The Whisper Man

Suspenseful and chilling; The Whisper Man will leave readers unsettled and cautious in their own homes. I listened to the audiobook version which was narrated brilliantly by British actor, Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who) and I would definitely recommend that to anyone who enjoys listening to audio. Tom and his young son Jake move to a new house after the unexpected death of his wife. They're hoping for a fresh start but, soon the whispers start coming. A little boy Jake's age has disappeared and it bears a strong resemblance to the Whisper Man serial killer that murdered young boys two decades prior. Was there an accomplice? Is Jake in danger? The suspense builds quickly and things only become darker. Creepy and wonderful!

The Silent Patient

This is really a 3.5 star book - I did not see the ending coming.. I would have rated it higher, but I really had a hard time empathizing or liking any of the characters. Other than that, this was a solid thriller that had a slow build up and a satisfying end. Alicia Berenson, a talented and beautiful young artist was found holding the gun that killed her husband. All signs pointed to her pulling the trigger but she never uttered a word in her defense or to implicate herself. In fact she never uttered another word again. She's been locked away in an asylum for years finally receding from the public eye. All that changes when a hot shot psychotherapist decides that he has what it takes to get Alicia to talk about the night of her husband's death. He is so enamored and intrigued by Alicia's story that he get's a job at her asylum just so he can be closer to her and get to work with her. Creepy and suspenseful; this thriller goes anywhere accept where you think it should go.

Stationary Bike

I enjoyed this, but not as much as other Stephen King novellas. I can't pinpoint why exactly, but it didn't resonate with me even though I liked many different aspects of it. Stationary Bike opens with a middle aged overweight man in a doctor's office. Things are being written down in red, weight cholesterol, he has to do something about it. Actually taking the doctor's advice he starts to eat better, sleep more at night, and introduce some work outs. Rather than join a gym, he purchases a stationary bike and puts it in his basement. At first it's tedious and boring, there is nothing to look at. As an artist he decides to paint a trail, a bike path he remembers from childhood. Overnight his biking improves and it turns to his favorite part of the day. If it weren't for the timer to snap him out of his biking reverie he might never stop. It's like he really is biking right there in his art/memories. But one day he sees something and in the distance he can hear an approaching truck. He can't bear to think about what will happen if the truck catches him while biking. Suspenseful, unique, and witty.

Me and My Girl

Impossible to put down, this fast paced romantic suspense ends with a major cliffhanger that will leave readers waiting breathlessly for more. Me and My Girl centers on Matise and her best friend Jordan. Matise has had feelings for Jordan for years but she is convinced that he would only see her as a friend. Because of that she locks down her heart and buries her feelings. When she discovers that Jordan is engaged, Matise blows her top. She didn't even know he was seeing anyone! Convinced that this girl must be a ho after his money and not his heart Matise vows to put an end to their relationship, but against her better judgement she discovers that she actually likes his fiance. Resigned to the fact that her one true love is going to get married off (at least it's too a cool chick), she decides to make her booty call of six months an official boyfriend. Isaiah is hot and the sex is to die for.  Matise decides that Isaiah will help her get over Jordan and who knows, she just may catch real feelings for him. Not all ends well though; Jordan's fiance and Isaiah may have some dark secrets of their own. Fun, sexy, and full of intrigue.

Black-Eyed Susans

A thrilling suspense novel that keeps readers guessing as the story alternates between modern day and 1995 when a heinous crime occurs. Tessa was one of the lucky ones, the only black-eyed Susan who wasn't murdered. When she was in high school she was left for dead in a shallow grave with two other young dead women. She has no recall of what actually happened, it's as if her brain shut off. Her testimony helped put a man behind bars and now that his execution is coming up she has some doubts, as do many others. Is her really the one that tried to murder her? What if she's wrong? Also, who keeps planting black-eyed susans outside her window. Is the real killer still at large? I did not see the end coming, although I still have a few unanswered questions. An okay read.

The Broken Girls

This awful cover art almost turned me away from what was, really, a very good book. It was suspenseful and the way the story unfolded with two story-lines between 1950 and 2014, keeps the story engaging and at the end of your seat. I was really impressed with how the author kept a few pretty complex story-lines together without confusing readers and pulled all those loose threads together at the end, for a pretty compelling and chilling ending. Idlewild boarding school for young ladies is not a nice place. It's dark, foreboding, and many say it's haunted. In 1950 four roommates are convinced there is a ghost haunting them and the grounds. She goes by Mary Hand and you can't let her in. They're not alone, decades of girls before them have written about and passed on legends about the haunting of Mary. In 2014, a journalist is appalled to discover that the long vacant Idlewild boarding school has been bought and is being restored. In the nineties the journalist's sister was found found brutalized and murdered in the athletic field and the place has haunted her ever since. During construction, the crews find the body of a teenager in a well, but it's not new, it's decades old. She decides she has to research and write this story. There is too much tragedy at the boarding house to be a coincidence. Fast paced and impossible to put down!

