This is not my usual travel post, but a lot of my free time is spent writing or reading, so I wanted to start sharing some of the books I’ve read. I’ve always loved writing and reading. I obviously love to write about travel but I also like to write about personal experiences and am dipping my toes into other writing as well. As far as reading goes, I feel like I’ve read quite a bit of the classics, the best sellers growing up like Harry Potter and Twilight, a few memoirs…but I always go back to thrillers. And right now, (because of my current writing endeavors) I tend to read solely thrillers.
It’s always hard to read on the regular and make sure you have new books, etc. Ironically, I found this Book of the Month Club right around March 2020 when everything shut down, that sends you a book each month. They pick 5 books (different genres and usually popular books/authors) and you get to pick which one you want. It’s like $15 a month, they ship your book to your door, and it’s fantastic. They’ve got a cute app where you can rate your books, find other books, etc. I’ve been doing it for a year now and I LOVE it.
Book Ratings:
I also just want to preface this by saying that NONE of these books I’m reviewing got below a 4-star rating on Google (even the book I rated at a measly one and a half stars–yikes). And I wanted to include the Amazon ratings too just to show that one person’s opinion doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a good book or that it isn’t worth reading. I may be judging stories on entirely different factors then how you judge a story. So, just because I may have not liked it that much, doesn’t mean you won’t. And most of these books are popular thrillers or promising authors, so they’re all worth a shot.
Click the books below to shop!
Synopsis: A high-profile wedding is set to happen on a secluded, island cliff off the coast of Ireland. Once the guests arrive on the island, there’s no way off until the festivities are over. Old friends reunite and drinking games commence as the past starts to unravel and jealousy arises. A storm blows in and the wedding still goes as planned until someone ends up dead.
Review: The plot and setting of this story were great. I love a good destination, especially a cliff that also happens to be an island. It was fantastic reading about the setting and also gave the story that dramatic, spooky edge. The twists were great but I felt like the characters’ back stories could have been more developed. I also sort of hated the frat boy-ness of the bridal party. It made some of the characters really unlikeable and I couldn’t really tell the difference between any of the groomsmen. Overall, a great read.
Amazon Rating: 4⭐
Synopsis: Lizzie is a federal prosecutors and happily married until everything starts to fall apart. A wealthy, law school friend contacts her out of the blue to tell her that his wife has been found dead at the bottom of his stairs and that he’s the primary suspect. Lizzie agrees to represent him, though she wonders why he’s chosen her to do it. As she learns more about the rich life of her client and the secrets being kept, she begins to wonder if he might be guilty after all.
Review: The storyline was interesting and it pulled me along. However, the ending wasn’t as satisfying as I had hoped and I still had questions that weren’t entirely answered. Worth the read but fell just a little short in some areas and isn’t entirely memorable. The characters weren’t the greatest and you don’t necessarily connect with them.
Amazon Rating: 4.5⭐
Synopsis: 25 years ago, Maggie and her parents moved into Baneberry Hall, an old Victorian estate, only to flee in the middle of the night and never return. Her dad penned a best-selling novel called the House of Horrors that detailed the ghostly encounters and the horror they experienced while living there for only 3 weeks. Maggie has continually spoken out against her father’s claims and doesn’t believe a word of the book. After her father’s death, she inherits the home and is determined to flip the home and prove the falsity of the book. However, when strange things start to happen, the parallels from 25 years ago make her question if the book has any truth to it.
Review: This is the best book I’ve read in awhile. I feel like dual story lines can be tricky but Riley Sager nailed it. I couldn’t wait to switch back and forth between the two different time periods to see what was happening then. There were so many plot twists and just when I thought I knew how it would end, it changed again! This was a book that I couldn’t put down because the story pulls you along so well. It’s a creepy story that might keep you up at night!
Amazon Rating: 4.5⭐
Synopsis: Alicia Berenson, a famous painter, lives in a lofty house with her successful husband until one day she shoots him 5 times in the face and never speaks again. Already a high-profile case, it becomes increasingly magnified by her refusal to talk. She becomes a silent patient at a secure forensic unit while Theo, a criminal psychotherapist, tries to unravel the mystery as to why she won’t speak and why she did it, only to be thrown into twists and turns that will make you question everything.
