Tag: Thriller

Hello Kittens! I’ve got a courtroom thriller for you today. Even as I write it I can’t believe that this is what I’m offering you right now. Can I tell you a secret? Courtroom thrillers are some of my least favorite books of all time. I had a few unfortunate Grisham and Turow experiences and I’ve never fully recovered. This book, however, may just have turned things around. Not for Grisham or Turow. Nope. That is never going to happen again. But Graham Moore has redeemed this category for me. He’s given us pleasant but flawed characters and a story where you want to root for everyone and no one all at the same time. Everyone’s a winner and everyone’s a loser with this one. It’s complex but deeply satisfying. It seems like everyone has been talking about this one so I hope you all will enjoy it as much as I did.

Title: The Holdout

Author: Graham Moore

Author website: https://mrgrahammoore.com/

Publisher: Random House

Publish date: February 18, 2020

ISBN: 9780399591778

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Summary:

It has been 10 years since Maya Seale sat on the jury that handed down the fate of Bobby Nock. In the years since, Maya has been vilified by the court of public opinion and has been publicly blamed by other members of the jury for the outcome of the case. As far as the general public is concerned, that jury let a guilty man go free, and they did it because of Maya.

In the years since, Maya has built a good life. She’s a lawyer, fighting legal battles with the perspective that she gained from her time as a juror. She believes that their verdict was the right one, even with everything that has happened since. But when she is approached in the courthouse by another one of the jurors from that trial, one who quickly and vehemently threw her under the bus after the trial, she is forced to confront what she has spent years trying to move on from.

A podcast turned Netflix-special called Murder Town is reuniting the original jurors to look at the case on its 10-year anniversary. Maya is reluctant to participate. The trial is done and laid to rest and no significant new evidence has ever appeared, or so she thinks. This other juror swears to her that he has found new evidence that proves their verdict was wrong beyond the shadow of a doubt. He won’t tell her what he knows yet, but his belief in this new evidence is absolute.

Against her better judgment, and with outside pressure guiding her decisions, Maya ultimately joins the other jurors for the reunion. Unfortunately, that decision will lead to serious consequences for Maya when a juror ends up dead and Maya is the prime suspect. Now she will have to face the justice system in yet another new role. Will she get the kind of juror that she was? Does she want to?

Why I liked it:

This story is a fascinating look at the justice system that we think we know. As these jurors discover: the lawyers are there to tell a story, the judge is there to make sure everyone plays by the rules, and the jury is there to make sure that justice is served. Can you ever be truly sure about something like this? Aren’t they all guilty of something?

I like how Moore handled the racial tension throughout the story. We got some really powerful monologues about identity and the role it plays in decision making. I also really enjoyed that all of the characters were changed so deeply by their participation on the jury, some for better and some for worse.

I also loved all of the twists. At one point or another I suspected nearly everyone throughout the course of this novel. While some of my guesses turned out to be correct, and I did guess a major plot twist, there was still plenty that I didn’t see coming.

Favorite quotes:

“Out here, maybe somebody goes to jail. Maybe somebody doesn’t. But we never know the truth. The real, whole, definite truth. It’s impossible.” pg. 112

“Their punishment for being people who demanded answers was that they would be forced to go on in perpetuity with their doubts.” pg. 183-184

“It wasn’t that any of them made Carolina nervous. It was that once you combined them all…well, somehow it felt like these people were going to collide against each other like marbles. They were going to send each other in directions none of them saw coming.”

What I would like to change:

This is such a small thing…but there are spoilers for 3 Agatha Christie books included, and I don’t feel like it was necessary. I haven’t read much Agatha Christie, and maybe these were well-known plot twists, but they weren’t known to me and I was a little miffed.

Disclaimer: No disclaimer necessary. I chose this book for one of my Book of the Month subscriptions.

My library rating: I wish this could have been a completely unobjectionable recommendation, but there is a sexual assault (it mostly takes place off the page) and a sex addiction and there are a few scenes involving drugs. It’s really not that bad and I still think it would be a great book club selection for talking about the criminal justice system.

4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads.  You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

My personal preference rating: I gave this title 5 stars. I’m not a fan of courtroom thrillers usually, but this one was fast-paced, had entirely believable characters, more red herrings than you can shake a stick at, and still managed to expound upon some deep issues. It was a joy to read.

Additional Info:

Investigation Discovery started a book club recently and they picked this as one of their selections. You can find more information about the ID Book Club here.

My Dear Kittens! For today, I have a pretty creepy read for you. I read my first C.J. Tudor book a few weeks ago and loved it so much that I snapped up another one right away. I’m very grateful for ebooks right now, even if I do get a headache when I read too many hours in that format. If you’re looking for a read to take you away from all of this but still keep you in a dark place, then this would be a good choice. This is a relatively new release and Tudor doesn’t have a huge backlist, but having read 2 of her titles now, I’ll be adding her to my list of must-read authors. Stay well and enjoy reading!

Title: The Other People

Author: C.J. Tudor

Author website: https://www.facebook.com/CJTudorOfficial/

Publisher: Ballantine Books (a Random House imprint)

Publish date: January 28^th, 2020

ISBN: 9781984824998

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Summary:

Gabriel is stuck in traffic on his way home when his life changes forever. In the car ahead of him he gets a fleeting glimpse of a young girl. She looks exactly like his daughter, Izzy, and she seems frightened. Gabe makes a split second decision to pursue the car through the traffic, but eventually loses track of the vehicle and convinces himself that it could not have been Izzy. He pulls over at a service station to call home and confirm that all is well, but when the police answer the phone, they tell him that something terrible has happened to his wife and his daughter.

