Thriller Book Reviews
Thriller book reviews!
These recent thriller/suspense novels earned 5 stars from me and many other readers. I love a good nail-biting novel and these are all outstanding. See what you think!
I loved Wicked River for many reasons! It’s a great, taut, thriller. It’s a wonderful snapshot of a marriage in crisis. Big time crisis. Tons of gorgeous nature scenes. And resilience. SO MUCH RESILIENCE! And it’s only $3.99!
Six million acres of Adirondack forest separate Natalie and Doug Larson from civilization. For the newlyweds, an isolated backcountry honeymoon seems ideal-a chance to start their lives together with an adventure. But just as Natalie and Doug begin to explore the dark interiors of their own hearts, as well as the depths of their love for each other, it becomes clear that they are not alone in the woods.
Because six million acres makes it easy for the wicked to hide. And even easier for someone to go missing for good.
As they struggle with the worst the wilderness has to offer, a man watches them, wielding the forest like a weapon. He wants something from them more terrifying than death. And once they are near his domain, he will do everything in his power to make sure they never walk out again.
There’s a very similar feel to this book: Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets. It kept me up way too late. Actually, given the raging insomnia of this the Winter of No Sleep, I was already up. Might as well be reading, right?
Driven to spend days alone in the wilderness, Amy Raye Latour, mother of two, is compelled by the quiet and the rush of nature. But this time, her venture into a remote area leaves her on the verge of the precarious edge that she’s flirted with her entire life.
When Amy Raye doesn’t return to camp, ranger Pru Hathaway and her dog respond to the missing person call. After an unexpected snowfall and few leads, the operation turns into a search and recovery.
As the novel follows Amy Raye and Pru in alternating threads, Breaking Wild assumes the white-knuckled pace of a thriller, laying bare Amy Raye’s ultimate reckoning with the secrets of her life and Pru’s dogged pursuit of the woman who, against all odds, she believes she can find.
Try Not to Breathe was amazing. It deals with Locked-In Syndrome and is about as creepy and thrilling as can be.
Alex Dale is lost. Destructive habits have cost her a marriage and a journalism career. All she has left is her routine: a morning run until her body aches, then a few hours of forgettable work before the past grabs hold and drags her down. Every day is treading water, every night is drowning. Until Alex discovers Amy Stevenson. Amy Stevenson, who was just another girl from a nearby town until the day she was found unconscious after a merciless assault. Amy Stevenson, who has been in a coma for fifteen years, forgotten by the world. Amy Stevenson, who, unbeknownst to her doctors, remains locked inside her body, conscious but paralyzed, reliving the past.
Soon Alex’s routine includes visiting hours at the hospital, then interviews with the original suspects in the attack. But what starts as a reporter’s story becomes a personal obsession. How do you solve a crime when the only witness lived but cannot tell the tale? Unable to tear herself away from her attempt to uncover the unspeakable truth, Alex realizes she’s not just chasing a story—she’s seeking salvation.
Shifting from present to past and back again, Try Not to Breathe unfolds layer by layer until its heart-stopping conclusion. The result is an utterly immersive, unforgettable debut.
And perhaps the most disturbing, haunting and unforgettable of them all, The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis. I don’t read a lot of YA but if this multi-award-winning book is representative, then I ought to be.
Edgar Award-winning author Mindy McGinnis delivers a riveting contemporary YA novel that examines rape culture through alternating perspectives. A stunning, unforgettable page-turner.
Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it.
Three years ago, when her older sister, Anna, was murdered and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best—the language of violence.
While her own crime goes unpunished, Alex knows she can’t be trusted among other people. Not with Jack, the star athlete who wants to really know her but still feels guilty over the role he played the night Anna’s body was discovered. And not with Peekay, the preacher’s kid with a defiant streak who befriends Alex while they volunteer at an animal shelter. Not anyone.
As their senior year unfolds, Alex’s darker nature breaks out, setting these three teens on a collision course that will change their lives forever.
What I’m Reading
- At March 16, 2019
- By Roxanne Snopek
- In Rox Reads, Roxanne Writes On
- 0
What I’m Reading is a collection of the things that bring me comfort when Bad Things and Dark Times threaten to overwhelm me. In reading stories of hope, redemption, courage, and love, I find courage to meet my own challenges, to rise above my fears and become stronger.