Review: This was a great book and an interesting story. The mystery behind Alicia’s refusal to talk pulls you along until everything is not as it seems. Quite literally in the middle of reading I thought, ‘I’m pretty sure I read that right…did I really read that right??’ Totally thrown off guard. It will have you reading late into the night for sure to finally find out what happens.
Amazon Rating: 4.5⭐
Synopsis: Paul Adams is trying to move on with life twenty-five years after one of his friends was the victim of a gruesome murder. The killer was Charlie Crabtree, a sinister teenager who happened to be friends with Paul and the victim. The strangeness surrounding the murder inspired many copy cat killers over the years who idolized Charlie. Paul returns to his hometown when he learns his mother is unwell and insists there’s something in the house. To make matters worse, another copy cat murder has emerged and Paul is forced to think about the awful tragedy of his teenage years, because after the murder 25 years ago, Charlie Crabtree disappeared.
Review: The mystery aspect of this story really keeps you guessing up until the last moment. Without spoiling the story for you, it covers a topic that I didn’t know a lot about and I feel like most people probably don’t know a lot about it. So it was really interesting to learn about and see where that took the story. It is a bit of a strange story at times, so while it was good, I can’t say that I loved it.
Amazon Rating: 4.5⭐
Synopsis: Rachel Krall is a true crime podcaster who rose to internet fame after her first season helped set an innocent man free. For her new season, she’s covering a trial in real time, attending the court sessions and updating her audience along the way. People know her voice, but not her face, so she’s caught off guard when a note is left on her windshield begging for her help on a cold case in that very town. Letters keep popping up revealing that a girl believes her sister was murdered years ago. When Rachel starts digging around, the two cases start to intertwine.
Review: The podcast theme added another element while following the two crimes and provided details about the current case that filled in the gaps in an interesting way instead of just telling them. It’s a heavier read because the two crimes involve rape, so it can be hard to get through some parts. There were a few things about the story that I thought didn’t quite hit the mark and at times, I wasn’t sure of the main character’s motives for taking on the second case, other than curiosity. I wanted to love it but I felt a little let down. There’s also a set up with the dual storylines that they don’t quite take.
Amazon Rating: 4.5⭐
Synopsis: A summer camp closes after 3 girls disappear from the camp. Emma was the last camper to see them alive. Now, years later, Camp Nightingale has reopened and Emma takes a job as the art teacher there. As she returns to the place where her friends disappeared, it’s evident that something isn’t right and Emma is determined to uncover the truth of what really happened all those years ago.
Review: I don’t know how I’ve been sleeping on Riley Sager books, but this is the same author as Home Before Dark, which I loved also. This one is another great story. I really had no idea what was going to happen and the ending threw me for a LOOP. What seems like a possible straightforward answer to the story becomes a complex twist. You won’t be able to put it down.
Amazon Rating: 4.5⭐
Synopsis: Iris and Summer are twin sisters who despite looking alike, are very different. Iris is negative and envious of Summer, who seems to have everything, including the perfect husband. A husband also means Summer is one step closer than Iris to their grandpa’s hundred-million dollar inheritance that will be left to the first heir produced by his grandchildren.
Summer ends up recruiting Iris to help her sail the family yacht from Thailand to the Seychelles. When Iris ends up alone in the middle of the ocean with her sister nowhere to be found, she forms a plan to take over Summer’s perfect life so she can be the one to win the inheritance. But pretending to be your twin sister isn’t easy and she’s constantly at risk of being found out. And the question still remains–what actually happened on the boat?
Review: I was skeptical from the beginning because of the twin storyline. To have twins in a thriller is pretty much a guarantee that the story will be about them switching places. No matter which way you spin it, it still revolves around that aspect of switching places. And to me, that meant a lack of surprise and a lack of twists. I liked the premise of the story but the twin we follow for most of the story is quite unlikable and I didn’t really like reading about her. And by the time I got to the end of the story, I thought everyone was unlikable. I like my characters to at least have some redeeming qualities.
Amazon Rating: 4⭐
Synopsis: Lila Ridgefield lives in a college town where a girl disappeared months ago. Now, Lila’s husband is missing too. Soon, they find out that the girl who went missing is the 3rd disappearance in the last few years. Police are desperate to find the connection between the missing girls, if there is one. Everyone in the town is worried about Lila’s husband–their beloved high school teacher–everyone but Lila. Her missing husband has only confused her…since she was the last person to see his body, and now it’s gone.
