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Thrillers

Review

I’ll Be You

by Henrietta Thornton

The number of all-caps texts I sent about THE TWISTS IN THIS BOOK!!! were…many. Those twists concern the misdeeds of identical twin sisters Elli and Sam Logan, who are estranged because of a shocking betrayal. They’re former child TV stars, with Sam back then enthralled by their minor fame while Elli hated every moment. As adults, Elli is a mom while Sam sees reproduction as “a monetizable bodily function.” While Ellie explores empowerment in a self-help group, Sam is a barely sober alcoholic and drug addict whose possessions consist “primarily of emotional baggage.” The twins’ paths have diverged, but when their dysfunctional parents call Sam for help looking after a child–one she didn’t know her sister had–she drops everything. The first part of the book looks at the past and present from Sam’s perspective, and the second at the same events from the point of view of her sister. This reveals that identical events can be experienced through a gulf of misunderstanding, hurt, and fear and that damage and love will find ways out. Brown’s insightful language and the emotional brutality and fortitude shown as Elli and Sam are forced to see themselves and each other anew will stay with readers. If twins in fiction are of interest, also try Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half.

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Review

Hidden Pictures

by Brian Kenney

A super-smart suspense novel featuring a leading character you’ll never forget. Twenty-something Mallory Quinn is 18 months sober. She was poised to get out of her south Philadelphia neighborhood—with an athletic scholarship from Penn State—when tragedy struck and she spiraled out of control, ending up addicted to opiates. But as the book opens, she’s able to move on from her half-way house, has a terrific sponsor, and is off to the posh suburbs for the summer as the nanny of five-year-old Teddy, son of Ted and Caroline Maxwell. Initially, this is the perfect set-up. Mallory lives in her own tiny house in the backyard and she bonds with the precocious Teddy. All is well until Mallory notices Teddy’s drawings are taking on a sinister tone, with violent images, then greater complexity, well beyond what any child is capable of. Mallory is so well realized, her interior world so compelling, that when she suspects the supernatural is at work, we believe her. Ted and Caroline—an incredibly creepy duo—try to gaslight Mallory, but a neighborhood boy, a love interest, helps to keep her sane. Ultimately, this is a novel of healing, as two very broken individuals—Mallory and Teddy—find ways to move on.

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Review

A Harmless Lie

by Brian Kenney

With its nine volumes, the acclaimed Detective Louise Rick series can be off-putting. But the newest title, A Harmless Lie, is actually a good entrance point. Sure, you’re missing plenty of backstory, but Blaedel is careful in not assuming too much knowledge on the reader’s part. Here, Louise is in Thailand, on sabbatical before returning home and taking the position of Copenhagen’s Head of Homicide, when she gets a call informing her that her brother Mikkel has been hospitalized after attempting suicide and that his wife, Trine, abandoned him and their children just days before. Louise heads off to her claustrophobic home town of Osted, only to confront a withdrawn Mikkel, her anxious parents, and the gradual realization that her brother is being investigated for Trine’s murder. Concurrently, her good friend Camilla, a journalist, is looking into the decades-old disappearance of a teen girl whose body has just been discovered, a girl who happened to be a classmate of Trine. While crawling with cops, this book is hardly a police procedural. It’s a deeply emotional dive into family, community, and the power of secrets.

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Review

This Might Hurt

by Henrietta Thornton

The first crime here is psychological abuse of two sisters whose father, named only as Sir, is obsessed with building their resilience (“Lord knows you’re not going to get by on talent or gifts”). Sir’s isolated, scared little girls can’t go to bed at night unless they achieve enough points. Chores count, but they must also endure “tests” like sitting in the snow without a coat for an hour, holding their breath for two minutes, and kneeling on broken glass. The abuse leads the younger sister to become obsessed with Houdini and perfect a show based on his escapes, with the psychological underpinnings of that quest not lost on her or on readers. Fast forward to adulthood and there’s possibly a new crime afoot, or at least a mystery, as one sister, Natalie, visits a Maine island where she suspects her sister, Kit, is captive in a cult led by the reclusive, mysterious Teacher. The markers of a cult are glaring, but is Kit being held against her will and what’s behind the other residents’ willingness to obey? The solution is satisfying here, and getting to it will bring home to readers Teacher’s declaration of the book’s central truth: “The difference between a cocoon and a straitjacket [is] perspective.”

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Review

The Younger Wife

by Henrietta Thornton

Quirky meets romantic meets WTF in this Australian import that’s brimming with character. Two very different sisters are at the center of the maelstrom. Rachel is a beautiful and successful baker who spends a week perfecting tiny roses on a wedding cake but eats two tiers of it by the fistful hours before delivery. Her sister, Tully, married with two little boys, is consumed with anxiety and a compulsion to steal. The younger wife of the title is Heather, who’s marrying Rachel and Tully’s father, Stephen Aston, and whose big day opens the novel. Stephen’s ex-wife roaming the altar during the vows is bad enough, but when the couple moves to the sacristy, a scream is heard and the celebrant reappears in the church covered in blood. Hepworth (The Secrets of Midwives) then chronicles the leadup to this chaos, a saga that involves a hot water bottle stuffed with $100,000, romance with cake-pun-loving delivery man, and hilarious observations about the million ways we sabotage ourselves. The Astons also face their share of heartaches and worse (Alzheimer’s disease, rape, and domestic violence are part of the story). For fans of domestic suspense and of the Australian show Offspring, which also features loving sisters and their interesting choices.

