Category: mystery

Book Review, Fiction, mystery

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Mystery

There are so many layers to this book. It starts off with a missing person. Mia’s father, Adam, fails to return from a walk with her younger brother, Eugene, who is nonverbal. The family begins to work together to try to uncover anything hinting at Adam’s whereabouts.

As they go through his things, they find notebooks indicating that Adam was fascinated by the psychology behind happiness, and determining ‘happiness quotients.’ This took up a large portion of the book, and honestly, there were whole sections I kind of skimmed. I found the science interesting to an extent, but it didn’t feel like it was moving the story along.

The other big focus of the book is on Eugene and how he was misunderstood as someone with autism and Angelman syndrome. It goes in depth about the different types of teaching and learning they have explored to try to help Eugene communicate. The research that must have gone into this narrative was tremendous and it painted a really powerful picture of the difficulty and frustration Eugene, and others like him, deal with.

Each piece of this book was interesting on its own, but as a whole, it felt like too many BIG THINGS to fit into one book. Together, they bogged the narrative down somewhat and made it feel slow.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy Happiness Falls at an indie bookstore near you
Happiness Falls on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, mystery

The Secret History by Donna Tartt ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Mystery
Similar to: If We Were Villains

Richard comes from a poor background and can’t believe his luck when he’s able to attend a prestigious college in New England. When he arrives, he soon finds himself emersed in the cultish Classics program, which necessitates that he take all his classes with the same professor and band of students.

The characters in this story were perfectly horrible. Tartt did an exceptional job of creating privileged, selfish students who gave no thought to how their actions impacted others, and whose magnetism mesmerized Richard. We know from page one that one of them ends up dead, and it was captivating to watch the web of relationships tangle and unravel, and to watch each person try to justify their actions.

The way that Tartt writes had me completely immersed in this story from the get-go. The setting seemed to come to life in a way that made it feel like more was happening than actually was. I usually struggle with long books (mainly because I like a lot of action and they tend to be more character and/or description-driven), but this on carried my interest and intrigue all the way through.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Secret History at an indie bookstore near you
The Secret History on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, mystery, thriller

The Final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix ~ Book review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Thriller

Lynnette is a final girl: the only survivor of a horrible massacre. She, along with five other final girls, have met with a therapist for years to support each other as they struggle to move forward from this unique trauma. When one woman fails to show up to a meeting, Lynnette fears that there is more horror in store for each of them.

This book was interspersed with articles about the sensationalization of final girls and reviews of the movies and games created based off of real women’s situations. These incorporations did a lot to help me understand the layer’s to Lynnette’s experiences and her paranoia.

I really liked the premise of this book and the style of writing was enjoyable. That being said, there were a lot of characters with a lot of backstory and I couldn’t keep them straight. Their stories were too similar for them to be distinct in my mind, making it challenging to follow the narrative and to keep track of Lynnette’s many guesses about who was after them.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Final Girl Support Group at an indie bookstore near you
The Final Girl Support Group on Goodreads

Book Review, mystery, thriller

All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham ~ Book Review

Morgan

Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

After Isabelle’s son, Mason, disappeared from his room in the middle of the night, she stopped sleeping. A year later, Isabelle, who has separated from her husband, speaks at true crime conventions, desperate for any leads on the case.

The present narrative is interspersed with flashbacks to Isabelle’s childhood growing up with her sister Margaret. It becomes clear that there is something dark in Isabelle’s past, but it took a long time for any connection between past and present to become clear and I found the sections in Isabelle’s childhood to be slow.

I was not satisfied with how this one ended. There were a lot of red herrings along the way and I didn’t think there was enough in place to make the ultimate culprit seem believable. I was definitely surprised a number of times along the way, and intrigued to see how things would unfold, but it wasn’t particularly shocking in a way that made me look back on the book in a different light, which is how I measure a really good thriller.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy All the Dangerous Things at an indie bookstore near you
All the Dangerous Things on Goodreads

Book Review, mystery

A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw ~ Book Review

Morgan

Mystery
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

A History of Wild Places starts by introducing the disappearance of Maggie St. James and Travis Wren, a detective who went looking for her. It picks up years later in a culty commune called Pastoral when one of the members discovers Travis’s abandoned truck just outside the community’s boundaries – where no one is supposed to venture to avoid bringing in disease. Thus begins the slow questioning of the community and what its members have been told to believe about the world beyond.

I found this book to be pretty slow for a mystery. It mainly followed the daily lives of several members of Pastoral. There was a decent amount of ‘world-building’ to acclimatize the reader to the culture of Pastoral, which felt overdone to me. It felt like the way the inhabitants were being controlled was repeated over and over and it was unclear why none of them seemed to notice or care.

Although I finished the book and was interested in hearing the ultimate truth about Maggie and Travis, it kind of just ended up where I would have expected it to, which fell flat.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy A History of Wild Places at an indie bookstore near you
A History of Wild Places on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, mystery

The It Girl by Ruth Ware ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5

One thing about me: I love a good prep school murder mystery. The It Girl tells the story of April, the Oxford ‘It Girl’ who Hannah Jones is assigned to live with. April is found dead at the end of their second term and Hannah provides key evidence in convicting the suspected killer, Neville. When Neville dies in prison a decade later, Hannah’s world is shaken when a reporter presents her with new information that Neville may not have been guilty.

This book cut between past and present and artfully showed how April could be both loved and hated by everyone around her. There was no shortage of people with motives and I was guessing until the end about who the killer really was.

The emotional destruction that the situation had on Hannah was heart-wrenching. Particularly, the way it drew a rift between her and her husband, just as they were expecting their first child.

I didn’t find the ending to be mind blowing, which is my extremely high bar for a thriller, but I was satisfied with it.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The It Girl at an indie bookstore near you
The It Girl on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, mystery

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio ~ Book Review

Morgan

Flatiron Books
Mystery
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

What a perfect fall read. If We Were Villains takes place at an elite boarding school and centers on a group of seniors in the acting program. We know early on that our protagonist, Oliver, ends up in jail for murder, and we learn through flashbacks what led to him being convicted.

As with many academia-centered books, there are a lot of central characters and, as is usual for me, I found it hard to keep track of everyone. There are a lot of changing intra-group dynamics and those were focused on more than the actual background or characteristics of each particular person. I wish I had gotten a chance to really know them all a bit more.

The atmosphere of this book is fantastic. I could practically feel the creaky old boarding school drenched in the legacy of thespians past. The acting program focuses solely on Shakespeare, so there are a lot of passages interspersed throughout the story. This is fun to some extent, but I found myself skimming them toward the end. I do think they were creatively intertwined with the narrative, but it was a little over the top for me.

This one was kind of a mixed bag for me. Overall, I thought the setting was incredibly interesting and well crafted, but I wish the characters had more development and I was not satisfied with the ending.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy If We Were Villains at an indie bookstore near you 
If We Were Villains on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, mystery, thriller

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham ~ Book Review

Morgan

Minotaur Books
Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪

I’m not sure why this book didn’t quite click for me. It has all the makings of a great thriller, with Chloe grappling with the impending 20th anniversary of when her father was convicted of a series of murders and sent to jail. When teenage girls begin to go missing again, Chloe has to face the fact that there may be a copycat killer on the loose.

From the beginning, Chloe voices how difficult romantic relationships have been for her given her family history. The framing is meant to make the reader automatically question her fiancé Daniel, and I felt like this was being forced too much throughout the book. There were twists that intrigued and surprised me, but the red herrings were frustrating.

The writing style was a little flowery for me and it seemed at odds with the tense content of the story. I would have preferred if it was more cut and dry so the action could unfold faster.

Overall, this was a fine thriller, but nothing earth-shattering.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy A Flicker in the Dark at an indie bookstore near you
A Flicker in the Dark on Goodreads

Book Review, mystery

The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda ~ Book Review

Morgan

Scribner
Mystery
My Rating: 🍪🍪

I loved the setting of The Last to Vanish. It took place at The Passage Inn in the town of Cutter’s Pass, most notably known for outdoor recreation and its access to the Appalachian Trail. It’s also, however, known for a string of unsolved disappearances of hikers over the years. The descriptions of the inn and the natural surroundings were wonderfully depicted and I could perfectly visualize the story unfolding.

The protagonist, Abby has managed the inn for ten years. She begins to feel increasingly troubled by the disappearances when the brother of the most recent man to go missing shows up to investigate. Abby begins to suspect that her neighbors and coworkers are not being honest about what they know.

There were so many characters in this book that I couldn’t keep track of them. No one had a stark enough personality to orient me to who was saying and doing what and it made it very confusing to try to stay invested in the mystery. It also felt to me like not much happened for the majority of the storyline, and the twists at the end were extremely anticlimactic. 

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The Last to Vanish at an indie bookstore near you
The Last to Vanish on Goodreads

Book Review, mystery, thriller

The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager ~ Book Review

Morgan

Dutton
Thriller
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

If you watched The Woman Across the Street from the Girl in the Window,  a Netflix show satirizing the thriller genre, the premise of The House Across the Lake will feel a little on the nose. Casey’s life has gone off the rails. Following the drowning of her husband at their lake house, she starts drinking heavily, causing her acting career to go off the rails and her to flee back to the lake house for privacy. Out of curiosity, she begins spying on the couple across the lake and begins to believe that something sinister is at play.

Sager created a rich setting with the lake community and Casey’s big empty house. The story is shadowed by the fading news of several nearby disappearances that keep Casey constantly on edge. Her excessive drinking makes her a classic unreliable narrator, and I enjoyed trying to untangle what was real and what she was extrapolating, as well as which of her neighbors could be trusted.

I was really into this book until about two-thirds of the way in when it took a kind of supernatural twist that I was not feeling. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t like ghost-y stuff in thrillers. If I couldn’t theoretically have guessed the twist before it happened, it’s not my kind of read. Despite how enthralled I was with the beginning of this book, the twist really lost me.

Check out my bookstagram: @Treat.your.shelf
Buy The House Across the Lake at an indie bookstore near you
The House Across the Lake on Goodreads