Review: To me, this book was read and forgotten. It was good to read and the mystery keeps you reading, but it just didn’t hit. The characters were a little flat and I wasn’t too surprised by anything. My feelings were kind of neutral about it afterwards and I really like when a story makes you feel all the emotions.
Amazon Rating: 4.5⭐
Synopsis: A tech company takes a mountain retreat in a beautiful chalet. 9 co-workers arrive, one is noticeably an outsider, but the retreat is all about company bonding. When an avalanche hits, the group is snowed in and they’ve just had a team meeting where they’ve learned half of the group wants to sell the company. Emotions are high and disagreements escalate. One by one, the team members show up dead. Who’s behind it and will anyone make it out alive?
Review: Let me just start this off by saying I love Ruth Ware. She is probably my favorite thriller author. I also love a good setting (snowy chalet, yes please!) and think the characters were interesting. While this was a great read, it doesn’t quite hold up against some of her other books, which might be a little unfair of a comparison. (Most of the books on this list are from authors I hadn’t read before, and I wasn’t comparing them to other books the author had written.) But since I have read all of Ruth Ware’s books, I have to say she’s got better stories. BUT I will recommend all of her books. This one is no exception.
Amazon Rating: 4.5⭐
Other books by Ruth Ware I’ve loved:
Synopsis: Noemi receives a frantic letter from her newly married cousin begging for someone to help her. She heads to High Place to figure out what the letter meant and to potentially bring her cousin back home if she needs help. The house is dark and strange, but not more so than the family who resides there–her cousin’s new in-laws. She starts to learn of the dark past of the family and the town surrounding High Place and realizes she and her cousin may never be able to leave.
Review: This book is technically classified as horror. And maybe this is my fault because I thought they were relatively similar genres. Turns out a thriller is meant to excite and horror is meant to ‘horrify or disgust’ the reader. So I guess in that sense, it did. To sum it up, this book was freaking weird. The synopsis intrigued me but the story was slow. There was no action until the end and then the ‘action’ was just really freaking weird.
At times, this felt like a period piece, but then the dialogue didn’t really match that. It was also set in Mexico and gave off zero Spanish vibes. The setting was an English style house and even the characters were of European decent or something. The whole book was just off and I nearly didn’t finish it. The only thought I had up until the very end was, “What in the hell am I reading?”
Amazon Rating: 4⭐
Other books I read:
I read two other books by Agatha Christie. If you don’t know, she’s one of the world’s top-selling thriller/mystery writers from the early 1900s and somehow I’d never read any of her books. (My dad has a huge library full of all the classics and I’m an English major who had to read a lot of classic authors.) Most notably, she wrote Murder on the Orient Express. She’s like the OG Queen of thrillers so I picked up two of hers. And I’m not going to give Agatha Christie’s books my own rating. These books are classics, written in the 1930s. They simply can’t be compared because writing styles evolve and change.
And Then There Were None
By Agatha Christie
Synopsis: 10 strangers are lured to a mansion on an isolated island. At dinner, they realize that none of them have ever met the host. When a recorded message plays at dinner accusing each of them of crimes, they start to wonder why they’re here and how can they get away. Each of the guests starts to die in the same way that’s listed on the poem in each of their rooms. But the questions remain–who is the host? And who is the killer? Will any of them make it off the island alive?
Review: It’s a classic storyline and movie theme–when strangers are thrown together and they don’t know why. I loved the setting and loved the idea behind the story of strangers being exposed of their crimes. A great story and I’ve been told it’s one of her best.
Amazon Rating: 4.5⭐
Death On the Nile
By Agatha Christie
Synopsis: Linnet Ridgeway is the socialite everyone is envious of. Beautiful, confident and very rich. She falls in love in a whirlwind romance and is quickly married. On her honeymoon in Egypt, the newlyweds book a cruise down the Nile River where Linnet is shot in the head. Hercule Poirot is the famous detective on board who pieces together possible motives, passengers’ whereabouts and potential suspects to try to uncover who is responsible and why they did it.
Review: Honestly, I had to pick this up because it’s a murder mystery based in Egypt. I absolutely adore Egypt and love learning about Egyptian history, so I thought this story was great. I recognized a lot of places the characters went to and and the setting on the Nile was everything. This is also being made into a movie with Gal Gadot (2022) and the trailer looks awesome.
Amazon Rating: 4.5⭐
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