Survive the Night

Finished April 5

Survive the Night by Riley Sager

This psychological suspense story was a great read, with twists and turns along the way. The specific time setting isn't stated, but it is set before cell phones are around. The main character is Charlie Jordan, who is named after a character in a movie. She goes to college in New Jersey, but is from Ohio. Her eccentric, charismatic roommate Maddie was the third victim of the campus killer, a serial killer as yes uncaught. The killer kidnapped and killed the young female victims, and took a tooth for a souvenir. The last piece of information hasn't been made public. 

The night Maddie was killed she pressured Charlie into going out to a bar, and Charlie was not enjoying the night at all. She finally told Maddie that she'd had enough and wanted to go home, but Maddie wasn't ready to go. Charlie actually saw the back of a man talking to Maddie when she looked back, not realizing that he was the killer. Charlie feels extremely guilty for leaving Maddie, and Maddie's family blames her as well. She's been struggling with life since the murder. 

She's finally decided to go home, and goes to put up a post on the Rideshare board at the college, but meets Josh Baxter who is just posting that he is looking for someone to share the trip to Akron with. He's a graduate student. Charlie is a little nervous about the whole thing, given the recent murders and not knowing Josh, but she so wants to get away that she brushes any concerns aside.

On the drive, she begins to notice discrepancies in Josh's story, and becomes suspicious.

Add to this Charlie's love of thriller movies. She's watched them all her life, first with her parents, and later, after their deaths in a car accident, with her grandmother who is a huge fan. Charlie has, at time, had episodes where she kind of zones out and lives a scene in her head. She always has realized that this happens to her as soon as her episode is over, but now she wonders whether things she has seen are real, or one of these "movies" that plays in her head. She doesn't trust her own observations anymore, and isn't sure what is real and what isn't. But she keeps telling herself all she has to do is survive the night.

Before she left campus she had jokingly set up a code phrase with her boyfriend in case something happens, and as a result of her actually using this phrase, he gets drawn into the action as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, the character Charlie is, the character Maddie was, and the well developed plot. 

The Guest

Finished April 2

The Guest by Emma Cline

I grabbed this book from the library to fill a challenge. I would say that it's a book that made me feel kind of like I was watching a train wreck in slow motion.

The main character Alex is very unlikeable. She behaves very much like a narcissist, and tries to manage the relationships, but doesn't necessarily put a lot of work into it. She moved to New York City as a young woman and lives with roommates. She has been in the city for a while as the book opens, and it appears that she worked as an escort, but never made a lot of money at it, and now is finding it more difficult to draw the men that she wants to. She has also missed rent payments and her roommates have kicked her out. 

After an encounter at a bar, she has decided to go in a different direction, beginning a relationship with an older man with the expectation that it will be long term. He doesn't pay her, but he does buy her things like clothing and accessories. She has traveled with him to his vacation home on Long Island, and accompanied him to various dinners and parties. When she makes a misstep at one of the parties, she finds him distancing himself from her and the sending her back to the city. His assistant buys her a train ticket and leaves her at the station. 

But Alex has another issue. She has got on the bad side of a man who doesn't suffer fools, and he is looking for her to return something she's taken from him. We do eventually find out what that it, but he has been calling her and trying to get her to meet him, so she is wary of taking a chance and going back to the city.

As she maneuvers herself into various living situations through meeting people and pretending she knows them, she has a plan to go back to the man who has sent her away, timing it for a party he has planned for Labour Day. 

Alex is desperate, but also very manipulative. She looks for opportunities to ingratiate herself into others' lives for her own benefit. She can be charming, but also cold and uncaring. I found myself wondering what crazy thing she would do next. 

An interesting and unique look at a life situation beyond anything I could imagine. 

The Vet's Daughter

Finished August 28

The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns, introduction by Kathryn Davis

This novel first came out in 1959, although Comyns started writing it in 1947. The title character, named Alice, is a teen as the story begins. As indicated, her father is a veterinarian, one who treats animals like objects and has no feelings for them. Her mother is unwell, and both of them live in fear of him. Alice tries to spare her mother so she can rest, and the two have quiet talks about her mother's childhood when alone in the evening. 

After the death of her mother, things become more difficult for Alice. A friendly and kindly housekeeper and a young veterinarian help mitigate her circumstances, but the woman that her father takes up with is a force against her. 

