Genre: Mystery

Freida McFadden’s Never Lie is a thriller / psychological crime thriller that has a great plot, some wild (and polarizing) twists, and a premise involving found evidence that never gets old (in this case, tape recordings from therapy sessions). On paper, this should be a standout but unfortunately the execution with the details and the prose left a lot to be desired for me. The biggest twist near the conclusion is a great idea that simply conflicts with the rest of the narrative and makes the entire book’s plot unbelievable. Starting off with the good, Never Lie’s setting at a remote manor that also served as a home office for a mysterious psychiatrist was a great setup. The premise involving found audio tapes recorded by Dr. Adrienne Hale and her clients is a narrative concept I love and the snowed-in setup was a great narrative choice to not only trap Tricia and Ethan in the manor, but to also serve as a plausible source for the odd noises due to snowfall. The core crime mystery involving Adrienne’s sudden disappearance a few years ago and reliving her last known days through the tapes and a split narrative was a page-turner; I…

This is my fourth Matt Haig novel that I’ve read (though I have another three that I already own but keep putting off) and The Life Impossible is both somewhat on-brand for what you would expect yet also quite out there in the back half of the book. If you are a fan of The Midnight Library but have yet to read his other works or are picking this up as your first Matt Haig novel, I would strongly recommend trying out his other books first and coming back to this one later. While The Life Impossible is filled to the brim with introspective reflections and lengthy internal monologues that are to be expected for Haig’s style, I found the fantasy/magical realism plot elements in this one to be quite bizarre, random, and less effectively incorporated into the character work of his previous books. That’s not to say that The Life Impossible isn’t well-written; it’s very ambitious and complex. It’s that the presentation and the plot devices are nowhere near as mass appealing or accessible as the Midnight Library and even as a fan of Matt Haig’s books and slower reads, even I had trouble staying invested in this one…

There’s honestly a lot of great ideas going on in Peng Shepherd’s All This & More including science fiction time and reality bending, second chance life choices and romance, an underlying mystery revolving around the unreleased tv show season, and the unsettling appearance of Chrysalis. This is all done on top of a “Choose your own adventure” branching storyline book setup. Yet despite how ambitious and creative Peng’s concepts are on paper, it was amazing how uninteresting and tedious this was for me to read. I don’t know what it was exactly, but this book felt heavily catered towards suburban mother book club members in their late 30’s to 40’s based on Marsh’s characterization and the tone. I thought the Choose your own adventure concept and branching choices were decently executed but the pacing, unusual choices in focal points, and Marsh’s character were all not to my taste and squandered the excellent premise. Also to properly review and critique the book in its full entirety, I went back and read through every potential choice including any parallel sections and each short ending. An unrelated nice touch though was the “System Error, you shouldn’t be here” due to cheating and not…

I’m starting to detest the genre and book descriptor “thriller” or “horror” as it sets an unfair expectation for a twisty, fast-paced, intense reading experience which doesn’t fit many books classified under it. And to be frank, Riley Sager’s Middle of the Night is NOT fast-paced nor intense (by my standards anyway), and even calling it slow burn might be a stretch at times. However, despite the slow pacing for almost 60% of the book (slow even by Riley Sager standards), I still found it to be a rewarding and surprisingly sophisticated read! This is my 3rd Riley Sager novel that I’ve had the pleasure of reading and it’s definitely not one that I would recommend if someone has never read any of his other books before. The pacing is deliberately slow and there’s a decently large ensemble cast of characters to keep track of. Constantly jumping between two time perspectives, the bulk of the story is told from the present day perspective of Ethan Marsh as a grown 40yr old, thirty years after the disappearance of his friend and neighbor Billy. Despite much of the past perspective taking place over the course of a few days and the present…

Reading Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series is usually a good, but often mildly frustrating time for me as they’re decently fun reads that are so close to being excellent. Book number three, Whispers Under Ground, is unquestionably the most tonally consistent and focused story so far that improves upon all my biggest criticisms of the previous installments. While Midnight Riot/Rivers of London (I’ll be referring to book 1 as Midnight Riot for consistency) and Moon Over Soho suffered from overly loose, meandering plots that attempted to weave together two separate cases, Whispers Under Ground smartly focuses on just one case and allows its dry, tongue-in-cheek British style to be front and center. Despite the improvements across the board, unfortunately I found the core mystery investigation to suffer from inconsistent pacing yet again and the culprit/reveal to be rather random which holds this back from a higher rating. Each novel in the series so far has had an underlying theme that’s tied to the magical crime case and some type of fantasy element/being; Midnight Riot was themed to the theatre while Moon Over Soho was heavily Jazz-focused. Whispers Under London’s thematic flair is the visual fine arts (though one could…