Dead End Drive by Ian Kirkpatrick

 

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

Oh boy, this book was a mess. Originally I was going to give it 2 stars for having a decent premise, but having found out that it's based off a boardgame, that means the only things I liked about it aren't original at all.

Dead End Drive is about a family where, when someone dies, the battle for inheritance is a literal battle to the death. After the reading of the will, the person left alive in the morning will inherit everything. How can such a premise go wrong? Well, for starters the premise isn't actually introduced well within the book itself. People just start killing each other with no real explanation, which would have been very confusing if I hadn't read the blurb recently before starting it.

This book has two major problems. Firstly, the writing is not great. The pages are littered with both actual editorial mistakes (understandable for an ARC but there are a lot, far more than any other ARC I've ever had) and just poor writing choices. The characters are bland and, in the worst cases, harmful stereotypes. There is a gay stylist who constantly uses the word 'honey' and who, after murdering a black woman, insists on fixing her 'coarse dark hair'. I'm almost certain the racial implications of this were accidental but yikes.

The pacing is similarly poor. You get introduced to all the characters in very repetitive chapters, and then the one with the most personality instantly dies so you don't have a character you have a connection with. Far from being a bloodbath, the rest of the deaths are then paced very oddly. There is no real sense of tension or fear and none of the characters seem particularly scared or bothered by their situation. Again, the only character who wasn't aware of the bloodbath beforehand is murdered straight away so you don't get the benefits of following an outsider in this horrible situation.

Overall, I sadly can't recommend this book. I ended up skim-reading everything after 50% as I just didn't care enough. It's a shame because a book like this has such potential and some of the humour/horror elements were alright. It just had too little going for it.

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Strangers by C.L. Taylor

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

C.L. Taylor has proven herself capable of crafting very neat, well-executed thrillers and Strangers is no exception to this. There is a slight trend to have thrillers where you appear to be focused on separate characters only to have their lives collide when it comes to the climax. I can honestly say that this is probably the best example of that kind that I've ever read. It is both extremely hard to predict just how and when the characters' lives will intersect, and also satisfying when they do. I was impressed by how tightly plotted this book was.

The only real flaw of this thriller is that it feels like it has too many characters. The blurb mentions three POV characters and I was actually surprised when I checked this after reading it because it felt like far more. I think because each character has several people they interact with, and the way that the stories all intersect at the end means that you have to keep track of pretty much all of them, this resulted in there feeling like there are about twelve main characters. This was actually executed about as well as it could be since for once, I remembered pretty much all of the characters which I am notoriously bad with for thrillers. Even so though, it is a little intense.

In terms of the plot, this book falls squarely into domestic thriller. There really aren't tons of thriller elements or lots of mysteries going on but each character has a solid enough storyline and it kept me engaged throughout. Overall, this is a really enjoyable read and a great example of Taylor's writing skills. I look forward to seeing what else she can write next.

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