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Domestic

Review

The Lake Escape

by Jeff Ayers

An annual tradition goes horribly wrong at a lake retreat in Vermont in Day’s latest thriller. Three families have grown up, and lifelong friendships have developed from Julia’s, David’s, and Erika’s families spending time every summer together. So much so that when their children become adults, they continue meeting every year and bring their kids. The area gives off a Jason/Friday the 13th vibe, since a local legend has a young woman disappear every 30 years, and this reunion marks the 30th anniversary of the last disappearance. Tensions explode from the moment they arrive, and everyone appears to have secrets and hidden motives. Day takes characters who initially seem to dislike one another and slowly reveals the bonds and reasons for them to stay as close as siblings forever. When David’s new girlfriend disappears, and his new nanny seems to have ulterior motives for taking the job, the group’s bonds begin to fray. The revelations pile up, and by the end, the reader will be surprised and a bit overwhelmed, which is a good thing. Day perfectly delivers the awkwardness and obligation of family reunions while spotlighting the comfortability and love that makes it all worthwhile.

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Review

Nobody’s Fool

by Jeff Ayers

Coben (Think Twice) brings back former Detective Sami Kierce from Fool Me Once (the book and the NetFlix series) as his past crashes into his simple life. Sami works as a private investigator, doing jobs that embarrass him. He teaches a true-crime class at night school and lives with his wife and year-old son. Sami might want answers from past events in his life, but thinks he will never learn the truth until a woman he recognizes arrives in his class. When Sami graduated from college, he met Anna on a trip to Spain, and for days their lives were bliss until she ended up dead. But the woman Sami sees in his class is Anna, and Sami stumbles into a larger mystery that seems unrelated to his time overseas. To add to the investigator’s increasing stress, the person responsible for killing his partner when he worked in law enforcement is released from prison and asks Sami to reinvestigate the case to prove his innocence. Then Sami’s wife, Molly, thinks she is being stalked, and the lurid texts proving she’s right begin popping up on Sami’s phone. Coben juggles several complex stories, each one of which would be compelling by itself but that together create a page-turning experience that will leave fans and newcomers to Coben enthralled. The twists are shocking, and Sami; his wife, Molly; and the supporting cast are so much fun. Coben would be foolish not to bring them back for another story.

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Review

Plays Well With Others

by Brian Kenney

You won’t find any members of organized crime here. Nor are the characters locked on a Scottish island or seeking a cozy murderer who has their community petrified. In fact, men have practically no roles in this book. And who needs them? The small group of suburban women who populate this novel are terrifying enough. Let’s start out with Jake, who a year ago endured her then-bestie posting their most intimate correspondence on social media. The result? Jake lost everything: job, house, and, most importantly, her husband. After a bit of sulking and trying to live down her past, Jake is back—she settles into a charming bungalow—and gets ready to retaliate. But this time she has a new friend with her, Mabel, who has her own set of problems. The two join up to seek revenge, although the real victims turn out to be the kids, who find themselves in the cross-fires (for real!). Is anyone in this terrifying community without a grievance? A compulsive domestic thriller that is as dark as it is dangerous.

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Review

The Backwater

by Henrietta Thornton

Sabine Kelly has been on the run for years. As a teen she was accused of arson that killed nine people, including her mother and sister. The Sabine whom readers meet seems hardened by her years on the road—or rather, on the river, hiding as she does in a houseboat on the same rural Australia waterway she grew up by, with her drug-addicted mother and a sister she had to parent. But she doesn’t seem capable of the crime she’s running from. Instead, she seems scarred by it and desperate for the truth to come out, but powerless to make that happen. Enter Rachel Weidermann, a journalist who lives next to Sabine’s grandfather, a complicated character called Pop. She’s been obsessed for years with getting Sabine’s story, and when she sees the fugitive visiting Pop, she is excited to both get answers and save her fading career. Following the women, as Sabine learns to trust someone and Rachel to let things unfold imprecisely, offers both an engrossing journalism procedural tale and a look at what can happen when goodness meets desperation. Setting is as prominent as characterization and plot here, with all combining to create a memorable tale of redemption.

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Review

If Two Are Dead

by Jeff Ayers

Luke Conway and his wife, Carrie, are moving from LA back to Clear River, Texas, where they grew up, so they can help Carrie’s father, who is gravely ill. For police officer Luke, it is a chance to escape a shooting that has traumatized him, and he’s now a county deputy. Carrie has baggage as well, but she is heading towards it. When she was a high-school junior, she was the sole survivor of an incident that left two girls dead and her with a chip in her skull. She barely survived and can’t remember any details of that day. One evening, while off-duty, Luke appears to hit someone while driving home in the pouring rain. Inspecting the area provides no evidence of a body, so he leaves and doesn’t report it. Luke tells himself that he hit a tree branch, but deep down, he knows he hit someone and decides to keep it a secret. Carrie arrives in town to find a not-so-warm welcome and soon learns that some there believe she killed the two girls years ago and is faking amnesia. Luke and Carrie need each other’s support, but running from the truth only makes matters worse for their marriage and their lives. Mofina generates suspense in unexpected ways and crafts a compelling, genius story that ends in a manner not even savvy readers will see coming. His background as a newspaper reporter allows him to craft realistic characters who face overwhelming odds. Harlan Coben and Alex Finlay fans should already have Mofina on their to-read pile, and this one is another guaranteed bestseller.