The Woman in the Window

For thrills and plot twists 5 out of 5, I docked it one star overall because I disliked the unreliable narrator (although she did keep things interesting). This book was definitely worthy of the hype surrounding it. I hate comparing it to Gone Girl and The Girl in the Train but...... I have to!! We have an unreliable female narrator who drinks too much, plot twists out the ass, and some dark hidden bits about her past. All intriguing! Basically a 38 year old woman who is "separated" from her husband has shut herself in her large New York City house for the past 10 months. After some mysterious traumatic experience (which the reader is dying to know all about!) she became a hardcore agoraphobic and can't leave the house without having a full fledged panic attack. She passes time watching classic noir movies, playing virtual chess and spying on her neighbors. When a new family moves in something seems off but then when she witnesses a crime in their house, no one believes. She's not making it up... or is she? Definitely unique and worth a read. I sped read this in one day.

Fierce Kingdom

Damn this book made me tense! I was feeling physically ill and nervous, like I was experiencing all the hell written on the page. Fierce Kingdom is about a normal day at the zoo turned nightmare. A mother and her four year old son are enjoying a late afternoon at the zoo when they hear gunfire. Thinking that it must be fireworks or something else they ignore it, but as they're trying to leave they discover dozens of bodies that have been shot down. When the reality hits that there are active shooters killing people and animals indiscriminately, Joan goes into flight mode. She has to hide her and her son and keep him quite, but will that be enough? Does she try to help other people or does she only worry about her own child? Can they escape? Where are the police? How can she keep her son from having a meltdown? Fast paced and tense, this book will leave you on the edge of your seat!

You Will Know Me

I really really got into this book, but it just lost steam towards the end and I hated the conclusion. But the suspense, intrigue, and heartache leading up to that point really did grip me. In a nutshell this is the story of a mother so wrapped up in her daughter Devon's gymnastic's career that she doesn't notice when things start to fall out of place. She and her husband have been their every step of the way for their exceptionally talented daughter and have been grooming her for the olympics along with their coach and other Belstars parents and teammates. Even Devon's little brother Drew is okay with always being overlooked consistently because he knows how important his sister's rise is. Everything starts to come apart when one of the coach's boyfriend is tragically killed in a hit and run. It begins to tear at the gymnastic community and then slowly starts unraveling the mother's tight knit family. It started off so solid, I was bummed that the end couldn't keep up. Some twists, turns, intrige, and a crappy ending.

The Lying Game

This author has gotten a lot of hype as thriller author with good twists (The Woman in Cabin 10) so I thought I would check her newest book out. While I wasn't head over in heels about it, the premise was good, the plot solid, and there were some good twists. While in boarding school Isa befriends three girls and they immediately become inseparable. Weekends are spent together, drinking, laughing, and playing the lying game. The goal is to say outrageous lies to people (strangers, peers, professors, etc.) and get them to believe you. Points are awarded on if they believe you, how tall the tale was, and if you could get one of the girls to crack and start laughing. The only rules are: stick to your story, never get caught, never lie to each other, and know when to stop lying. Their time at boarding school was cut short by a tragic accident (of which the reader won't find out until much later) and the girls haven't seen each other in well over a decade. However a chilling text from Kate (I need you) brings the four girls back together again. What they don't realize is that their biggest lie of all is going to come back and haunt them. For fans of suspense and plot twists.

The Face on the Milk Carton

How have I lived my whole life without reading this? I assumed I had read this because I always saw it lying around. Wrong! It's a pretty quick read, I had this done in no time. It's set in the late 80s/early 90s and follows the story of young Janie Johnson as her life shatters before her eyes. One day at school she happens to notice that the young girl on the milk carton is her, her as a three year old. She tries convincing herself it isn't her but things keep adding up. She has no birth certificate, there are no photos of her before the age of 5, and she has the matching dress of the girl in the photo. When she confronts her parents things still don't add up. Who is the girl on the milk carton. A suspenseful teen read that leaves readers on the edge of their seats at the stunning conclusion (thankfully there are more books in the series).

