Category: Thrillers

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.

Thoughts: This was a little confusing at the beginning so it took me a little to get into it but I ended up enjoying the ending. A Supreme Court justice goes into a coma and leaves his clerk as his power of attorney, setting her off on a hunt to solve a conspiracy within the highest offices in the US. As someone who loves the inner workings of politics and misses living in DC, I enjoyed it. Slightly reminded me of something that would happen on an NCIS episode, but as someone who has watched too many marathons on USA I swear that’s a compliment. 

Summary: Avery Keene, a brilliant young law clerk for the legendary Justice Howard Wynn, is doing her best to hold her life together—excelling in an arduous job with the court while also dealing with a troubled family. When the shocking news breaks that Justice Wynn—the cantankerous swing vote on many current high-profile cases—has slipped into a coma, Avery’s life turns upside down. She is immediately notified that Justice Wynn has left instructions for her to serve as his legal guardian and power of attorney. Plunged into an explosive role she never anticipated, Avery finds that Justice Wynn had been secretly researching one of the most controversial cases before the court—a proposed merger between an American biotech company and an Indian genetics firm, which promises to unleash breathtaking results in the medical field. She also discovers that Wynn suspected a dangerously related conspiracy that infiltrates the highest power corridors of Washington.
 
As political wrangling ensues in Washington to potentially replace the ailing judge whose life and survival Avery controls, she begins to unravel a carefully constructed, chesslike sequence of clues left behind by Wynn. She comes to see that Wynn had a much more personal stake in the controversial case and realizes his complex puzzle will lead her directly into harm’s way in order to find the truth. While Justice Sleeps is a cunningly crafted, sophisticated novel, layered with myriad twists and a vibrant cast of characters. Drawing on her astute inside knowledge of the court and political landscape, Stacey Abrams shows herself to be not only a force for good in politics and voter fairness but also a major new talent in suspense fiction.

Thoughts: I mistakenly read the sequel to this before the first, but still loved this. Anytime I see an Anthony Horowitz I grab the book knowing I’ll love it, but I forget how many series he has and need to do some research first. Susan is a book editor and receives a new mystery novel from her biggest client with one issue, the last chapter is missing. Things then get even more confusing when the author suddenly dies. The set up for the book is different from most because the book they receive and try to find the last chapter for is also included. It’s essentially two books so it’s a longer read but wraps up so well in the end it’s worth it. The sequel is the Moonflower Murders and deals with Susan trying to solve a real life mystery that another one of her authors wrote about. 

Summary: When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she’s intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.

Conway’s latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder.

Thoughts: I love an Agatha Christie style mystery, but this book was just not it for me. It was too long and if I hadn’t been on vacation when reading it I don’t think I would’ve made it through to the end. Aiden wakes up one day with no memory of his past or how he got there, but quickly learns his task, he must solve a murder before it happens at 11pm. He gets eight tries to solve it, and wakes up as a different character every day who all help him get to the answer. The concept sounded great to me when picking the book up but it just got really confusing throughout and I didn’t love it. 

Summary: Aiden Bishop knows the rules. Evelyn Hardcastle will die every day until he can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest at Blackheath Manor. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others. With a locked-room mystery that Agatha Christie would envy, Stuart Turton unfurls a breakneck novel of intrigue and suspense.

Thoughts: I’m almost indifferent on this one. I just felt like I was rereading The Guest List with the format and the plot. I didn’t dislike it, but it was hard to get into because it felt so similar. A group of college friends go up to the mountains to celebrate NYE together. The story goes back and forth between guests POV and the two employees of the days leading up to and then after a murder happens. You don’t find out until the end who the friend is that died and who did it but they do wrap things up and let you know everything that happened. 

Summary: During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirty something friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.

The trip begins innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps, just as a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.

Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead. . . and another of them did it.