Oh, wow! Talk about a propulsive page-turner!

J.T. Ellison’s A Very Bad Thing is a pretty hefty book, almost 500 pages thick. I picked it up to be my commuting and lunch break read for the week. Except once I started reading, I didn’t want to stop. I devoured the book over two days, and the only reason it even lasted that long was that I’d started it in the evening, and no matter how much my mind wanted to keep going, my body was more than ready for bed, thank you very much.

Best-selling author Columbia Jones is on a book tour to promote her latest novel and its upcoming movie adaptation. Her books are so popular that Spielberg bought the movie rights to this book even before Columbia finished writing it–now that’s a flex!

Except during the final stop on the tour, Columbia sees someone in the audience who seems to cause her distress. She faints on-stage, and the next morning, is found dead in a pool of blood in her hotel room. I’ll pause here to give the author due kudos: the description of Columbia’s body immediately made me think she was stabbed, but the death actually came about via a different method, one that I believe Agatha Christie herself would have approved of. (Not a spoiler; we learn this fairly early after the death.)

Within the periphery of this event are four characters whose perspectives we’ll follow throughout the rest of the story: Darian, Columbia’s daughter, manager, and sometime collaborator; Riley, the reporter Columbia has selected to write a feature article on the book tour; Kira, a Columbia Jones super-fan whose husband surprised her with tickets to the book tour’s VIP experience, a meet-and-greet with Columbia herself; and Detective Sutcliffe, the cop assigned to the case.

We also learn the Columbia has a stalker, someone who harasses her online from multiple accounts, their messages always beginning with the question, “Do You Remember?”

The secrets haunting Columbia from her past are revealed in a fairly steady stream, and long before the official reveal, it’s not too difficult to fill in most of the blanks. The mystery kept under wraps for much longer is who Columbia’s killer is and why they killed her. More urgently, why does this person now seem to be targeting Riley? Those questions kept me reading long into the night, and had me racing to finish this book even when I knew I had other stuff I needed to do that day.

The ending is frustrating, but I mean that in the best way possible. Because the intensity of my response proves that Ellison has set out to do what she intended: hook me into this thriller and never let me go. I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other about the big reveal, only that it made sense to me.

I can also imagine more objective critics calling the climax rushed; given how long it took other reveals to happen, the big set piece in the end does seem rather brief. However, I’ll also admit that it worked for me. I wanted to see how things turned out, darn it! My greedy hands couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, so on a purely visceral level, I was actually glad the climax played out as quickly as it did.

Overall, this is a fantastic read. I’ve read some other good page-turners recently, but this stands head and shoulders above them all. It was unputdownable, plain and simple.

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Thank you to Firefly Books Ltd for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.