All Is Not Forgotten

If I could have given this a 4.5 star rating I would have. It was soo close to being a 5 star, it truly was! The suspense and writing style had me hooked at the very get go and I powered through determined to find out the ending. A teenage girl is brutally raped and as a result of drinking and repressive therapy she remembers none of the attack. She knows she was assaulted but she can't remember any specific details which everyone seems to think will help her out in the long term. Unfortunately, it has the opposite affect and she just wishes she could remember it so her brain would stop trying so hard to put the pieces together. Told through the perspective of her therapist, this harrowing story is his piecing together what happened to her and his dark role in uncovering and possibly altering the truth. Wonderful. Loved it, wished their was more to the ending. It came to fast, I needed more!!!

Truly Madly Guilty

In the same vein as her previous novel, Big Little Lies, this fast paced novel will have readers screaming "What Happened!" the entire time. Alternating chapters show what happened after "the barbecue" and what happened the day of. Although the day of chapters start at the beginning of the day so it's not clear until the end of the novel what actually went down at the ill fated bbq. We see the characters all trying to go about their lives after some "disastrous" event took place, but the suspense is built up and keeps the readers trying to puzzle together what in the world went down. Just when you think you may have an inkling of what happened Liane Moriarity flips it around and you're back at square one. She is truly a master of suspense and in the most light hearted way possible, it's such a fun read and the characters are very well developed. An excellent new book from her. I can't wait for more!

The Quality of Silence

This one started off a trifle slow, but thoroughly peaked my interest 50 pages in and then I could not put the damn thing down. I thought it was just a suspense novel, but it turned out to be so much more than that, although I don't want to divulge too much and ruin the twist at the end.

Yasmin and her ten year old deaf daughter have just flown from England to Alaska to meet her husband and when they arrive they are giving awful news. The small village that Matt was staying at to film the wildlife has burnt down killing everyone it including her husband. Unable to believe the news she is convinced she must go to Norther Alaska and find her husband because the state troopers won't search for him since they believe he is dead. Armed with only her guts and her wildly smart and mature ten year old, they convince a trucker headed north to let them tag along for several hundred miles. When he is taken ill and rushed to a hospital, Yasmin uses her engineering degree to drive the rig up the ice highways to search for Matt. She soon realizes that it's not just her and her daughter on the road, someone is following her. What is trying to stay hidden out in this barren hellishly cold landscape? Is her husband even still alive?

It's chilling (literally, you get cold while reading this; the descriptions of the weather conditions are spot on), riveting, and you can't help but rooting for the mother daughter duo even in face of the horrible odds. A masterful book and I look forward to reading more by this author.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books in return for my honest, unbiased opinion.

Finding Jake

I could not put this book down. Utterly engrossing from page one. Simply fantastic. It's fast paced, suspenseful, heartbreaking, and full of raw emotion. There's been a shooting at the high school. Thirteen teenagers have been shot. Stay at home father, Simon, rushes to the school to find his two children Jake and Laney. Laney is safe, but Jake is nowhere to be found. And worse, the police think that he was one of the shooters. What comes next is a psychological page turner as Simon recounts moments from Jake's childhood  and desperately tries to piece together what has really happened and where his son is. A fantastic read!

The Pocket Wife

This book is definitely for fans of "The Girl on the Train," it is soo similar! A woman with mental issues tries to piece together the last time she saw Celia, her neighbor, before she was brutally murdered. According to the police, she was the last time to Celia alive, but between all the drinks and the mental instability, she can't remember how it went down. Did she really murder Celia?! Told between alternating viewpoint of Dana and Jack Moss, the detective, this story is sure to keep readers at the edge of their seats as they try to figure out what really happened. The webs of deception are thick and the plot keeps you guessing. A great mystery/ thriller and I can't wait to read more by this author. What a fantastic debut!

The Fever

I didn't have any notion of what this book was about other than a "fever," so I didn't have very high expectations or pre-conceived ideas about what I was reading. That being said, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The first half of the book, I was like, "What in the world am I reading? What's going on? Are there zombies at the end?" But by the end I was like, "Oh damn! Didn't see that coming!" If you're confused by my ramblings here is a brief summary. High school. Ugh. Drama, growing up, boys, friends, etc. Then all of a sudden everything changes. Deenie's best friend has a seizure in class and then goes into a coma. A few days later something similar strikes one of her other friends. Not just seizures, but backs arching, hair flying, foam, hallucinations. Shit is getting trippy. Suddenly, other girls in her high school start to have problems. What is affecting all the teenage girls? Is it the HPV vaccine everyone got? Was it the dirty lake? Was it something Deenie did? The story is told through the eyes of the Nash family; Deenie, her hot older brother, Eli, and their father Tom. Everything is always normal until it's not, and it's threatening to teat the high school and community to bits.

