Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Sometimes you just need to read a really fun psychological thriller—and that’s the boat I found myself in last week. Because I had been challenged, I did spend a large part of my reading time in my thinking chair, assembling a map of clues in my head and trying to divine the ending. The social media component quickly became my favorite element of the book; as someone who (evidently! This is a fast paced thriller with lies, lies and more lies leading Joe down a terrifying path where nothing is what it seems and he is slowly being framed for something he didn't do. in this book technology and social media both helped and hurt Joe, and I’m not sure if it was worth the pay off.
Joe is the type of character who you want to root for as his life is currently a big mess but you also get annoyed with him and some of the decisions he makes. As Joe goes deeper into his investigation of his own personal life, it begins to appear that someone is threatening him - and that they are using the anonymity of social media to do so without repercussion. in " The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly " Publishing This Week" newsletter. Finding out your wife has been cheating on you for the past five months and then having to deal with what someone was doing to your life via social media is what Joe was dealing with.
And the inclusion of a mini-cliffhanger at the conclusion of almost every chapter made it difficult to put down.
The second issue I had with this novel was also character related: I felt like something more was going to happen with the son, William, and it just never did. I’m confident there will be many readers for whom the addictive pacing and easy-to-binge entertainment value of LIES will make it very well suited, I simply wasn’t one of them. Huge thanks to Vanessa and her publisher for giving us this early sneak peek—I can’t wait to read BLOOD SISTERS this fall!Ranked from Christmas level 1 - 5 (with Level 1 being Christmas in the background of the story, and Level 5 being a full-on, 100% Christmas-y plot! If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added. There’s no better time to watch a slasher movie—or read a slasher book—than October, and if your idea of perfect Halloween entertainment involves villains like Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger, the book I’m recommending today is the Halloween read for you.
They live in the moment and trust their eyes and ears, what they can see in front of them---I think we can all learn something from that. I’m surprised Joe and Mel are comfortable enough to argue with the door closed upstairs while their 4 year old toddler is alone by himself downstairs. They just become a nails-on-a-chalkboard figure that can really damage my feelings about a particular book. Be sure to check out their reviews on their blogs (linked in my blog post) and mine as well at PhDiva. Though perhaps a touch dramatic at times, there’s an undeniable relevance and authenticity to this component of the story that makes it genuinely chilling and gripping.
As I reflected on my year in books while writing this blog post, it felt nearly impossible to narrow down my picks. Later Beth confronts Mel of the pictures, Joe’s happy marriage and comfortable life as he sees it is no more. I’ve had a family member deceive me (luckily not my husband) and I know all too well that gut wrenching feeling of having the world fall out from under your feet. Bloody, meta, occasionally self-deprecating, and always wickedly entertaining, CURSE OF THE REAPER draws inspiration from the world of slasher films to tell a delightfully devious tale of an actor, the silver screen villain to which he devoted his entire career, and the grip that villain might just have on him in the real world. Though undeniably binge-worthy and easy to devour, LIES was quite significantly spoiled for this reader thanks to an entirely out-of-left-field finale - a conclusion so dramatic and over-the-top I couldn’t help but feel I’d been duped.
I am beyond excited to have discovered this author, and now I’m even more excited to learn that he has another book out!I mean, it had been promised right on the cover, with a teaser line penned by the prolific Lee Child that read, “Compelling and hypotonic…with a twist I guarantee you won’t see coming. The main drawback for this novel is that it is sometimes repetitive in that condescending way that seems to imply the author doesn’t feel the reader is capable of keeping up. When he arrives, he finds his wife, Mel, arguing with Ben, a family friend and the husband of one of Mel’s best friends from college.
Great Deal 
New Comment