but due to his mental health difficulties and some dark things from his past, they don't believe him. He then decides to take matters into his own hands and investigates her disappearance.

For the first half or so of this book, I was very engaged and intrigued by the story. I don't really enjoy reading thrillers with unreliable narrators anymore because I tend to just switch off and wait until the author reveals what really happened at the end, but Sean's potential hallucinations are sort of kept to a minimum and aren't too intrusive. The mental health rep in this is pretty shocking but then, I don't expect a lot from thrillers. There is a fair amount of accuracy in terms of treatment and that side of things but the actual details about the condition are few and far between. Maybe this was meant to add to the ambiguity aspect but it felt lacking to me. I can definitely see it angering some people.

The problems start to kick in around 50% of the way through. Firstly, the story becomes incredibly repetitive. Sean goes to meet someone from Annabelle's past, he finds out a little more about her and then he gets the name of the next person to go see. Rinse and repeat for like 100 pages. Secondly, Sean discovers something very incriminating about a person in Annabelle's life which seems like it would be important to the investigation. An intense fight happens and Sean escapes with evidence of this incriminating thing and then...nothing happens? It isn't mentioned properly until the very end and it's incredibly distracting to have this plot device just hanging there like the elephant in the corner. I initially expected this encounter to be a hallucination of Sean which would explain why it was just forgotten about but this turns out not to be the case and it's just a really baffling writing decision.

This review is spoiler free but the final and biggest problem with this book is the ending. I found it very unbelievable and frankly a bit of a cop-out, and it soured the tone of the whole book for me. Overall, I can see some people really liking this book but I'm just not convinced it brings anything new to the thriller genre. I think the writing has real potential and there are a lot of nice elements at the start of the book. I would want to read more by the author but I can't really recommend this to people, and the problems far outweigh the good points. Sadly this was not a winner.

Overall Rating:

.5

Little Monsters by Kara Thomas

I read a lot of YA. I read a lot of thrillers. But something I tend to neglect somewhat in my reading in YA thrillers. Recently I've been in the mood for them so I finally picked up Little Monsters which has been on my TBR list forever. And yeah, it's pretty damn good.

One great thing about this book is it did not go in the direction I expected. It wasn't 100% surprising and I could see a lot of what happened around the middle of the book coming from a mile off, but then the story evolved and went in a slightly different direction again which was surprising. I will say that the very end (as in, literally the last sentence) was confusing for me. I didn't understand what it was trying to do, though it was framed as a last-minute twist of sorts. Maybe someone can explain to me what that meant because yeah, it left things on a weird note.

Little Monsters tells the story of Kacey, the relatively new girl in town who is still struggling to find her place among her friends. The plot kicks off when her two best friends don't invite her to a party one night and, unfortunately, this is also the night where one of the friends mysteriously vanishes. Like most YA thrillers, this book does take some ridiculous turns. They're not awful but they're not exactly the most logical of routes either. Kacey also makes terrible decisions throughout which is very frustrating. I consider both of those features of the YA thriller genre though so I'm willing to let it slide. I get very tense reading about people accused of a murder they didn't commit so perhaps Kacey's poor decisions got to me more than they would most.

Overall, this is a neat little read. The writing style is pleasant enough and I definitely wanted to keep reading to find out what happened next. The ending is satisfying if not perfect, and all the characters are quite well-developed and interesting. If YA thrillers are your thing, you should definitely check this one out.

Overall Rating:

White Lies by Lucy Dawson

I received an ARC from Net Galley and publisher Bookouture in exchange for an honest review.

Now this was a good one.

I read a lot of thrillers and yet I haven't really read anything like White Lies. The story starts with our doctor protagonist Alex sleeping with a random guy she meets in Ibiza, only to return home to realise that she has accidentally slept with a teenage patient of hers. The story flips perspectives so you hear her side first, followed by Jonathan's and then some other characters' as well for good measure. This is the kind of thriller that makes you doubt everything the characters say, but in a really enjoyable way that means you can't put the book down. I loved how the reader was made to doubt Alex and how this was mirrored by the doubts of both the media and her husband in-story. I also liked how Alex was kept at a little bit of a distance from the reader in comparison to the other characters, despite her being the first POV we get. Not returning to her head after we hear Jonathan's side continued that doubt and kept the reader guessing in a really effective way.