Here are the books that are giving me courage right now.
I’ve mentioned Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead before. I’m reading it slowly, so I can digest it fully and oh, is it ever exactly what I need to read right now. Here are a few quotes:
When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.
Boy, do I ever understand this. It’s hard to be ordinary. It’s hard to feel like I’m enough, just me, with my flaws and fears and talents and gifts. Someone, somewhere, is always more, better, smarter, farther along on this journey, while I’m just here, peddling as fast as I can.
Connection is why we’re here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The power that connection holds in our lives was confirmed when the main concern about connection emerged as the fear of disconnection; the fear that something we have done or failed to do, something about who we are or where we come from, has made us unlovable and unworthy of connection.
That fear lives large in me. As a child growing up introverted and artistic in a community that valued practicality and extroversion, I was always afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing, of being laughed at or excluded or deemed unworthy by some metric. I worked hard to raise my children to know that they are loved and accepted unconditionally, that they are worthy. In mothering, I learned to give myself that same love. But being vulnerable is such a risk.
There are many tenets of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness; facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough.
Isn’t that beautiful? Anyway, I’m loving this book right now.
This one’s $1.99 in the Kindle store right now and it’s a winner! I read it last year, and loved it. Of course, I’ve loved everything I’ve read by Liane Moriarty, so that’s not a shock. Give The Hypnotist’s Love Story a try and let me know what you think.
Ellen O’Farrell is a professional hypnotherapist who works out of the eccentric beachfront home she inherited from her grandparents. It’s a nice life, except for her tumultuous relationship history. She’s stoic about it, but at this point, Ellen wouldn’t mind a lasting one. When she meets Patrick, she’s optimistic. He’s attractive, single, employed, and best of all, he seems to like her back. Then comes that dreaded moment: He thinks they should have a talk.
Braced for the worst, Ellen is pleasantly surprised. It turns out that Patrick’s ex-girlfriend is stalking him. Ellen thinks, Actually, that’s kind of interesting. She’s dating someone worth stalking. She’s intrigued by the woman’s motives. In fact, she’d even love to meet her.
Ellen doesn’t know it, but she already has.
I just picked this book up today, somehow having missed the earlier release date! It’s written by the very talented Deborah Small, who happens to be a friend of mine. I read her first book, My Dear One: A Novel and was blown away by her talent. These are beautiful western-set historical romances, people.
From the author of My Dear One… a gripping sequel that sweeps us back in time and across an ocean in a desperate race for answers that unearths dangerous truths, and inspires heart-breaking sacrifice, all in the name of love…
1914 A woman forced to face her past …Suffering amnesia following a tragic accident, Dianna Douglas struggles to fit into a marriage, and family, she has no recollection of helping create. When her memory returns with brutal clarity of her young son who’s vanished and is believed dead, victim of the same storm that almost killed her, she refuses to accept he’s gone forever…
A man desperate for closure…Jake Douglas lost his first wife and son in childbirth. To cope with the pain of their loss he walled himself off from those who would have loved him. Dianna, and the children they’re raising together, gave him reason to break out of his self-imposed prison and learn to live—and love—again. Now he’s willing to do whatever it takes to find answers—provide closure—for the woman, and family, he loves…
Two hearts determined to reclaim their own…The quest for clues to their son’s disappearance leads Jake to England just as Britain joins the war against Germany, while Dianna stays in Texas to keep home fires burning. But when weeks turn to months without word from Jake, Dianna is forced to leave her daughters behind and return to the land of her birth where she unearths dangerous truths and exposes devastating lies that send her on desperate race against time to save both the child and the man she loves… a perilous fight to reunite her family… make them, and their hearts, whole again.
This one is a re-read for me. Robyn Carr’s books are comfort reads for me and while the first one, Virgin River: Book 1 of Virgin River series (A Virgin River Novel) remains my favorite, this one, featuring a widowed pastor hero and an ex-stripper single mom heroine, is pretty great too. Reading a book with a Christian world-view AND a sex positive attitude, is SO refreshing to me. I worried that the book might lean too far to the religious side or take on a judgmental tone, but I should have trusted the author. Thank you, Robyn Carr, for writing such a great hero in Noah.