Thrilling and suspenseful, a quick enjoyable read with a great twist!

Reconstructing Amelia

Holy cow Batman! This book was impossible to put down!!! It was a great mystery/thriller that kept me guessing and turning pages. In turns of suspense and pacing, it reminded me a lot of "Gone Girl." I literally can't even recommend this book enough. It was great!

The story opens up with Kate getting a call from her daughter's fancy prep school saying that Amelia had been caught cheating and needed to be picked up immediately. This sets off warning bells in Kate's mind because she knows her daughter would never do such a thing, she's super smart and practically an angel! Once she arrives at school though, the unthinkable has happened. Amelia is found dead on the concrete, supposedly from committing suicide by jumping from the roof. Something isn't quite adding up, her daughter wasn't impulsive and had been a very happy teen. As Kate pours through her daughters emails, texts, and facebook she begins to see a whole new side to her daughter and her "suicide" seems very very fishy.

A must read for fans of suspense or "Gone Girl."

Suspense - The Bone Collector

Author: Jeffery Deaver

Title: The Bone Collector

Publication Date: 1998

Number of Pages: 427

Geographical Setting: New York

Time Period: 1990s

Series: 1st in the Lincoln Rhyme Series

Plot Summary: Suspense novels aren't generally my cup of tea but I really did enjoy this one. It was extremely fast paced and the serial killer added some historical intrigue to New York City that I found appealing.

The book starts off as young Detective Sachs discovers a hand emerging from the dirt. As she assesses the crime scene she realizes that the killer left behind clues that have to be deciphered in order to find the next victims before they too are killed in an unfortunate manner. She gets paired up with Lincoln Rhyme, formerly one of the best criminalists in the country and now quadriplegic, and together they make an unlikely duo as they try to track down one of the smartest and most demented serial killers New York City has ever seen.

This novel is great, but not for the faint of heart, there are scenes that will make your stomach churn and make you sleep with the light on. Lincoln and Sachs have their hands full with one crafty and disgusting serial murderer.

This suspenseful read is also the basis for the movie, "The Bone Collector," starring Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, and Queen Latifa. The movie follows the novel quite well and is a great adaptation. Fans of the lead character, Lincoln, will be pleased to learn that there is a whole series dedicated to his thrilling adventures.

Subject Headings: (via WorldCat)
Rhyme, Lincoln (Fictitious character) -- Fiction. Police -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction. Forensic scientists -- Fiction. Quadriplegics -- Fiction.

Appeal: Fast paced, explores the world of forensic science, dark, and graphic.

Similar Authors & Works:
1. Fiction: (via Goodreads)
Rules of Prey by John Sandford
Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter
The Poet by Michael Connelly

2. Non-Fiction: (via subject heading search in WorldCat)
Solving Crimes: Pioneers of Forensic Science by Ron Fridell
Forensics: Solving the Crimes by Tabatha Yeatts
Vice Cop: My Twenty Year Battle with New York's Dark Side by Bill McCarthy

The Diviners

I'm really glad I found my way back to Libba Bray, in high school I had read her famed book, "A Great and Terrible Beauty" and really enjoyed it, but for some reason I didn't pick up any more books by her. I'm glad that streak has ended, because this was a fabulous read!

First off, this story takes place in in Manhatten during the Prohibition, there are speakeasies, great music and fabulous style. I'm already sold, I love reading about this era. Libba Bray did her research well, even the slang the characters use is spot on. You really are transported back in time while reading this. 

The story follows Evie as she is sent from Ohio to live with an uncle after she misuses her "gift" and it gets her in trouble (she can get memories and readings from people's personal objects). While working for her uncle in the museum of "creepy crawlies" she befriends a pickpocket (Sam), one of her uncle's employees (Jericho), a fabulous flapper (Theta), and reconnects with an old friend (Mabel). Together they help Evie's uncle and police catch the pentacle killer using the museums library, their intellect, and their "gifts."

Throughout the story we are introduced to other characters in the story that have unique abilities, Memphis, an aspiring black poet from Harlem, has the ability to heal others. His younger brother, Isaiah, also has the ability to see the future. It isn't all fun and games though having these abilities, all the "diviners" (those with gifts) keep dreaming of a crossroads and a great evil coming. Can they stop whatever it is? Is the pentacle killer the great evil?

This book is very fast paced, not a dull moment in here, the characters are very well developed and likable. The story is even spooky at parts and I had to keep reminding myself that this was a young adult novel, I shouldn't be scared!

Overall, it's a great great book. I know this review has been full of ramblings, but this book contains so much! Read it! It's suspensful, full of things that go bump in the night, historical intrigue, and friendship.