My Darling by Amanda Robson

 I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and Avon Books in exchange for an honest review.

My Darling is a confusing, messy story about two women and (sort of) two men. Jade is married to Tomas and she is delusional, rude and unpleasant. Emma has just begun dating Alastair, a man who starts to show controlling tendencies. Emma herself is pragmatic and honestly, she doesn't have a second personality trait. Jade becomes convinced Tomas is cheating on her with Emma and decides to take matters into her own hands, resulting in a multi-layered murder plot where everyone is framing everyone else.

This book was so painful to read. I initially started with the audiobook but that was far too confusing, so I swapped to the e-arc which was a bit easier to follow. The characters are quite bland. I expected there to be more going on with Jade but no, she is just delusional and horrible to everyone. I expected there to be more going on with everyone to be honest. We learn more about Emma but it doesn't really translate to anything meaningful in terms of how we view her. Alastair has an ex-wife who shows up a few times and is described in a huge amount of unpleasant detail, but why? What does it add?

The plot itself is very melodramatic and a bit tedious. I wasn't surprised by anything that happened. I am not someone who needs a huge twist in my thrillers, but it almost felt like it was written to contain twists but there just weren't any? I won't give the details of the ending but it is framed like a standard ominous thriller ending where we are meant to feel dread at what the protagonist might do next, except I feel like everything she did was reasonable given the world and people she was dealing with. This is a side effect of the melodrama. Everything becomes a potentially reasonable response because the actions themselves are so extreme, and the people so one-dimensionally unforgiveable.

I was so disappointed by this book. The one saving grace is that this is quite an easy read, so I did finish it rather than abandon it halfway. Unfortunately I can't recommend it though

Overall Rating:

Watch Her Fall by Erin Kelly

 

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Hodder & Stoughton in exchange for an honest review.

I love books about ballet, especially if those books have a dark twist. Watch Her Fall caught my attention almost immediately but I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from the blurb. I actually think the blurb is fairly misleading so I will give you a spoiler-free summary of the plot.

Watch Her Fall is the story of Ava, the top ballet dancer at the intensely strict school run by her father. She has a complicated relationship with her dad as he rules the ballet with an iron fist and hates her displaying any kind of creativity. As they begin a production of Swan Lake, Ava becomes increasingly paranoid about her father replacing her with another dancer. When that dancer becomes injured however, she realises she is ill-equipped for the real world and begins to plot how to take over Ava's life.

This is not a thriller about someone being messed with by a mysterious figure, at least not past the 20% mark. What this is is a thriller driven by characters and a plot which goes in a very different direction than you would expect it to. I wouldn't say I was ever surprised by this book which some people might see as a negative, but I was genuinely enthralled and the lack of twists didn't stop me enjoying the story one bit.

The main negative of this book is that it does a lot of 'flashback' narrative. That is, an event will happen and then it will switch POV to another character and take us back in time for a bit to see the events leading up to the thing we just read about. Sometimes this is welcome, sometimes I was uninterested. It definitely slowed the pace down which isn't a positive in a thriller. Still, I did appreciate the depth we got to know the characters to and it does build a really complete and complex story. I can see how it might build suspense for some readers if you don't think the surprises are obvious.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Kelly is clearly very talented at crafting thrillers with a unique setting and interesting characters. Having read/experienced a fair amount of 'dark ballet' media, I was pleased to see this book had new things to offer still. I think this book is definitely worth a read if you're looking for a compelling thriller, and I am eager to try Kelly's other work now I've seen her writing skills.

Overall Rating:

The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica

I received a free copy of this book for review thanks to publisher Park Row and Edelweiss.

My experience with Mary Kubica has been an interesting one. I have loved almost all of the books I've read by her but I can usually see why a person might not like them as well. Sadly The Other Mrs. proved to be a thriller that just wasn't for me and that's because it commits the cardinal thriller sin-it is extremely predictable.

