elevation: stephen King
My Review: This was an easy, absorbing read. One of King’s finer efforts. I am a fan of his earlier work, but this one reminded me why I love his writing.
Although Scott Carey doesn’t look any different, he’s been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are.
watching edie: camilla way
My Review: This book is organized by BEFORE & AFTER. If you like twists, this book surprised me.
For fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train: A dazzling work of psychological suspense that weaves together the past and present of two women’s twisted friendship.
Beautiful, creative, a little wild… Edie was the kind of girl who immediately caused a stir when she walked into your life. And she had dreams back then—but it didn’t take long for her to learn that things don’t always turn out the way you want them to.
Now, at thirty-three, Edie is working as a waitress, pregnant and alone. And when she becomes overwhelmed by the needs of her new baby and sinks into a bleak despair, she thinks that there’s no one to turn to…
last girl ghosted: Lisa Unger
My Review: I couldn’t stop flipping the pages. A fantastic example of a mystery that you gets completely invested.
She met him through a dating app. An intriguing picture on a screen, a date at a downtown bar. What she thought might be just a quick hookup quickly became much more. She fell for him—hard. It happens sometimes, a powerful connection with a perfect stranger takes you by surprise. Could it be love?
But then, just as things were getting real, he stood her up. Then he disappeared—profiles deleted, phone disconnected. She was ghosted.
The silent patient: alex michaelides
My Review: If you want a good night’s sleep, don’t start this one. On my “to read again” list.
The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband―and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.
Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.
the couple next door: shari lapena
My Review: There is nothing I love more than a story about “the perfect life” that turns out to be exactly the opposite. My favorite book candy.
Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all—a loving relationship, a wonderful home and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.
Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something, and both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets—secrets they’ve kept for years.
What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family—a chilling tale of deception, duplicity and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist.
the push: Ashley audrain
My Review: Warning. This story is dark. I loved it. I read it in two nights.
A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family, and about a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for, and everything she feared.
Blythe Connor is determined to be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby, Violet, that she never had.
But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe doesn’t find the connection with her daughter she expected. She’s convinced something is wrong with Violet—she is distant, rejects affection, and becomes increasingly disruptive at preschool.
Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. Fox doesn’t see what she sees; he sees a wife who is struggling to cope with the day-to-day challenges of being amother. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.
the downstairs neighbor: helen cooper
My Review: This story is written with multiple POVs. Helen Cooper did a masterful job.
An addicting and twisty debut about an apartment building devastated by the disappearance of a teenage girl–and by the secrets that won’t be kept behind each closed door–that will thrill fans of Lisa Jewell and Shari Lapena.
One House. Three Families. Countless Secrets.
From her downstairs apartment in suburban London, Emma has often overheard the everyday life of the seemingly perfect family upstairs–Steph, Paul and teenage daughter Freya–but has never got to know them. Until one day, she hears something that seizes her attention: Freya has vanished and the police are questioning Steph and Paul about their life. Do either of you have any enemies? Anyone who might want to harm or threaten you?
The effects of Freya’s disappearance ripple outward, affecting not just her parents, but everyone who lives in the building, including Emma and local driving instructor Chris, who was the last person to see the teenager before she went missing. Each character’s life is thrown into sharp focus as devastating mistakes and long-held secrets are picked apart and other crimes come to light–including a child gone missing twenty-five years earlier, and a shocking murder–that make clear that the past never stays where we leave it, and that homes can be built on foundations of lies.
looker: Laura sims
My Review: This was and easy fast read. Think of it as a bag of chips. Tasty, probably not good for you. Done before you know it. And you want more.
In this “wicked slow burn” (Entertainment Weekly) of psychological suspense, a woman becomes fixated on her neighbor—the actress.
Though the two women live just a few doors apart, a chasm lies between them. The actress, a celebrity with a charmed career, shares a gleaming brownstone with her handsome husband and three adorable children, while the recently separated narrator, unhappily childless and stuck in a dead-end job, lives in a run-down, three-story walk-up with her ex-husband’s cat.
As her fascination with her famous neighbor grows, the narrator’s hold on reality begins to slip. Before long, she’s collecting cast-off items from the actress’s stoop and fantasizing about sleeping with the actress’s husband. After a disastrous interaction with the actress at the annual block party, what began as an innocent preoccupation turns into a stunning—and irrevocable—unraveling.
the wife between us: greer hendricks & sarah pekkanen
My Review: When these two authors work together, pure magic happens.
