Tag Archives: Thriller

Review | A Very Bad Thing, by J.T. Ellison

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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.

Review | The Off Season, by Amber Cowie

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The Off Season had an interesting hook: documentary filmmaker Jane Duvall moves into a remote hotel during the off season with her new contractor husband, Dom, and his teenage daughter, Sienna. Dom is tasked with doing renovations at the hotel to prepare it for the next tourist season, and Jane is coming off a work-related scandal (the details of which we don’t learn till much, much later than really necessary) and hoping the atmospheric hotel will give her material for her next film. Except odd things start happening at the hotel, and the more Jane digs into its history, the more she learns of mysterious deaths and disappearances linked to the place, most notably Dom’s ex-wife and hotel owner Peter’s son.

So far, so compelling. I love locked room mysteries and thrillers rooted in family secrets, and a remote hotel during the off-season is such a wonderfully atmospheric setting for such a tale. Unfortunately, this book didn’t fully work for me. So much of the success of this kind of story lies in the setting and the main character, and neither really gripped my interest.

I didn’t really understand why Jane was so fascinated by the Venaventura Hotel; apart from her being stuck there for a few months. She was really drawn into the history of the hotel, but from an outsider’s perspective, I didn’t really find the hotel super mysterious beyond Jane’s assertions that it was.

I also didn’t really understand why she was so into Dom at all. There were a couple of steamy scenes, but mostly he seemed like a bit of a jerk, and his secrecy about his wife’s death was such a giant red flag that I wondered why on earth Jane even married him in the first place. His daughter Sienna is a total brat, and honestly, I just felt Jane should leave and both Dom and Sienna should go into family therapy to deal with unresolved feelings over Dom’s ex-wife.

A lot of the issue comes from the fact that Jane has only known Dom for a few short weeks (I think?). So when Dom starts acting shady, and Sienna starts doing cruel things, and Jane literally thinks she’s in danger from one or the other, or both of them, I don’t understand why she still keeps wanting to make it work. I may have understood more if the goings-on at the hotel made her want to escape, and the story turns into a race against time to leave while she still can. But instead, she keeps flip-flopping between wanting to run away and wanting to make things work with Dom and Sienna, and that just gets really frustrating to read after a while.

In terms of thrills, there’s a lot going on: mysterious mean notes scrawled on mirrors, potshots taken at Jane, a trip wire designed to cause serious injury, and a lot of stuff that is unclear if they’re signs of danger or mere coincidences (for example, Jane’s phone falling into a sink full of water so she can no longer use it). There are also elements to enhance the atmosphere of danger, such as the bridge becoming damaged and a storm coming in. And of course, all the mysterious deaths and disappearances.

But to me, these are all elements of a thriller that don’t quite have a compelling enough emotional core to make me care. I see the danger, and I want Jane and the stray cats she took in to be safe. (Good news: the cats remain alive and unharmed till the end.) But since I don’t really understand why Jane cares so much about Dom, Sienna, and their new family in the first place, then whenever something new and dangerous happens, I just wanted her to break up with Dom and take herself and the cats away.

All to say, this book didn’t work for me. But at least the cats survive, and also to the author’s credit, I didn’t guess the big reveals.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | The Escape, by Ruth Kelly

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TheEscapeBritish influencer Adele posts a crowdfunding video online asking her followers to help fund her dream to purchase a beautiful old chateau in France. Amidst all the hateful comments about how selfish and deluded she is for the ask, Adele also receives an email: a wealthy and intensely private philanthropist wants to buy the chateau for her and her partner, Jack.

The catch? They cannot bring any furniture of their own, nor make any changes to the building. They cannot have guests over, much less move in Adele’s mom, who has cancer. They must also agree to let the unknown benefactor come over whenever they desire. In return, the deed to the chateau will be in Adele and Jack’s name within the day, the philanthropist will send them cash for living expenses, and they’ll even have a gardener to help with caring for the grounds.

Personally, I couldn’t do it. I would hate for anyone to have that much control over my home and my life. But Jack is unemployed, and Adele’s boss fired her after interpreting the crowdfunding video as Adele intending to leave. So Adele and Jack decide to take the offer and go for their dream life. Four months later, a few days after New Year, Adele’s sister Erin comes to the chateau to tell Adele to come back home; their mom’s condition has worsened, and her dying wish is to see Adele one final time. Except that neither Adele nor Jack is at the chateau, nor answering their phones. And when Erin asks the people in town, no one seems to want to help.

The Escape starts off really strong. I love the dual narrative structure: Erin’s chapters are set in the present day, with Erin trying to retrace events leading up to the last time she heard from Adele, a texted heart emoji on New Year’s Eve. And Adele’s chapters are in the months leading up to New Year’s, detailing the creepy vibes she keeps feeling at the chateau, the overall unfriendliness of the people in the nearby town, and increasing tensions in her and Jack’s relationship. The first half of the book was fantastic! Lots of mystery, lots of spooky vibes, and lots of curiosity about what on earth is actually going on with that chateau.

Unfortunately, the story turned kinda meh for me in the second half. We do find out big reveals about the mysterious benefactor and their interest in the chateau, and it’s ridiculously over-the-top and dramatic. I usually like drama, and I’m not averse to a little pulp in my fiction, but this was just so pulpy yet played so straight that it was a struggle to maintain my suspension of disbelief. It’s tough to describe without going into spoilers, so I’ll just say it gets dark, it involves minors, and based on the descriptions in some scenes, some non-consensual sadism. Torture, conspiracies, and people in power all play a part. And when Erin’s investigation puts her personal safety at risk, voyeurism plays a role in how the story’s denouement eventually plays out.

It’s so utterly over-the-top and ridiculous that I can easily imagine Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc’s utterly bewildered expression in trying to make sense of it all. Yet Ruth Kelly writes the whole thing with such earnest seriousness that you can’t quite tell if you’re expected to take this as seriously as she and her characters are.

Still, I had managed to suspend my disbelief to that point, and I was willing to stay with the author all the way to the end. But then came another reveal about Adele’s whereabouts, and honestly, that was just a reveal too many. I’ll acknowledge that the author did set up this reveal earlier in the novel; she was hardly subtle about it, and if I hadn’t been so distracted by all the other stuff going on, I may have critiqued it for being too obvious. But as it is, my response is more one of disbelief that even after everything else, she felt the need to tack on yet another dramatic plot beat to the story.

The epilogue was just full-on evil villain cackle level chef’s kiss of an ending. If this book were adapted for a movie, it will probably become a cult classic with multiple sequels.

That being said, I do think the touch of romance for Erin was cute, and I do find the resolution of the family story to be heartwarming. And as critical as I was of how the story turned out, I was entertained by it, and had a pretty fun time overall in reading it.

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Thank you to Publishers Group Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.