Category: Reviews

Thoughts: On a Shari Lapena kick after finishing Not A Happy Family I decided to pick up this one, and I was not disappointed! I love the way she writes thrillers, keeps you guessing the whole book but then gives you every detail of what happened and finishes it off with just enough mystery that you wish there was more. Anne and Marco come home from a dinner party next door to find their baby was kidnapped. The cops automatically start looking into the family that of course is holding secrets from each other as well as the police. There were times I was able to figure out where it was going and a couple of the clues but there was one twist at the end I truly didn’t see coming and gasped at. Highly recommend if you’re looking for a page turner! 

Summary: 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 lands 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. 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.

Thoughts: This was our book club pick a couple months ago that I forgot to read and has been sitting on my shelf until a rainy weekend caused me to finally pick it up. Two strangers sit next to each other at a bar before their flight from London to Boston, and takes you on a ride of about 50 twist and turns from there. It starts off with a casual question about drink preferences and by the time they land at Logan Airport they have a plan to kill Teds’ wife and the man she’s having an affair with. The first half is mainly background info on the characters and was a little slow for me, but the second half is just about as non stop as you can get and definitely made up for the first. 

Summary: On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage that’s going stale and his wife Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start—he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit—a contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a cliché.

But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, “I’d like to help.” After all, some people are the kind worth killing, like a lying, stinking, cheating spouse. . . .

Back in Boston, Ted and Lily’s twisted bond grows stronger as they begin to plot Miranda’s demise. But there are a few things about Lily’s past that she hasn’t shared with Ted, namely her experience in the art and craft of murder, a journey that began in her very precocious youth.

Suddenly these co-conspirators are embroiled in a chilling game of cat-and-mouse, one they both cannot survive . . . with a shrewd and very determined detective on their tail.

Thoughts / Summary: This was the best thriller I’ve read in a WHILE! I blindly ordered this based on a friends suggestion and didn’t read the summary until I was sitting on my flight, this is the front cover “You just boarded a flight to New York. There are one hundred and forty-three other passengers onboard. What you don’t know is that thirty minutes before the flight your pilot’s family was kidnapped. For his family to live, everyone on your plane must die. The only way the family will survive is if the pilot follows his orders and crashes the plane. Enjoy the flight.” So I recommend not doing what I did and reading this on a plane, but it was SO good. I cried in multiple parts and haven’t stopped thinking about it since finishing it. 

Thoughts: I really enjoyed The Last Time I Lied so when I saw Riley released a new book I grabbed it right away. This was a very intense thriller, from start to finish, definitely a page turner. Charlie a college student decides to road trip back home with a stranger who she immediately starts to suspect had something to do with her roommates murder. If you’re looking for non stop action it was a good read, but for me it was a little too stressful. 

Summary: Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it’s guilt and grief over the shocking murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. For Josh, it’s to help care for his sick father—or so he says.
 
The longer she sits in the passenger seat, the more Charlie notices there’s something suspicious about Josh, from the holes in his story about his father to how he doesn’t want her to see inside the trunk. As they travel an empty, twisty highway in the dead of night, an increasingly anxious Charlie begins to think she’s sharing a car with the Campus Killer. Is Josh truly dangerous? Or is Charlie’s jittery mistrust merely a figment of her movie-fueled imagination?
 
One thing is certain—Charlie has nowhere to run and no way to call for help. Trapped in a terrifying game of cat and mouse played out on pitch-black roads and in neon-lit parking lots, Charlie knows the only way to win is to survive the night.