Alice retreats often to a world of fantasy, pulling on bits of her mother's memories of childhood in Scotland, and fairy tales helped along by an uncanny ability she discovers in herself. 

Alice finds her thoughts can take her away from her circumstances, but she is aware that others find it unnerving. 

This is an odd book, with a strange premise, but one that nevertheless had me enthralled from the beginning. Alice is a character that I empathized with and hoped would find a better situation than the one she is born into.

The Appeal

Finished January 18

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

This book has an unusual format with the whole story told in emails, documents and chat. Two early career lawyers are asked to look over the gathered conversation from a case to see what conclusions they make about who may be the murderer in the case.

They are given no background information at all, and it seems like the case hasn't come to their attention in any other way, such as through the news, as they appear to have no knowledge of it at all.

The book mostly consists of email between the various players in the small community, people who are linked together through their involvement with a local theatre group and the family that runs it. 

One of the main players is a young nurse, who is a bit of an outsider, tolerated, but not liked, and who comes across as quite needy. The family who runs the theatre group consists of a local couple, their two adult children, the children's spouses, and their very young granddaughter. 

There is also another young couple, both nurses, who have recently come back to England after working for several years in Africa. We don't have access to their emails, but can see some that are sent to them by the others. 

Every so often the two lawyers chat about what they're reading in the case notes, and as the book nears its close, they begin to draw conclusions and make arguments for their reasoning, interacting with the older lawyer who has assigned them this task. 

It is an interesting structure, and an interesting case, and because of the limited glimpse you get into people's lives, you aren't sure how much to trust any of them. 

In Another Light

Finished December 22

In Another Light by A.J. Banner

This novel was one that turned out to be a real page turner for me. I read it in less than 2 days, and was totally caught up in the plot and the main character. Phoebe Glassman works as a mortuary cosmetologist in the funeral home that her husband used to co-own. Her husband Logan died in an accident and Phoebe has shut out most of the world since then. One of her newer coworkers, Mike Rivera, a former paramedic, warns her to avoid a body coming in later that day, but that only intrigues her. When she views the body, she is taken aback to find a woman who looks like a younger version of herself. Who is she, where did she come from, and why is she dead? are all questions Phoebe begins asking.

As she travels down that path and learns more about the woman, Pauline Steele, she also learns things she didn't know about her husband and other family members. Not sure whether she can trust her friends, or even herself, Phoebe finds herself in the grip of an absurd hope and making dangerous connections. 

Phoebe is an interesting character, smart and creative. She got sidetracked into her current job when she met her husband, from her former career as a sculptor, and she still secretly does some sculpting in her home studio. She hasn't changed anything in the house since her husband's death. Her father also died around the same time, and her mother is in the early stages of dementia, and living in a retirement home. 

Her new coworker Mike is also interesting, a man with a varied past, and who seems to be drawn to Phoebe. This is a story that gradually reveals the truth, and each revelation brings more questions. 

Beautiful Bad

Finished August 5
Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward

This psychological suspense novel has three timelines. One takes place on an evening when an emergency call is received at a suburb in Kansas starting with the call. One begins decades before when Maddie worked overseas teaching and writing and first met her now-husband Ian. The other is recent events taking place in Maddie's life, particularly her time with a therapist, leading up to the call she makes.
Maddie always wanted to escape her boring life growing up in small town Kansas. She studied languages, and began working at various jobs overseas. She met her best friend Jo at school where the two connected instantly. Jo became an aid worker, and as their story develops from a time where Jo was working in Macedonia and Maddie in nearby Bulgaria, we see how their estrangement began. It was there they met a number of young men in the British military, one of whom Ian developed a relationship with both women, eventually marrying Maddie as we know from the more recent timeline.
This is another story with unreliable narrators, where we aren't sure who to trust. Why is Jo angry with Maddie, and what happened between them to create the later rift. Do Ian's military and para-military experiences lead him to have violent tendencies? How does his PTSD affect him? What is Maddie's life like with her husband and young son? What happened the night they were camping?
There's a lot going on here, and a lot of uncertainty. All you really know is that something bad has happened, and it isn't over yet.