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Review

The Shadow House

by Brian Kenney

If you arrived at your new house and found a package at the entrance, containing not some welcome brownies from a neighbor but a grotesquely mutilated bird, what would you do? If you’re anything like me, you’d head for the hills. But Alex, a single mother-of-two, is made from tougher stuff. Escaping from an abusive partner in Sydney, she’s trying out Pine Ridge, an ecovillage out in the boondocks. She’s committed to making it work, especially for her teenage son, who got up to some nasty behavior online. But the bird is only the beginning, as the creepiness includes more horrifying presents, vandalism, and surveillance. It turns out that Alex’s experiences aren’t all that different from those of another family six years ago, but unlike many a thriller protagonist, she’s no victim, and sets out to confront the evil before it destroys her and her family. This is a wonderfully written work of suspense that succeeds in being both completely terrifying and totally believable—no easy feat. For fans of Lisa Jewell and Ruth Ware.

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Review

The Favor

by Henrietta Thornton

This is one of the best-plotted thrillers I’ve read in ages; it’s also a great portrayal of why women experiencing domestic violence are stuck. We meet Leah Dawson during her carefully choreographed routine of visiting a different liquor store every day. She hides the booze from her violent husband, Liam, a lawyer who has coercive control down to an artform. Leah’s legal career came to an end recently because her husband didn’t like her reading a work email at dinner, and took action. At the liquor store, something compels Leah to follow a fellow shopper, pediatrician McKenna Hawkins. Soon Leah’s routinely watching the woman, who’s also needlessly unemployed, from the street outside McKenna’s clinically clean home. The reason Leah felt drawn to McKenna is quickly apparent: McKenna is just like Leah, or rather McKenna’s husband, Zach, is just like Leah’s Liam. Both have ego to spare, enjoy speaking slowly to their wives to make them feel stupid, and are financially abusive. These guys have it all, until they don’t. No spoilers here, but get this book for the very original storyline, true-to-life characters, and a searing look at the pain and mind games endured behind too many closed doors. For more on why “she can leave any time” is ridiculous and insulting, read the afterword by Murphy, an attorney who’s represented survivors of intimate partner violence.

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Review

The Book of Cold Cases

by Brian Kenney

A medical receptionist by day, Shea Collins operates a popular true-crime website that specializes in cold cases. Single, a loner, and herself a victim—she was abducted as a child—Shea reserves her passions for her blog. Until the day that Beth Greer comes to Shea’s office. Back in 1977, Greer was tried and acquitted in the Lady Killer Murders, in which two men were killed, seemingly for the fun of it, by a female serial killer. Since then, the beautiful, sophisticated, and super-rich Beth has spoken to nearly no one—making it all the more remarkable that she agrees to be interviewed by Shea. Beth slowly opens up to the interviewer—inviting her into her super creepy mansion and deeply introspective life—as Shea struggles to put together the fragments Beth shares. This novel is beautifully written and perfectly paced. It creates a powerful sense of place in its depiction of an Oregon coastal community, and doesn’t shy away from tackling larger social issues, such as the sexism Beth experienced throughout her trial. Finally, its use of the paranormal—something I typically shy away from—is as terrifying as it is credible

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Review

Secret Identity

by Henrietta Thornton

Anyone who’s worked in publishing will recognize the low pay, deadline whirlwind, and scramble for recognition facing Carmen Valdez, a Miami transplant in New York. Worse, she’s a secretary trying to advance in a man’s world within a man’s world—comics publishing in 1975. Male colleagues sometimes show up drunk and their work is barely passable. Still, Carmen’s boss, whose father started the company, reminds her that “in the real world, we grant jobs based on experience and merit” when she gives him her comics scripts. Then her smoking buddy at work, Harvey, proposes to help by submitting a project by the two of them, but mainly by her, as his, and to reveal her authorship once it’s a success. Things don’t go according to plan, with not only Carmen’s professional future but also her safety jeopardized by a killer targeting her circle. Complementing this puzzling whodunit is a major plus for comics and graphic novel readers: Segura’s insider view of the comics industry and its history, as well as his spot-on chronicling of the too-frequent backstabbing among striving artists. For fans of Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl, another look at a young woman trying to make it in publishing

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Review

The Secrets We Share

by Brian Kenney

A bold, ambitious novel with a big, multigenerational story line, a busload of characters, and a smart balance between mystery and suspense. Natalie Cavanaugh and Glenn Abbott are sisters, but not the least alike. Natalie is a tough-as-nails Boston cop, while Glenn is a food blogger and now a book author. What they have in common is what they never talk about: the murder of their father, who was bludgeoned to death in the woods behind their house. But through a series of incidents in Glenn’s life today, the women are drawn back into their shared past, and the story line opens up to include Glenn’s husband, her tween daughter, Natalie’s colleagues on the police force, and many more. It’s remarkable that Hill can keep so many subplots afloat while at the same time creating such a level of suspense that the reader feels as though they are being catapulted to the knock-out conclusion. Hill is the author of the more cozy-ish Hester Thursby series, and librarian Hester makes a few delightful cameos in this book. For fans of Robert Bryndza and Karin Slaughter.

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