This book dovetails nicely with the concept of worthiness, as the heroine, Ellie, struggles with how her life choices have affected her children. But she isn’t cowed or self-pitying. She doesn’t expect much from men, but when she discovers love, she doesn’t question whether or not she deserves it. She knows she’s worthy – even if others have decided she’s not. She might be down on her luck, but she’s a queen.
This one is on sale in the Kindle store at the moment, so I grabbed it. $2.99 for a Jodi Picoult book, you can’t beat that with a stick. I haven’t read one of hers for a long time, so this might be next up for me. I’ll see. Have you read it?
Paige has only a few vivid memories of her mother, who abandoned her at five years old. Now, having left her father behind in Chicago for dreams of art school and marriage to an ambitious young doctor, she finds herself with a child of her own. But her mother’s absence and shameful memories of her past force her to doubt whether she could ever be capable of bringing joy and meaning into the life of her child, gifts her own mother never gave.
Harvesting the Heart is written with astonishing clarity and evocative detail, convincing in its depiction of emotional pain, love, and vulnerability, and recalls the writing of Alice Hoffman and Kristin Hannah. Out of Paige’s struggle to find wholeness, Jodi Picoult crafts an absorbing novel peopled by richly drawn characters, and explores motherhood with a power and depth only she is capable of.-
Another one on my To-Be-Read list that I haven’t gotten to yet. When our kids were small, a favorite movie of ours was The Secret of Roan Inish. Oh, what a beautiful story! This book sounds like it might evoke the same feeling. It’s $1.99 in the Kindle store right now and as Elizabeth Berg (love her!) praised it, I think it’ll be a winner. Have you read it? I’d love to know what you think.
There is an island off the west coast of Ireland called Inis Murúch — the Island of the Mermaids — a world where myth is more powerful than truth, and love can overcome even death. It is here that Lisa Carey sets her lyrical and sensual first novel, weaving together the voices and lives of three generations of Irish and Irish-American women.
Years ago, the fierce and beautiful Grace stole away from the island with her small daughter, Gráinne, unable to bear its isolation. Now Gráinne is motherless at fifteen, and a grandmother she has never met has come to take her back. Her heart is pulled between a life in which she no longer belongs and a family she cannot remember. But only on Inis Murúch can she begin to understand the forces that have torn her family apart.
End the R-word
- At March 06, 2019
- By Roxanne Snopek
- In Rox Reads, Roxanne Writes On
- 6
End the R-Word day is here. You know what word I’m talking about. It was once a commonly used term for someone with intellectual disabilities. The word itself – retard, a verb meaning “to delay or hold back” – is benign. But when used as a noun, it becomes something else, a pejorative, a hurtful, offensive, derogatory way of categorizing and excluding those in the disability community.
Throughout my life, I’ve been exposed in various ways to people with disabilities. I had an uncle with Down syndrome. In school, I volunteered with special needs classes. Later, I worked in nursing homes, with a wide variety of people, and a wide variety of abilities. My sister, brother and brother-in-law work with people with special needs. Differently-abled people aren’t foreign or particularly frightening to me. Or, I should say, they’re no more foreign and frightening to me than most people. 🙂
But I understand that if you’ve never known a single person with special needs, it’s easier to categorize them all into one box and put that box up on a high shelf, where it can’t frighten you and you don’t have to look at it.
So when I wrote The Chocolate Comeback (Love at the Chocolate Shop Book 7), I deliberately included a young man with Down syndrome. I wanted to introduce readers to a character they may have never encountered before, and let them get to know him. I thought, once they met Mark, they might see that he’s just a person, with a person’s thoughts and feelings.
It was a risk, I knew. These are romance readers. They might not want to read about this much “real life.” People might judge my portrayal of this young man harshly, either painting him too idealized or too “old-school”. They might avoid the book, thinking the story would be dark or sad.
But that’s not what happened. People loved it. In fact, at the moment, it is my top rated book, with reviews averaging 4.8 on Amazon. They use words like “entertaining” and “heartfelt” and “positive” and even “fun.” Here are some comments I got:
from BookGannet:
This book was such a delight to read. Not just because of the way DeeDee softens and changes throughout it, or the way Isaac slowly changes his view of many things, but because of Mark. He’s such a great, positive representation of Down syndrome…
from LadyWithAQuill:
What I loved most about this book was that it tackled such a heavy topic – developmental disabilities – and didn’t sugarcoat the reality of it. We saw both angles, that of the family member and that of an outsider with zero experience joining that family. While her first book in this series [The Chocolate Cure (Love at the Chocolate Shop Book 4)] remains my favorite, I think this one gets so deep and made me want to be a better person.