In general, the writing style here is very good. All the characters are well-developed and have a unique voice to them. The only minor gripe I had was that the author seemed to have certain vendettas which unfortunately leaked their way into the story. For example, at one point a character complains about how people can become famous on Youtube for doing nothing, and this is mentioned again later by a different character. It's not plot-relevant and it seems like Dawson just wanted to rant a little about social media. There are a few little moments like that with the teenage characters as well which just seem a bit off. However, I have read far worse-written teenage characters, especially in thrillers.

Overall, this was a nice little surprise in a genre I am very familiar with. The actual mystery aspect isn't too complicated which bumped down the rating a little, though there was still an unexpected moment or two. The strength of this thriller is the characters and how you get invested in finding out which ones you can trust, and it is this that drives the book rather than lots of surprising twists and dramatic happenings. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely seek out more from the author.

Overall Rating:

.5

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

SPOILERS AHEAD (Technically. You should be able to figure this one out anyway but yeah)

What do I do with this book? On the one hand, A. J. Finn is a very talented writer and I was completely sucked into the world of this book. On the other hand, the plot absolutely sucked. I mean, for a thriller this was bad. Let me tell you, there is nothing more frustrating than when you're reading a thriller and you've figured out the 'twist' because it's insanely obvious and yet the main character remains painfully oblivious. The Woman in the Window is a particularly bad example of this because there are literally only two possibilities and the character completely glosses over one of them.

So, let me introduce you to the main plot. An agoraphobic drunk woman named Anna meets her neighbour's wife, sees her being murdered a few days later and then is told by the police and everyone else that she has never actually met his wife who is now a completely different woman. The main character insists the new woman can't be his wife, even when papers are produced showing she undeniably is. So the other possibility you immediately come to is that the first woman wasn't his wife and was in fact lying while this new woman is his wife.

Not if you're this main character!

Instead she continues on for hundreds of pages wondering who this new woman is instead of focusing on the identity of the victim. It is very frustrating to read and it means that the first intended 'twist' of her realising the first woman was lying and not the second comes off as anticlimatic and very poorly done. This is especially bad when the second major twist also turns out to be fairly guessable, though admittedly not to the extent of the first. Even so, the reveal that Ethan is the evil killer all along falls very flat and is unsatisfying. It is extremely easy to guess that the person Anna has been talking to online is a fake and is fishing for information, to the point where again you wonder why the supposedly smart Anna isn't making these simple connections.

The other major problem of this book can be defined as a distinct lack of originality. The main character reeks of the protagonist from The Girl on the Train, what with them both being alcoholics who witness a murder through a window and have their testimony doubted due to their substance abuse. This is even more obvious when you consider both protagonists jump to the wrong conclusions about the married couple they spy on. The other obvious influence is Rear Window. Anna is obsessed with old black and white movies and does mention Hitchcock several times, and yet she never draws direct parallels between Rear Window and her own situation. I actually enjoyed the constant use of movie quotes at first and thought it was quite a nice character quirk to include in a thriller, but said quotes quickly become overused near the end and the lack of the connection is honestly baffling. A throwaway line about it might have been cheap but at least it would have been something.

You may have noticed that neither of the things I have mentioned are what you could call small problems. By all rights I should hate this book for being a dumb, derivative, forgettable work.

AND YET.

By god this book is well-written. I didn't think much of it at the time beyond it being really compelling and hard to put down but honestly, this author deserves some kudos. They have an obvious plot with obvious twists and somehow I still enjoyed every minute of the characters and writing style. I guessed the first twist astonishingly early on but I still read eagerly, keen to find out what was going to happen. Then I guessed the second and third twists and yet I still read on. I minded a lot but it didn't make me rush through it or roll my eyes every other sentence like some thrillers I've read. Anna may be a bit of an idiot but she is likeable and has some decent depth to her. Also this book is much longer than the average thriller but it didn't feel like it for one second. I really, really hope this author writes more and writes something with a far better plot because he could go so far.

Overall, I am left with very conflicted feelings about this book. I cannot ignore its very painful and crucial flaws but I can't dismiss it as thriller trash either. Is it worth reading? Maybe. Do I regret reading it? Definitely not. This is the first book of 2018 I'm reading as part of my 'new releases, new reviews' schtick and it seems to be carrying on the noble tradition of not being that great. However, there are some really fantastic elements in here and I can't fault it too hard thanks to those. In terms of thrillers, you could do a whole lot worse.