Despite the police’s insistence that both his wife and daughter died that day, with both of their bodies recovered at the scene, Gabe refuses to believe that Izzy is dead. After all, he knows now that he could have seen her that day on the interstate. Consumed with guilt for giving up the chase then, Gabe now spends his days driving up and down the interstates, looking for that car and any other sign of his daughter. Along the way he comes into contact with a host of characters, some who seem willing to help him for reasons unknown, and some who believe he is just a hopeless man with an obsession.

When Gabe starts uncovering the truth of what happened that day, he falls down a rabbit hole that will entangle half a dozen lives. His wife is dead. Izzy must be alive. People he trusted have lied to him and a mysterious group known only on the Dark Web as the Other People, is coming after him. The vigilante group has a reputation for settling scores, and the more he digs into them, the more trouble he finds.

Why I liked the book:

The book is structured in a way that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. We get chapters from the perspectives of different characters. At first, the only character whose backstory we really know is Gabe, but we are also given the perspectives of a woman named Fran who travels with a strange girl named Alice, as well as the story of a waitress named Katie who works at one of the travel stops that Gabe frequents. As with all good thrillers, their stories seem entirely separate to begin with, but they twine together and form an entirely coherent storyline by the end.

In particular, I really love how many chapters drop a major clue or plot twist in the last sentence. It made it very difficult to stop reading at any one point because I was dying to know how each revelation would impact the overall story.

I also love a good creepy element, and the references to Alice’s narcolepsy and the beach and the strange girl in the bed kept me wondering if the supernatural would play deeply in the story.

Lastly, the Other People vigilante group make great villains. With an underground shady internet group, you never know who is with them, which means that the main characters literally have no one they can trust.

Disclaimer: No disclaimer needed. I borrowed an electronic copy of this title from my library’s digital collection.

My library rating:

This book is a no-brainer recommendation for mystery and thriller lovers, but if I was recommending it to a stranger who wasn’t as familiar with the world of mysteries and thrillers, I probably wouldn’t start with this title. There’s a fair bit of violence and a few actual and attempted murders. It doesn’t really go deep enough into difficult subject matter to be a good book club selection (unless it’s a mystery/thriller book club).

3 glasses of lemonade= a book that you could recommend to coworkers and friends you don’t know very well.

My personal preference rating: I gave this one five stars. I love a good dark mystery. I didn’t guess the twists (in fact I was pretty far off about a few things). This is a solid novel for my tastes.

 

Salutations Kittens! I’ve got a real treat for you this week with Sandie Jones’ The Other Woman, which takes a new look at the doomed relationship suspense trope. As the main character deals with a devious future mother-in-law, readers will cringe through every marriage rite-of-passage in this gripping read. I loved this title because I really couldn’t figure out these characters and there were several sub-plots that added complexity to the story and kept me guessing. This title had a little violence and a curse or two, but overall, I think this is a title that is going to be getting a lot of attention (it would make a great movie) and could be pretty widely recommended.

Title: The Other Woman

Author: Sandie Jones

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Publish date: August 21, 2018

ISBN: 9781250191984

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Meet Emily. Emily is a young professional living and working in London. She’s had a lot of jobs over the years, but has finally found something that she loves in recruiting. As she is finishing up a particularly useless professional conference, she escapes to a nearby bar and runs into an intriguing man named Adam. At first she thinks he’s a rude, entitled jerk, but he works to redeem himself and ends up calling her a few days later.

The relationship proceeds smoothly from there and Emily starts thinking about Adam’s long-term potential. She is so excited when Adam takes her to meet his mom, Pammie. Emily stresses over what to wear and she and Adam have a little tiff on the drive over, so her nerves are at a high when she finally meets his mother. Pammie seems like a dream. She is so kind, but every now and again, she says something a little off and Emily can’t quite figure her out. As time goes on Emily begins to question whether Pammie is really as excited for their relationship as she wants everyone to believe. For instance, why does Pammie show Emily a photo album that includes a picture of Adam’s last serious girlfriend in it? That was an accident, right?

That is only the beginning. Emily starts to think that all of the disasters and fights that she and Adam go through have Pammie at the heart of them. He just can’t see his mother the same way that Emily does. As the relationship progresses, Emily becomes increasingly suspicious of Adam’s mother. Can Emily claim her rightful place in his life when his mother is constantly intervening? Who will win the battle for his heart and what will be lost in the ensuing war between the women.

I thought that I knew where this title was going, but I fully admit that the ending through me for a loop. I spent some time frustrated with character of Emily, because she started off as such an independent and seemingly tough cookie but then she crumbles in the face of Adam’s misdeeds and flippant treatment of her feelings. I don’t particularly enjoy reading about weak female characters, but Emily’s back and forth with forgiveness and paranoia was definitely draining at times. I found myself wondering, “Why doesn’t she just leave? He can’t be worth all that.” For the record, I stand by that sentiment. If you’re reading this and a man treats you the way Adam treats Emily, leave him.

I appreciated the number of subplots that acted as red herrings. It seems like in the current suspense climate, you can’t assume that someone is dead just because everyone believes they’re dead, and I admit to wondering if that was the scenario with this title or a while. I usually obsess over all of the possible ways that a story could end if such-and-such character wanted revenge for something or if there’s someone from the protagonist’s past who changed their name. With this story, I suspected everyone. Pammie, James, Charlote, and even Emily’s good friend Seb. I also loved that the reader’s first exposure to the story is that very creepy prologue. I assumed when I got to the end of the story that it would circle back around to that moment exactly, but in fact it references a moment about ¾ of the way through the book, so that plot point might not have the oomph that it might have otherwise.

Overall, the story is one that I think most suspense fans will enjoy. I’ll be recommending it to patrons once our library gets a copy in.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher through BookishFirst in exchange for an honest review.

My rating:

4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads.  You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.