From Marsha@KeeperBookshelf, who has family connections with the disability community:
…this story is realistic. It’s well thought out and researched. It is believable and at times brutally honest. I’ve come to realize that there are three categories of humans, those that accept people no matter their differences, those that are afraid of what they don’t know and will do everything to tear down a person for their differences, and those that might have a touch of non-thinking cruelty but soon discover that people are people no matter their differences and come to accept and enjoy every person in their own right. We encounter all three of those in The Chocolate Comeback. And Mark’s portrayal and that acceptance of reality is a major part of what made this story so believable for me – and enjoyable as well.
from Kristen Lewendon:
Wow. There are so many big messages and even bigger emotions in this book. Messages of respect, understanding, tolerance, love, hope, and redemption fill the pages and are so skillfully woven into the story you almost don’t even realize you’re hearing them.
I particularly loved writing this book. Below are a few scenes. For a bit of backstory, my heroine, DeeDee, is a failed fashion model who’s taken a temporary position as companion to Mark, a young man with Down syndrome, who lives with his older brother, Isaac, the hero. DeeDee doesn’t start off as a very sympathetic character. Here, while jogging in the park, DeeDee sees Mark and Isaac for the first time, when her sister Maddie points them out, knowing Isaac needs to hire a companion for Mark.
One was tall and athletic, the other short and wide, like a fireplug. Even from this distance, DeeDee could see he was handicapped in some way. The tall guy jogged backward and forward as if impatient to get going. “How would you feel about being a care aide?” Maddie asked. DeeDee laughed. “Care aide? This is me you’re talking to. Those are not words commonly associated with me.” She glanced at the two men again. “Especially if you’re talking about short-bus, there.” Maddie shot her a disapproving look. “Really? You’re better than that, DeeDee.” A pang of remorse tweaked DeeDee's stomach. It was just a joke. “Don’t bet on it.” “His name is Mark, and he has Down syndrome. He’s Isaac’s brother and a real sweetie.” “Then he doesn’t deserve me. Mom replaced Goldie the Goldfish twelve times and I didn’t even notice.” Maddie waved away her concerns. “You were eight. You’ve grown.”
In fact, DeeDee still has a lot of growing to do. But grow, she does. Toward the end, she has just organized a baby shower for a single expectant mother named Portia, and half the town has turned up, including a nasty, bigoted woman named Carol Bingley. This is a scene that had readers cheering.
"If Portia’s going to do this on her own," Carol said, "she needs to toughen up, the sooner, the better. Especially if there’s something wrong with the baby. That aunt of hers had one with mental defects, after all. Maybe it runs in the family.” Isaac had joined her just in time to hear this part of Carol’s rant, and DeeDee saw him stiffen at her words. She put up a hand to keep him from talking. She had this, cold. “Portia's little cousin has Down syndrome," DeeDee said. "There’s a young man over by the door with Down syndrome. His name is Mark. Sara Maria, the girl with him, is autistic. That cute kid standing by the food table is Jade. She has Asperger’s Syndrome. You’ll want to watch what you say about people with special needs.” “Oh, I know, everyone’s special these days,” Carol said. “But no one hopes for an abnormal child. If it has problems, I don’t know how Portia will cope, an unwed mother as she is. Even if her baby is normal—” “Normal like who?” DeeDee lowered her voice. “You? I hope not.” Carol’s lips tightened. “No one would blame her for putting it up for adoption. Which makes you wonder why we’re having a party—” DeeDee grabbed Carol’s elbow and yanked her toward the door. “This,” she said, “is a happy event. You and your opinions aren’t welcome here. Now, get out.” She shoved her through the door and closed it behind her, barely managing to resist kicking it.
Our fictitious world of Marietta, Montana is full of wonderful characters. Sara Marie, the girl with autism, comes from Melt My Heart, Cowboy (Love at the Chocolate Shop Book 1) by my pal C.J. Carmichael, and I introduced Jade in Her Montana Hero (Montana Home Book 1). Have you read any books that with characters with special needs?