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Review

You Have Gone Too Far

by Henrietta Thornton

O’Connor’s latest Ireland-set novel is darker than her previous titles, but will still work for her many fans. Steadfast, kind veterinarian Dr. Dimpna Wilde is back, and this time life in her hometown, tourist hot-spot Dingle, Co. Kerry, is repeating itself in a macabre way. Only locals remember that 29 years ago, a cult centered around two men’s obsession with pregnant women ended in death and the men being sent to prison. They’re out now, and horrifyingly seem to be at it again, as a pregnant woman is found dead in a bog near the town and another is missing. A local child has been snatched, too, and Dimpna’s love interest, Detective Inspector Cormac O’Brien, is on the case, desperate to find the missing locals. An officer who worked the previous case threatens to destroy this one with her fixation on the just-released men. The best and the worst of small-town life come together here to great effect, and the nail-biting chronicle of the missing duo’s ordeal, with the pregnancy clock ticking, makes for an engrossing read that’s topped off by an exciting, satisfying ending. A realistically portrayed deaf protagonist adds texture to the story. While you’re waiting for this terrific read, watch a documentary with elements of similarity: Gloriavale: New Zealand’s Secret Cult.

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Review

Deep Beneath Us

by Danise Hoover

Tabitha is compelled by the spiteful actions of her ex-husband to move back to her childhood home. This is not a cozy, safe space as one might hope. It is a sort of compound: two schoolhouses on different sides of a reservoir, one occupied by her family, the other by her uncle’s family. In the past, four cousins, Tabitha the youngest, ran and played like a pack. But her mother is an unstable artist, her father and uncle killed themselves, and her sister and cousin married each other at age 16. Now, cousin Davey purportedly dies by suicide as well, leaving his property to Tabitha. But is that what really happened? Davey’s two cronies, along with three smart teens, use skills learned from TV crime dramas and DNA analysis to get to the bottom of it all. The characters are captivating, the atmosphere is dark and dour, and the wretched weather contributes to the overall tone of the book. The novel is set in Scotland and the use of Scottish dialect and expressions is sometimes daunting, but never gets in the way of the telling. To say that the plot here is a tangled mess may be an understatement, but the untangling is a treat.

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Review

Such a Good Mom

by Henrietta Thornton

There’s more medical follow up for a sprained wrist than for having a baby, Brynn Nelson notices. She tells everyone she’s fine after her son’s birth though she’s very far from it. Every other sleepless new mother does just fine, she thinks, so there must be something wrong with her. Her husband, Ross, loves the time he spends with his son but it’s a few moments here and there and he has no idea of the deep pit of fear his wife is in. Brynn has more or less lost touch with her own mother since staying on Martha’s Vineyard with her well-off new in-laws while her poorer parents moved off-island. She’s now firmly a Nelson, and when Ross tells her a family secret after a young woman’s body washes up on the beach, Brynn finds that she has much more facing her than the exhaustion and fear of new motherhood. This thriller excels in portraying the social dichotomy that is life in an expensive resort town, a split that’s echoed throughout the book in breaks between Brynn and her family of origin, the break between the life she could have had if she had chosen another boy and this one, and her life pre- and post-motherhood. Absorbing and satisfying.

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Review

The Tokyo Suite

by Brian Kenney

A deep investigation into the lives of two women: a mistress and her maid. Maju is one of scores of the “white army,” maids and nannies in São Paulo; she cares for young Cora, whose parents pay the child little attention. Fernanda, Cora’s mother and a successful TV executive, is uniquely self-involved; even when Maju and Cora disappear one day, Fernanda can’t stop obsessing over an affair she’s having long enough to focus on her own daughter’s abduction. Dad, meanwhile, has pretty much checked out. But once Fernanda does realize her daughter is gone, her whole world begins to cave in. Maju and Cora, meanwhile, have boarded a bus for a multi-day trip that Maju barely plans—they have limited food and money—and that begins to unravel after the first day. Each woman is confronted by a harrowing series of events that forces them to confront maternal guilt, poverty, and society’s expectations.

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Review

Anyone But Her

by Henrietta Thornton

The love surrounding a beloved neighborhood institution shines through in Swanson’s latest, in which a 1979 Denver record-store owning mom is shot dead in a robbery, her forlorn young daughter, Suzanne, left behind. But Suzanne’s hapless dad has the perfect solution. It’s all figured out! His old girlfriend, Peggy, is moving in. Peggy seems much too eager for this arrangement. She’s also far more motherly toward Suzanne’s devastated little brother, Chris, than Suzanne would like, while nasty toward Suzanne herself. But Suzanne’s mom used to call her daughter “my little seer,” and indeed, after some time, she gets visits from her mom, hearing again her “warm, round voice–like the sun speaking.” When we fast forward in alternating chapters to 2004, adult Suzanne is moving back to Denver from California with her husband, disgruntled teenage daughter, and nine-year-old son. Trying to settle in, she opens a new business in her mom’s old shop, but sinister things start cropping up–a girl is missing in town, and elements of the case are strangely familiar. Then there’s the rat left on the family’s doorstep. What it all means leads this protagonist on a frightening and gripping path to the truth about what happened in 1979, a tale that is enriched with details on the music of the time and the feeling of enduring love. For fans of T. Jefferson Parker’s A Thousand Steps, which is steeped in the same emotions, and all who love a solid mystery

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