My eyes light up at psychological thrillers, True Crime & great literary fiction
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 Kieran Elliott's life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his family to the coastal community he once called home. Kieran's parents are struggling in a town where fortunes are forged by the sea. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn.
When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge. --- This takes place in a small coastal community in Tasmania. Along the shore are caves with long tunnels running through them that can only be accessed when the tide is low. If you get caught inside these caves during high tide, you will never walk out again. I’m not gonna lie, this setting made my gothic-loving heart sing! It’s the best thing about this book! The plotting and pacing are both also nearly perfect for a mystery, and the story held my attention fully from beginning to end. I did wish for more specificity in the characters. They didn’t seem to have quite enough personality, and their dialogue and behaviors weren’t distinctive enough to stand apart from one another. I could certainly feel for them, and there were many evocative moments, but the people inhabiting this book seemed a bit more 2D than 3D. This became problematic because there are a large number of characters, in part to have a greater number of suspects, and I struggled to keep them all straight while reading. Despite this, I found Kieran’s relationship with his mother and father incredibly moving, and the depiction of them all dealing with his father’s dementia was both sad and haunting. I found the end to be sort of mediocre. Kind of interesting, but not all that surprising. This is a solid book, but not something I would call a stand-out. Still, it’s an enjoyable mystery to curl up with on a cold winter day. It hits the shelves Feb 2!
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 Hannah’s husband was murdered in their home ten years ago, and a man was charged for the killing. But when a popular true crime podcast focuses on the murder, the past gets stirred up and new questions are raised.
As Hannah, her boyfriend and everyone they know listen to the podcast, it is revealed that the man who has been in prison for the murder may have been wrongfully convicted. This means the killer may still be out there, roaming free. And with horror, Hannah realizes that suspicion of guilt may be turning directly towards her. --- Hannah is an unreliable narrator (my favorite type!), and it’s fun to experience, right along with her, the revelations of the podcast that is focusing on the murder of her first husband. The book moves between past and present, slowly unwinding the backstory of their relationship leading up to his death. I found their relationship to be incredibly specific and unique. There’s also a nice complexity to the relationship between Hannah, her new boyfriend and her daughter. I wouldn’t describe this as a propulsive and tight thriller. It’s more of a free-form, complex and sophisticated form of psychological suspense. The tone is haunting and creepy, the writing style fluid and elegant. For an avid thriller reader, the middle may seem slow, but I still found it captivating. It also includes a creepy old mental institution, which is sort of like book catnip for me. Is that a saying, book catnip? Oh well, it is now. This hits the shelves on Feb. 9! Thank you St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC!  Summary:
Frankie Elkin is a recovering alcoholic with more regrets than belongings. But she spends her life doing what no one else will--searching for missing people the world has stopped looking for. A new case brings her to Mattapan, a Boston neighborhood with a rough reputation, to search for a Haitian teenager who vanished from her high school months earlier. Frankie will stop at nothing to discover the truth, even if it means the next person to go missing could be her. - Frankie reminded me of a real person named Lissa Yellow-Bird Chase, who I learned about some time ago on a This American Life podcast (ep. 706: A Mess to be Reckoned With -- I highly recommend you give it a listen!!) Chase is a tough-as-nails woman who stops at nothing to find the missing. It turns out that Gardner read a BBC article about Chase and was influenced to write this novel based on people like her, amateurs who seek out the missing. Frankie Elkin is a tough female character who doesn’t just move the needle forward for feminism, she blows up the whole damn record player. She reminds me of what Ibsen did with Nora in “A Doll’s House” back in the late 1800s: shocked us with a completely different view of how a woman can live her life. Or Frances McDormand’s character in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, who showed us that a woman can be flawed and not what the patriarchy might define as ‘nice,’ yet be a heroine because of her sheer determination to make sure that justice prevails. This is the type of company that Frankie keeps, and she MAKES this book for me. This character is bold and rebellious and *everything* I also love the way the densely packed and diverse urban communities within Boston come alive on the page. This is a fast-paced and heart-pounding thriller that had me hooked from beginning to end. You should get this if you like thrillers with strong female characters or gritty crime dramas. It hits the shelves Jan. 19, 2021! Thank you to PENGUIN GROUP Dutton and NetGalley for the ARC! |