Overall Rating:

.5

The Choice by Samantha King

ABSOLUTELY HAS SPOILERS AHEAD. It's okay, this one sucks.

This is one of the messiest books I have ever read. I don't understand how it got this way either because the basic premise (woman picks which child gets killed when a psycho breaks into her house) is good. Not very original but certainly a solid basis for a thriller. Unfortunately the book isn't actually about that.

Okay, so the best way to explain the plot of this book is to summarize each of the three parts separately because really, they're a different story:

Part 1-A woman struggles to live with the guilt she feels for choosing one of her children to die. Unfortunately she can't talk (because none of this is real) which means she doesn't actually have any interesting interactions with anyone. Instead we get internal monologuing interspersed with flashbacks.

Part 2-A woman wakes up from a coma. *gasp* None of part 1 was real! Nothing much happens here until we build up to the 'twist' that her daughter isn't actually dead because the weird choice scenario didn't happen like she imagined it in her coma dream (see what I mean about messy?). This twist is entirely obvious due to no one mentioning her daughter's death at all during this whole section.

Part 3-The main character is kidnapped by her husband who was the masked gunman (again, this is painfully obvious). A vague and badly paced showdown occurs. The woman lives with her two children, the end.

The biggest theme of this book is 'missed opportunities'. So part 1 has the main character be mute as an attempt at foreshadowing the fact that she's not really there/it's some weird coma dream. I as a reader don't care about this however because where is the premise offered by the blurb? I expected a book dealing with the main character's guilt at being forced to choose which child to die, an examination of why she chose that child and MOST IMPORTANTLY, other peoples' reactions to it! What would her husband say to her? Her surviving child? Her friends? All of this is completely lost for the sake of a twist which means that none of it matters anyway.

Similarly, by having the twist at the end of part 2 be so incredibly obvious, it unfortunately means that none of this section really matters either. None of her thoughts about her dead daughter are valid because her daughter isn't dead. So now we're two thirds of the way through the book and nothing so far matters.

It's really sad because there is some good stuff in this book. Not the pacing or plotting because that's always awful, but the actual style of writing isn't terrible. The characters as well are believable and had the potential to be compelling. I like the story of the romance between her and her husband, even if I hate the way it's revealed. And again, that initial seed of the idea could have made for a really good thriller. Instead, we just have the worst kind of mess.

Overall Rating:

The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood

I am having such luck with authors lately! After finding the joy that was Ruth Ware, I was skeptical about how good the next thriller I read would seem in comparison. Fortunately, I picked this beauty up.

The premise of this book is nothing special really. The story follows several different people living in an apartment building, one of which is a serial killer. What makes it special is the writing style and the sheer brilliance of the characters. Again, on the surface they don't seem unique-there's the runaway teen delinquent, the kindly old lady, the weird misfit, the perverted landlord and many more. But every character is well-developed and you genuinely become very invested in their lives and what's going to happen to them next.

This actually helps a lot with one of the book's main issues. It's told in third person but each chapter focuses on a different character. This definitely takes some getting used to (there are a LOT of characters) but the characters are genuinely all quite different and having a unique voice for each of them stops it being the train wreck it could have been otherwise. Apart from that minor hiccup, I couldn't fault the writing style. It was engaging, suspenseful and all without being melodramatic or cheesy. Hey, actual good villain POV chapters! That never happens!

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book, enough to immediately acquire everything else the author wrote. I consider this her best book for sure and it's the perfect example of how to do a thriller right. Definitely worth a read

Overall Score:

.5

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

You know, there's a common theme with modern thrillers that almost never ends well because it's been done to death. I am so sick of suspecting the main character or it turning out to have been the main character all along. You might ask then why I'd pick up a book so obviously intended to invoke the 'unreliable narrator' trope-good question. I do actually really enjoy the trope when it's done well. Unfortunately I'm not sure this is a shining example of that.

Sometimes I Lie actually starts off a lot better than I thought it would. Nothing special perhaps but the premise is intriguing enough and it fares better than most thrillers I've read lately. It starts off alternating chapters between present day and before the main character's accident and that's fine, but then flashbacks to her childhood diary also make an appearance and the whole thing gets a bit...crowded. I got fed up pretty quickly due to this but it actually turns out there is a very good reason for their inclusion and so I am more willing to accept them in hindsight.