The Woman in the Window

Finished March 18
The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn, read by Ann Marie Lee

This psychological suspense novel had a couple of mysteries going on, one that I guessed fairly early on, and one that surprised me. The main character, the one whose head we are inside, is Anna Fox. She is a woman in her late thirties, a child psychologist, who has undergone some kind of trauma that has caused her to be agoraphobic. This is the first mystery.
Anna lives in a large 4 story house in Harlem. On the ground floor is the entrance, the kitchen and living room, and a small bathroom, painted red. One floor up is her husband's study and her own office, and a storage closet, along with another bathroom. The next floor up has the master bedroom suite, and the top floor has her daughter's bedroom and a spare room. Anna also has a tenant in the basement, David, who's been there a couple of months. The idea to get a tenant came from her psychiatrist, who suggested she give a reduced rent for someone who could help out with small repairs, errands etc.
Anna talks to her estranged husband Ed and young daughter Olivia regularly. She gets groceries including a lot of red wine delivered, and her psychiatrist and physical therapist visit her at home. The remainder of her day is spent online, where she participates in a forus for agoraphobics, ands plays chess, and looking out the windows at the neighbours she can see, and watching noir movies.
Anna uses her camera to zoom in on her neighbour's activities and uses the internet to do some research on them, to find out background information. She really has no other contact with the outside world.
A change occurs when she gets new neighbours in the house across the small park next to her house. The Russells move in and she sees the husband and teenage son on moving day as she looks out. Soon after the son, Ethan, visits with a candle, a gift from his mom, and Anna surprises herself by letting him in and having a nice visit with him. Is it because she misses the previous contact she had with children in her job, because she misses her own daughter? Who knows.
When another chance encounter due to outside actions cause her to meet the woman of the house, she finds she likes her quite a bit, and feels the possibility of a friendship beginning. A second visit by the woman only deepens this feeling.
When she sees a terrible thing happening to the woman in the house across the way, she wants to help. She calls the police, and tries to do more. But the police doubt her story, and her alcoholism, the pills that her doctor has prescribed her for her situation, and her situation have the reader questioning her as well.
How confused is she? What has she seen, and what has she imagined? This is the second mystery. Anna's own questioning and some of her behaviours are erratic and unreliable. She is a well-meaning woman still recovering from a trauma that also has an element of guilt to it. She's been stuck in her house for nearly a year, and the isolation isn't helping.
I liked Anna, and I worried for her, and I wanted her to be okay. The story was well-developed and had its surprising moments, and I enjoyed that as well.

Sometimes I Lie

Finished February 22
Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

This is an interesting book.Amber Reynolds is in hospital after a car accident. But at first she doesn't know that. To others she appears to be in a coma, but in reality she slips in and out of awareness. As she gradually learns why she is there from the people around her, and begins to remember the missing days of her memory, we also learn about her childhood, and about her present day life.
We learn about her job gradually, and about her relationship with her sister and her parents. But as the books title says, sometimes she lies. But of course she isn't the only one who lies, and so, as the reader, one isn't sure how much to believe, or who to believe.
As you gradually learn about what really happened, sorting out what is true from what isn't, you also find your mind influenced by information that you assume.
This was a very interesting thriller, with a very intriguing ending.

Liar

Finished June 28
Liar by Justine Larbalestier

This teen novel presents us with a fascinating main character, who we know is an unreliable narrator right from the start (as if the book title didn't already alert us). Her name is Micah and she lives with her parents and younger brother in New York City, and goes to a private Quaker school on a scholarship. And her family has a big secret.
As the book opens, her friend, perhaps her boyfriend, Zach, has gone missing and soon is found dead. As she and the other students react to this tragedy, we learn her version of her life. She admits right away that she's known for lying, and yet she says she's going to be telling us the truth. But as a reader, you're never really sure what facts you can trust her on, and what you can't.
The nature of Zach's death is mysterious and doesn't come out until later in the novel, and it means something.
We learn about the other people in Zach's life: his best friend, Tayshawn and his girlfriend, Sarah. We learn about Micah's favourite class, biology and her teacher who encourages her. We learn about her family, both those she lives with and those she doesn't. We learn about her past lies, the supposed motivations for them, and how she deals with them being exposed.
This is a fascinating book, one in which you're never quite sure of how much to believe the narrator. This is a story of teens and their interactions, and about how they deal with difficult issues. A book that has a lot of discussion points, and would be great for a book club.