48%
06.04.26A very silly story that depended too much on coincidences, miscommunications and misunderstandings, with only its Irish setting to lend it some interest.
60%
10.02.26A fun and thoughtful high-school supernatural thriller that leaned into the ridiculous horror tropes while also tackling the universal desire to belong. It could have been developed a little more - there were parts that needed more (and others that needed less) focus, and the protagonist didn't really have enough conflict, but generally it was engaging and mostly unpredictable.
02.02.26
An interesting premise, poorly executed. The author needed to spend less time thinking about how it would adapt for Netflix and more time improving her writing skills.
07.12.25
Someone pointed out that all Riley Sager's books can be summarised as 'Young down-on-her-luck woman moves house, discovers neighbours' secrets, has secrets of her own.' This one definitely fits that mould, and is also pretty similar to Sarah Pinborough's supernatural domestic thrillers (like the one I've just read). Despite its cliches, this was still quite well written and pretty entertaining, if not all that engaging.
60%
09.10.25All talk of this book is about the twist - or rather, twists - the first of which I guessed and the second I didn't, because it was, frankly, crazy (if not, on reflection, particularly surprising or original). But maybe I should have, as it was a crazy story in general, with so much booze consumed that it's no wonder it ends up like a fever dream. Although some of the weirdness never quite works, and characters are frustratingly inconsistent, the genre-bending approach worked for me and it was, in the end, simply entertaining.
13.09.25
I think I was supposed to root for the very flawed protagonist in this domestic thriller but she was so unlikable and her actions so inexplicable that the best I can say is at least she did protag, unlike all those passive lit fic main characters. Almost as annoying were the endless detailed descriptions of every room and every outfit that kept stalling the plot. Just sum it up in a pithy sentence and move on.
11.12.24
Talking cats! Comedy villains! What a shame the premise was better than the execution. It just all seemed so half-hearted - it needed more action, more conflict, more coherent plot, more character development, more humour - and less pointless paragraphs of nothing. And how disappointing (spoiler) that the main character gave up villainy before he even got started.
10.07.24
From the Shari Lapena school of telling, not showing, this was a long, often grammatically dodgy synopsis with too many expositional flashbacks and not enough emotional development or psychological realism. I only read it because it was (partly) set in my local area, but it could have been anywhere.
I won't be watching the new Netflix adaptation if the protagonist is as spectacularly unlikable (has the author ever met a woman?) and the story is as muddled and boring as in the book.
As you'd expect from the cover, this '80s-set thriller ramped up the gothic mystery factor before unapologetically going all out at the end. You could call it twisty but twisty does not necessarily a good book make - the last 10% or so was a case of "Really? Come on! Give the reader some agency!" Credit for the variety of female characters, though (all the male ones were pretty one dimensional), and for the quality of the writing - except for the irritating overuse of "atop" instead of "on".
61%
What makes this interesting - other than the details of how the urban American legal system works - is the character development arc. It could have been a standard procedural but the narrator goes from shrugging off the ethical issues of defending guilty people to confronting and eventually embracing the complexity of different cases. There was a lot of unnecessary visual detail, though - who cares what side of the sofa people are sitting on?
31%
I was trying to identify what made this so bad and it finally occurred to me that it was one very long synopsis. 'He did this, then he thought that; she looked like this, then she thought that...' - a case study in telling, not showing. The stilted, emotionless style reminded me of Danielle Steel, and the plot (and its sudden sort-of-resolution which made various characters and storylines redundant) was just plain weird. Why is this author popular?
12.10.22
I'm a big fan of Bauer's thrillers but this wasn't her best. Why? Perhaps it was a bit too weird, without the oddly humorous, very British, small-town authenticity of Snap or Exit. And there was the big problem of the serial killer's eight or nine (I lost track) victims not being as important as preventing the deaths of the protagonist and her father. But it was still better than most novels in this genre.
28.01.22
A by-the-numbers attempt at a thriller and by that I mean the 'twists' were so predictable that 1+1 = 2 every time.
17.01.22
Three main things made this 'thriller' relentlessly unthrilling. One: the confusing plot, bogged down with existential questions. Two: the characters with no character. Three: the effort that instead went into the endless, pointless descriptions, detailed to the extent of irrelevantly stating the race of even each one-scene bit-part - please let the reader construct their own visual world.
47%
Notable only for the clunky 'Beware! Covid's on its way' references and the hilariously inaccurate local driving times. But still I read this series.
47%
If there were any keen readers of this blog, they'd know my opinion of Grisham's books is as exciting and unpredictable as his storylines (full of peaks and troughs). Unfortunately, this classic has dated badly over 30 years, crammed as it is with sexism, racism and tediously bickering alpha males, including the 'hero' himself, who I hoped would get eliminated by the mob but the plot didn't even make enough sense for that.