The best word to describe this book is 'messy'. It has one genuinely good twist which surprised me and was kind of cool, but then it quickly descends into not making much sense. Then it tries to throw in more twists and there is far too much going on at the end which is unconnected to the main story or is too hard to follow. It's not complicated by any means, it's just not interesting enough to get me to focus enough to understand the poorly written reveals. The ending wasn't satisfying and I couldn't help but stop caring at that point. Also, as often happens with these books, the husband might as well have not existed. He had about as much personality as a sheet of paper and had even less influence on the plot.

Overall, this is one thriller that has some interesting potential but manages to ruin it in its attempts to be clever. Not a bad read by any means but hardly a standout in its genre.

Overall Rating:

.5

Misery by Stephen King

SPOILERS

I am going to start this review by saying I am 100% biased towards this book and I am not ashamed of it.

Okay so, Misery. This is the first Stephen King book I ever read and the one which made me love him so it's no wonder I'm biased. However, I tried to read it this time round as critically as possible (I was reading it as part of a book club) and even then, I found myself still loving it. This is pure King at his best-no supernatural elements, no weird things with aliens or monsters, just pure psychological horror and two really good characters. Let's start with those.

Paul is of course the main character. It was pointed out to me that he's a little flat by my book club and I really have to disagree. True, Paul is a typical King self-insert and perhaps the most blatant example there is. But Paul has such a strong voice as the narrator that he comes alive. I don't think anyone could read this and not root for Paul, not feel every ounce of his pain. Speaking of which...

Annie Wilkes. My god. As awful as she is, I LOVE her character. By which I mean, I love how detailed and fleshed out she is. Maybe now we're spoiled by murderers with tragic backstories but she was one of the first and one of the best. Not that she isn't causing all the tragedies herself. One thing that did surprise me upon rereading is just how quickly she turns on the crazy but hey, I like that the plot gets kickstarted instantly. I especially like when she gives up all pretence of letting Paul live and how easily she talks about killing him out of sheer weariness. Annie is horrifying in the best way and every second she's on the page, you can't help but tense up.

I promise I will get onto the negatives in a second but first, more gushing! One thing I thought was particularly done well was Paul's descent into Stockholm syndrome. It was blended so perfectly with his med addiction and his growing love of the book he was writing. It felt completely realistic to me and I loved how Annie also seemed to be aware of it, and how needy it made her despite her cynicism.

Okay, so actual criticisms. I have very few to make (big surprise there). A few of the rambly chapters probably could have been cut without too much being lost. I'm not sure what purpose the loss of Paul's thumb served, especially since it happens off-screen right after the on-screen loss of his foot. I guess it's supposed to highlight how awful she is but really, the foot scene worked better and the thumb felt like an add on that wasn't needed. And that's literally all I can think of right now. I really love this book.

Do I even need to sum up? King's fantastic writing style combined with a tense, sardine can thriller that stars two incredibly in-depth characters. A lot of horror, a lot of food for thought and a lot worth reading.

Overall Score:

.5

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

I wanted to read this book years ago. I remember going into my local bookshop about a dozen or so times and each time I'd pick it up, consider buying it before ultimately walking out again. To be honest, I completely forgot about it after that until I saw the movie trailer. It looked so good that I decided to go see it, making a vow to read the book first of course.

God I loved this book. So much so that I stayed up an extra two hours until 4 am just to finish reading it. Before I Go to Sleep tells the story of a woman who loses all her memories each night while she sleeps and so wakes up with no idea who she is. Fortunately her husband is there to tell her everything only she discovers that she's been seeing a therapist behind his back and keeping a diary which slowly reveals some startling secrets...

As a Psychology student, I was all prepared to hate this book. I'm used to the media taking liberties with Psychology but thankfully I was pleasantly surprised. Okay granted, some artistic license is taken with the way Christine's amnesia works but on the whole, it was reasonably accurate. Also I am so glad  that [HIGHLIGHT TEXT FOR SPOILERS] the therapist was not evil. That happens far too often in fiction and it just sends a bad message.

There's not really much else I can say to be honest. I did see the ending coming but only because I basically guessed every possible ending and the book was very good at creating doubt and disguising what was actually going to happen. All I can say is read it yourself. If you're looking for a good thriller that focuses very much on the characters and creating tension, you won't be disappointed.

Overall Score: