Month: July 2020

Posted in Gregg Olsen, Uncategorized

Lying Next To Me by Gregg Olsen

Posted on by roxtao

Synopsis:

No matter what you see, no matter what you’ve heard, assume nothing.

Adam and Sophie Warner and their three-year-old daughter are vacationing in Washington State’s Hood Canal for Memorial Day weekend. It’s the perfect getaway to unplug—and to calm an uneasy marriage. But on Adam’s first day out on the water, he sees Sophie abducted by a stranger. A hundred yards from shore, Adam can’t save her. And Sophie disappears.

In a nearby cabin is another couple, Kristen and Connor Moss. Unfortunately, beyond what they’ve heard in the news, they’re in the dark when it comes to Sophie’s disappearance. For Adam, at least there’s comfort in knowing that Mason County detective Lee Husemann is an old friend of his. She’ll do everything she can to help. She must.

But as Adam’s paranoia about his missing wife escalates, Lee puts together the pieces of a puzzle. The lives of the two couples are converging in unpredictable ways, and the picture is unsettling. Lee suspects that not everyone is telling the truth about what they know—or they have yet to reveal all the lies they’ve hidden from the strangers they married.

Review:

I have no idea how many months passed already since I’m in this “psychological/domestic thriller” loop, but for now, the attraction for this genre looks just as strong as when it started and it’s still bringing me joy and excitement. So here we are, with yet another mystery that I finished in just two-three days: Lying Next To Me.

There’s not a single character in this book that doesn’t look deceiving and shady. Even the only one which seems pretty clean in the beginning will make you change your mind later. As for all the rest…no chance they won’t make you squint suspiciously to anything they do, say or even think! This is perhaps one of the most interesting aspects. When it comes to this type of books, usually the authors prefer to mislead you into thinking that their characters are innocent and later to shock you by revealing their true nature. But Gregg Olsen makes everybody look guilty. You doubt everyone, you detect all the lies they’re telling both to themselves and to the others around them and yet, you still cannot put all the puzzle pieces together.

I normally don’t even try to unravel a mystery and just enjoy the ride as it comes, but this time I was convinced that I discovered the murderer way before reaching the final chapters. So I was completely surprised to see that in the end, I was and I wasn’t right in the same time. I did get a part of the puzzle, but only to notice that I missed a whole other bunch of it.

I enjoyed the whole story, the characters’ double faces, the imperfect matches, the apparently untied threads that the author leaves here and there.

What I definitely didn’t like was the rushed ending, the way everything looks fast-forwarded. There’s a constant cadence during the whole book, not to slow, not to fast and in the end, everything escalates in an unnatural way. I guess the author’s intention was to raise the reader’s pulse and the adrenaline levels but it felt unnecessary and unflattering for the whole story. All of a sudden, you’re witnessing this abrupt evolution of some of the characters and therefore, the whole story’s development looks forced and hasty. That’s actually the only reason why I dropped my rating from 5 to 4 stars so besides this annoying aspect, the story was a great and engrossing read.

Posted in Joanne Serling, J.D. Serling

Good Neighbors by Joanne Serling

Posted on by roxtao

Synopsis:

In an idyllic suburb, four young families quickly form a neighborhood clique, their friendships based on little more than the ages of their children and a shared sense of camaraderie. When one of the couples, Paige and Gene Edwards, adopt a four-year-old girl from Russia, the group’s loyalty and morality is soon called into question. Are the Edwards unkind to their new daughter? Or is she a difficult child with hidden destructive tendencies?

As the seams of the group friendship slowly unravel, neighbor Nicole Westerhof finds herself drawn further into the life of the adopted girl, forcing Nicole to re-examine the deceptive nature of her own family ties, and her complicity in the events unfolding around her.

Review:

First things first: this is not a thriller. It might be described as one, it might even give you the illusion that it is, at least in the first pages. But slowly, slowly, you will understand that it’s not. By definition, a thriller is suppose to…mm… thrill you? To surprise you? And Good Neighbors has a good start in building that required tension. But somehow, chapter after chapter, the tension just dissipates somewhere in thin air, leaving you with a deflated balloon that hisses embarrassingly instead of popping with the glorious bang that you’d expect.

Buuuut…. There is a big “but”. I did actually enjoy the book. I can’t say I was “thrilled” (pun intended) to go back to it each time I interrupted my reading sessions and it did take me a while to finish it because of this reason. But weirdly, I liked the dark colors the author uses to paint her whole story. The slow action didn’t disturb me, the lack of suspense didn’t feel like a flaw. Don’t get me wrong, there is a certain feeling of apprehension, only that it’s not as concentrated as I was expecting when I read the synopsis.

I also loved how dark, somehow rhythmic and melancholic the protagonist’s voice was, as well as how lyrical Serling’s style is because of the abundance of verbless clauses. Few authors surprised me during the years with a very unique writting style that would be worth reading even if they’d write a grocery list, but I think J.D. Serling might actually be one of them.

And my-oh-my, I couldn’t wait to write this review only to share this one thing with anyone who’s reading it: the deeper the writter digs in the heroine’s mind and soul, the deeper you feel she went into your own. There’s nothing wrong with the protagonist. Realistically speaking, she doesn’t do or act in any wrong ways. But in the same time, there’s something disturbing, there’s something that feels somehow too personal and hidden. Or, perhaps, that’s exactly the issue: that it should be concealed and yet, there it is, out in the open, a truth about each one of us that we never acknowledge even to ourselves. You will find that ugly part of yourself in one of the protagonist’s thoughts. Perhaps when she’s thinking about all the ways she wishes her kid to be different. Or when she’s judging her own husband. Or when she’s not such a good friend as she likes to think. When she is not saddened about somebody else’s unhappiness. When she throws money to cover the guilt of lacking the proper feelings or taking the right actions. When she avoids responsibility just because her comfort zone is warm and nice. We all do things like these. We all have dirty sides that we refuse to look at. We all know they are there, despise them, feel guilty about them and yet, do nothing to correct our ways. Maybe because unconsciously, we feel they are irremediable, maybe they are our souls’ diseases that cannot be cured.