I will not spoil any 'twists' in this book but it uses one of the more overdone thriller tropes and what's more, it is completely obvious from the start that it is going in that direction. I kept reading hoping I would be wrong but by the time the climax rolls around, I fail to see how anyone would not have worked out what is happening. Though I'm not usually a fan of this trope anyway, I have loved books which have used it in a clever and surprising way. This book does neither of these things.

Putting the lack of a twist to one side, the writing style is competent but also weaker than other Kubica books I've read. There are just some really odd choices, particularly in the first few chapters. A face is described as 'eyepleasing', an adjective is used twice in the same sentence, the structure is just a little off. These are all minor things but they were very frequent and it took me out of the story. I did not find the main character Sadie likeable at all. She was far too quick to suspect her own children of awful things and she didn't have a lot of empathy for anyone. None of the characters were particularly great.

I'm really disappointed I couldn't give this book a more positive review. It might appeal to complete thriller novices but for anyone who likes the genre, this offers nothing new.

Overall Rating:

I Never Lie by Jody Sabral

I received an ARC from NetGalley and publisher Canelo in exchange for an honest review.

I am literally so baffled. I genuinely loved reading this book. It is extremely well-written, the characters are interesting and I was definitely invested in the story. So why am I only giving it three stars? Because the only 'twist' of the book is mentioned on the cover and the blurb.

Let me make this clear-I am not going to spoil anything about the plot of this. But both the blurb and the cover hint strongly that Alex (the protagonist) might be the one behind the serial killings. The very possibility of this is not mentioned until well over 80% of the way through the book and I am dumbfounded. Again, I am not saying for definite whether Alex is behind it or not and therefore am not going to spoil the ending. But the fact that she may be behind it is treated as a twist in the plot and it's so stupid when it's mentioned on the cover and in the blurb!

If it weren't for this one major flaw, I would absolutely be giving this book 4 stars. Alex is a developed and fascinating protagonist, the side characters all feel like they could be real people and the general plot is very good. I've read thrillers about journalists and I've read thrillers about alcoholics before but Sabral's writing style means that it all feels pretty fresh and new.

There's also a pretty major editing mistake in one of the 'Dear Diary' chapters. The mystery POV character describes crushing a mouse and then a few sentences later, talks about squashing a fly instead. This was very distracting as it was clearly a fly in the original draft and was changed to make it more dramatic.

Overall, I would still recommend this book for a good read but don't expect to be surprised by anything. It's not the kind of thriller with a lot of twists (or any twists really) which is such a shame because it could have been so much better.

Overall Rating:

One Was Lost by Natalie D. Richards

I was so disappointed by this book! I mean look at that gorgeous cover. To be fair, I had forgotten this book was YA going into it so I was expecting more of an actual thriller tone. You can definitely tell that this is a YA book. I also found the first few chapters incredibly hard to get into. Something about the writing style and the way things are introduced is very messy at the start and I was a bit confused until I got settled into it.

Apart from that slight niggle, this really isn't a badly written book in terms of style. The characters were fairly interesting and I was intrigued anytime the story chose to focus on them. Unfortunately, the big weakness of this book is the thriller aspect. I'm not going to spoil anything but the ending is incredibly obvious and it's almost painful how long it takes the main characters to work things out. There are the obvious double-meaning conversations where characters will not say things properly, so the main character will jump to a conclusion which you know as the reader is going to turn out to be false because the conversation was so vague.

The existence of the other camp is a factor I think was greatly underused. It does show up in the plot eventually but only to provide some new suspects, which are promptly abandoned a few pages later. Further exploration of this would have helped the story and potentially made the actual solution a lot less obvious. This also applies to the side characters as well come to think of it. Each character is kind of developed in turn, briefly becomes a suspect and then is pushed to one side. It's a shame because they really had the potential to be interesting characters.

Alas I don't really have much more to say about this book. I may explore other titles from this author because there was nothing wrong with the writing style or the characters, and she may have the potential to write better stuff with a different plot. Sadly the failure of a compelling mystery is too big a flaw for me to ignore.