When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.
You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife.
You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement – a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love.
You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle.
Assume nothing.
Twisted and deliciously chilling, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage – and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.
the flight attendant: chris bohjalian
My Review: I found this a light and fun read. As an ex-flight attendant, a lot of this is accurate.
Cassandra Bowden is no stranger to hungover mornings. She’s a binge drinker, her job with the airline making it easy to find adventure, and the occasional blackouts seem to be inevitable. She lives with them, and the accompanying self-loathing. When she awakes in a Dubai hotel room, she tries to piece the previous night back together, counting the minutes until she has to catch her crew shuttle to the airport. She quietly slides out of bed, careful not to aggravate her already pounding head, and looks at the man she spent the night with. She sees his dark hair. His utter stillness. And blood, a slick, still wet pool on the crisp white sheets.
Afraid to call the police—she’s a single woman alone in a hotel room far from home—Cassie begins to lie. She lies as she joins the other flight attendants and pilots in the van. She lies on the way to Paris as she works the first class cabin. She lies to the FBI agents in New York who meet her at the gate. Soon it’s too late to come clean-or face the truth about what really happened back in Dubai. Could she have killed him? If not, who did?
Set amid the captivating world of those whose lives unfold at forty thousand feet, The Flight Attendant unveils a spellbinding story of memory, of the giddy pleasures of alcohol and the devastating consequences of addiction, and of murder far from home.
into the water: Paula hawkins
My Review: Paula Hawkins wrote “The Girl On the Train” and this is another amaze-balls read. If you like historical fiction, there are some good elements of past lives through different eras. One of my favorite kinds of books just hints at the speculative, so I found this book satisfying on three levels. 1) Good mystery 2) Addictive and easy to read 3) just than hint that magic exists.
A flowing river ejects the body of a woman onto its banks: a single mother, the motive behind her death unknown. Weeks earlier, the body of a teenage girl washed upon the river’s shores—motive for death yet unknown. But the river has dredged up more than just bodies: dark secrets thought to be long buried in the water’s murky depths will come to light, and the investigation will uncover the stain of a disturbing, complicated history that will not wash away.
A psychological thriller with a mystery that runs long and deep, Into the Water pits the search for truth against the deceptions of memory and emotion, and the suspense will have readers holding their breath.
the end of her: shari lapena
My Review: This is written in a kind of “he said” “she said” structure. It was full of twists and suburban paranoia. It’s your fast food hamburger. Satisfying, not very substantial. But you want another.
In upstate New York, Stephanie and Patrick are adjusting to life with their colicky twin babies. The girls are a handful, but Stephanie doesn’t mind being a stay-at-home mom while Patrick does the 9-5 to pay the bills.
And when a woman from Patrick’s past drops in on them unexpectedly, raising questions about his late first wife, Stephanie supports her husband wholeheartedly. She knows the car accident all those many years ago was just that—an accident.
But when the police start digging, Stephanie’s trust in her husband begins to falter, and Patrick is primed to lose everything. As their marriage crumbles, Stephanie feels herself coming unglued, and soon she isn’t sure what—or who—to believe. Now, the most important thing is to protect her girls, but at what cost?
the woman in the window: A. J. Finn
My Review: I saw the movie and read the book. The book was good. Sad, thought-provoking and full of suspense.
Anna Fox lives alone—a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.
Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble—and its shocking secrets are laid bare.
What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems.
the drowning kind: Jennifer McMahon
My Review: If you enjoyed Into the Water, this book is similar. Dark tides swirl in this plot. I enjoyed it.
Be careful what you wish for.
When social worker Jax receives nine missed calls from her older sister Lexie, she assumes that it’s just another one of her sister’s episodes. Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie’s mental state has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother’s estate. When Jax returns to the house to go through her sister’s things, she learns that Lexie was researching their family’s and the house’s history. And as Jax dives deeper into that research, she discovers that the land holds a far darker history than she could have ever imagined.
In 1929, thirty-seven-year-old newlywed Ethel Monroe hopes desperately for a baby. In an effort to distract her, her husband whisks her away on a trip to Vermont, where a natural spring is showcased by the newest and most modern hotel in the northeast. Once there, Ethel learns that the spring is rumored to grant wishes, never suspecting that the spring takes in equal measure to what it gives.