Thriller / Suspense Archives

Book review: The One Who Walked Away by Karen Rose

August 17, 20262 min read

The One Who Walked Away by Karen Rose reminded me why I used to be such a fan of romantic suspense. I read a stack of her books back in the early 2000s, along with Nora Roberts, Sandra Brown, Elizabeth Lowell, Jayne Ann Krentz and Suzanne Brockmann. Although I’m not a fan of straight romance (ie. solely romance, not non-gay romance!) romantic suspense kinda ticks a few boxes for me, those books becoming a comfort-read of sorts. This is marked as Mendocino #1 so presumably the start of a new linked series… our main characters here being a family lawyer turned bounty hunter and a small town detective.

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Book reviews: Irish intrigue with Andrea Mara

August 14, 20263 min read

I recently received a little gift box, including two books… promising some Irish intrigue from Andrea Mara. Mara is new to me as an author and I’m always happy to find a new author with a good backlist. I’m interested to know more about them though as both books here are similarly themed around children going missing… as is All Her Fault, a miniseries I recently watched, based on Mara’s book of the same name. I think the whole not having kids myself and not relating to parenting stuff means I’m less into books about that as it’s not a fear I’ve had to deal with IRL…

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Book review: She Lied First by Dinuka McKenzie

August 1, 20262 min read

Wow… She Lied First by Dinuka McKenzie is a great read! It’s obvious McKenzie (well, her characters) are keeping secrets and perhaps fooling themselves (and potentially us), making them consciously or unconsciously remain in denial, but at the same time this book goes in an unexpected direction and flips everything we think we know…or that we’ve assumed.

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Book review: The Death Row Club by VA Vazquez

June 30, 20262 min read

The Death Row Club by VA Vazquez was the second book I’d read in a short amount of time involving an adult daughter discovering their father was (in fact) a serial killer. Though this has a very different flavour to Happy Woman.

I found elements of this a little confusing and I’m unsure if Vazquez means for that to be the case (duping us), or if it doesn’t flow as well as it could or I missed obvious details or foreshadowing. For example, it’s not clear (initially) that Nicola’s father’s murders were committed twenty years earlier. And there’s reference to true crime show host Greer playing a role in uncovering Nicola’s father’s crimes but then we learn Nicola had been helping Greer on the case. And it seems that was coincidental until we (eventually) learn it wasn’t. Huh? That aside, I became sufficiently invested in the unfolding events so needed to hang in there.

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Book review: Every Time She Wakes by Petronella McGovern

June 21, 20263 min read

I was a bit worried going into Every Time She Wakes by Petronella McGovern because it features a Groundhog Day scenario… so I made some assumptions about how it would play out. But… wow, McGovern throws that trope on its head as the world in which Suzanna (Suze) wakes each time is very different. Eventually she reflects on her daughter’s philosophy studies about timelines and dimensions, not in a woo-woo way, rather trying to make sense of her same-but-different adventures (and I’ve written before about my fascination with the parallel lives concept). In each though, Suze’s family is abducted, which ends in a tragic accident… at which point she wakes up. Again. In the past.

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Book review: Find Me by Holly Craig

June 20, 20263 min read

Find Me by Holly Craig is a well-paced and action-packed read that goes beyond the thriller genre, digging into family relationships and roles we fall into… even into adulthood. Craig gives us three voices here: that of estranged sisters Hallie and Gertie who team up following their mother’s death for a last-ditch effort to find their brother Pete who disappeared in Tasmania three years earlier. We also offered another storyteller, one whose identity remains shut-off to us for much of the novel. We also hear from Pete through emails he sent home and (eventually) his journal.

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Book review: The Damned by Matt Rogers

June 17, 20262 min read

The Damned by Matt Rogers is the second in the series featuring former CIA assassin Logan Booth and I just need to say I bloody loved this book. Rogers again gives us a complex and fully formed (albeit slightly flawed) character in Logan along with ex-crack addict Alice (thankfully with new teeth, her old ones ruined by her habit)*. Here Logan travels to Columbia where a former lover has been (briefly) kidnapped. Unfortunately for him, her new boyfriend is connected to a cartel family which now has multiple reasons to hunt him down.

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Book review: Barren Cape by Michelle Prak

May 24, 20263 min read

I missed getting Barren Cape by Michelle Prak for review last year so am a latecomer to this, picking it up at my local second-hand bookstore. I read and enjoyed Prak’s 2023 novel The Rush and her second book sustains the sense of foreboding she instilled in her debut. This unfolds from several points of view and again Prak takes this in an unexpected and somewhat shocking direction. Prak also reflects on housing security and homelessness here and our female narrators also experience a sense of menace thanks to several men featured in the novel.

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