Overall Rating:

.5

Three Truths and a Lie by Brent Hartinger

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Oh boy. So I admittedly decided to read this book after seeing it on a Booktuber's 'Worst of 2017' list so maybe it's my own fault that yeah, it kind of ended up sucking. To be fair, this book is definitely not the worst thing I've ever read. It's just that the ending...wow.

So this book is about our main character Rob who goes to a cabin in the woods with his boyfriend Liam, Liam's best friend Mia and her boyfriend Galen. Galen gets murdered, they end up stranded in this cabin and then suspicion falls upon everyone. Blah blah blah, pretty standard thriller story.

First of all, the three truths and the lie listed on the blurb are not three truths and a lie. In fact, technically none of them are true? Also I've always played it as 'two truths and a lie' so I can only conclude that the title was changed to have it fit the story and the final twist.

I can't talk about anything else without discussing this ending. So first twist-Liam is behind everything all along. Big surprise. Rob and Liam have only been together for 3 months and yet Rob never suspects Liam once. In fact, he talks constantly about how Liam is his soulmate and acts shocked that he might not know everything about him. In 3 months? Really? By the end of the book, Mia is also dead so there is really only Rob and Liam left, and the book is told from Rob's perspective.

Now the second twist.

Liam and Rob are the same person. Yeah.

You can tell that Hartinger is trying so hard to be clever here. Admittedly, I like that 'Three Truths and a Lie' ultimately refers to three real people, one fake one. But he has this weird scene at the end where a psychiatrist points out to Liam/Rob that Liam and Rob never spoke to each other around other characters and this just reeks of self-congratulatory behaviour on behalf of the author. Like 'look, look how clever I am! See? It's totally not a nonsensical twist at all'.

Also there's another twist with Liam having hated Mia all along (see what I mean about the blurb?) which just makes him seem like the dumbest character ever. He hates her so he deliberately befriends her for years and years just on the off-chance he'll be able to murder her someday. Ah yes, perfect logic there.

I can't be totally unfair to this book. The writing style isn't the worst and I managed to breeze through it. It's just that the plot is so dumb that it overrides everything else. I picked it up out of curiousity but I'm not sure it's even worth that.

Overall Rating:

S.T.A.G.S by M.A. Bennett

This is a bit of a weird experience for me because I heard of this book this morning, got it on my Kindle, read it in less than two hours and now I'm writing this review. It's also kind of a weird book.

So S.T.A.G.S is about this girl who goes to this super fancy boarding school full of students with old money. She goes there on a scholarship and everything about the school is very traditional and totally unrealistic. The popular kids are these 6 teenagers called 'The Medievals' who wear monk hoods and stockings (to be fair, the entire school has to wear stockings). They detest technology and encourage everyone to read and paint and do other, more useful activities instead. We're meant to buy that the whole school goes along with this and no one ever uses a mobile phone entirely out of choice.

Anyway, the main character gets invited to a hunting weekend at the main popular guy's house, along with two other unpopular kids and all of the Medievals. If you've read the blurb of this book (heck, even if you've read the cover) you can totally guess where this plot is going. The downside is that it doesn't take it anywhere near far enough. I was disappointed by how tame this book is. Maybe I read too much horror but I was expecting the rich kids to literally hunt the unpopular kids and try to murder them. That isn't what happens. Even considering it's YA, it's a bit of a letdown.

Having said that, this is still a pretty good book. The characters behave like idiots at times and the ending bothers me so much because again, it's a super obvious 'twist' and it's not surprising at all. The one thing I liked about the ending was the callback to the comma thing. That was admittedly a nice touch. However, I feel like there was a plot hole with the whole 'it's been going on since Medieval times' thing. Like does it always take place at Henry's house? If so, how have they made sure that there is always one family member there? It's just one of those things where the more I think about it, the less sense it makes.

S.T.A.G.S is not a book that is going to change the world but it is an enjoyable and also very easy read. It's very short and if you like the sound of the blurb, you are pretty much going to get exactly what you expect from that. It's worth reading for the likeable characters and the endearing oddness of it all alone, but it's also a little more than that. Just don't expect anything super dark or surprising because you will be disappointed.

Overall Rating:

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