As Sick As Our Secrets by A B Whelan {Book Blog Tour with Review & Giveaway}

Series:	Standalone
Genre:	Thriller
Publication Date:	February 13th 2018
Format:	Digital
Published By:	CreateSpace
Goodreads:	As Sick As Our Secrets on Goodreads
My Review Copy:	Thanks to Ann at Random Things Tours for my review Copy

Where to get:

A fast-paced thriller with strong characters for fans of The Girl on the Train and Big Little Lies.


Looking away will not make the evil fade.

Olivia Campbell has the life most women want. A respected husband, beautiful home, and the freedom that only financial security can provide.

But not all is as it appears...

Olivia has secrets, and after discovering a hidden journal in her husband's study, she realizes that she's not the only one.

As her picture perfect world starts to fall apart around her, Olivia wonders just how deep the secrets run as she finds herself immersed in the investigation of a young missing girl. Some coincidences are just too hard to ignore, but how far is she willing to go to discover the truth?

                                

“I never thought I'd say this, but my husband frightens me. He is not the man I thought him to be. Since I snuck into his private den, his man cave, his sanctuary, I'm not the woman I used to be either.” 

These lines sum up this riveting read that kept me glued from the start to the end.

Everyone has secrets. Depending on the nature of your secret/s, they’ll either eat you alive, shame you or serve as lessons. This story is told from the viewpoints of several characters, where the author brings them together to solve the crimes committed. It begins with our killer’s point of view twenty-seven years earlier. His girlfriend has hurt his feelings and he’s no longer willing to play Mr Nice Guy.

What would you do if you found out your husband was a serial killer? Ashamed of her own secrets, Olivia after breaking into her husband’s man cave, discovers a journal and realizes that she is married to a serial killer. Her own secrets were bad, but what she discovers is far worse and sets her on a path to exact vindictive revenge for his marital misdemeanors.

Ashley is Olivia’s friend. She is a struggling psychologist who relies on a fix of cocaine, every now and then and becomes obsessed when her first patient ever (Skylar) fails to turn up for her second appointment.

Last is Betty. Married to a cop and whose sister and two children are freeloading off them. She is ashamed of her behavior years before with Ashley and Olivia on a night out in Vegas, which she is desperate to keep from her husband.

These 3 women come together to help find Skyler. Each has their own reasons for playing detective, as each has their own secrets to protect, or expose. Their search for Skyler uncovers so much more than they were expecting.

This was a fast-paced psychological thriller that kept me gripped right up until the very satisfying ending. I will definitely be picking up more of this authors books in the near future. 

As Sick As Our Secrets by AB Whelan - Audiobook & Signed Paperback Giveaway 

About the Author

A.B. Whelan resides in sunny Southern California with her family, among soccer fields, manicured lawns, and beautiful homes, where everybody's life 'seem' perfect. Here is where she cooks up unique psychological thrillers that delve into suburbia life.

Author Social Media Links:

 Facebook  | Twitter  |  Website  | Amazon

 

Into The Water by Paula Hawkins (Review)

Genre:	Adult Fiction, Thriller, Murder Mystery
Publication Date:	May 2, 2017
Pages:	386 (Hardcover)
Published By:	Riverhead Books
Website:	Paula Hawkins
	Into The Water on Goodreads
My review copy:	Received from the publisher via First to Read program in exchange for my honest review

Where to get:

In the last days before her death, Nel called her sister. Jules didn’t pick up the phone, ignoring her plea for help.

Now Nel is dead. They say she jumped. And Jules has been dragged back to the one place she hoped she had escaped for good, to care for the teenage girl her sister left behind.

But Jules is afraid. So afraid. Of her long-buried memories, of the old Mill House, of knowing that Nel would never have jumped.

And most of all she’s afraid of the water, and the place they call the Drowning Pool . . .

(Goodreads)

Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.

Yes, it is. It’s, like, when someone has an affair, why does the wife always hate the other woman? Why doesn’t she hate her husband? He’s the one who’s betrayed her, he’s the one who swore to love her and keep her and whatever forever and ever. Why isn’t he the one who gets shoved off a fucking cliff?

     Into The Water is not an easy book to review. Heck, it's not an easy book to read and wrap your head around, let alone try to analyze and judge. The plot line is very tightly woven, if a little bit confusing. For the majority of the book, I had a hard time following the story line and keeping track of all the characters (there were SO MANY, I do not recommend listening to this book on audio), but thankfully it all came together in the end.

     Initially, I was going to give this book 2, maybe 3 stars, because as I was reading it, I thought it to be very predictable and cliched. The very last chapter changed my mind completely. It wasn't until the very last pages that I realized just how extremely well plotted and foreshadowed this book was. And it was hard not to feel impressed by Hawkin's storytelling skills. At the same time, if I am to be honest, I enjoyed Girl On The Train a bit more. Both these stories feature characters that are beautifully complex, broken, and oh-so-completely human (and by that I mean flawed), but Into The Water is more convoluted and multi-layered, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the constant switching of POVs and timelines made it hard for me to really get into the story line and connect with the characters. 

     Into The Water deals with so many issues, from suicide, murder, abuse, statutory rape and infidelity to failed parenting and broken family ties. It doesn't just touch on those subjects, it explores them in depth, with brutal honesty and rawness. It's heavy, dark and very convoluted. Unapologetically twisted and haunting in its final message. 

     It took me almost two weeks to get through it, but in hindsight, it was well worth it.

The Dying Game by Asa Avdic (Review)

Genre:	Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia
Publication Date:	August 1, 2017
Pages:	288 (Hardcover)
Published By:	Penguin Books
Website:	Asa Avdic
	The Dying Game on Goodreads
My review copy:	Received from the publisher via First to Read program in exchange for my honest review

Where to get:

A masterly locked-room mystery set in a near-future Orwellian state, in which seven people are brought to a remote island to compete in a 48-hour test for a top-secret intelligence position, and one woman must stage her own death.

The year is 2037, and on the tiny island of Isola, seven people have been selected to participate in a 48-hour competition for a top-secret intelligence position with the totalitarian Union of Friendship. One of them is Anna Francis, a workaholic bureaucrat with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees and a secret that haunts her.

Anna is not actually a candidate for the position: in fact, she’s the test itself. Her assignment is to stage her own death and then to observe, from her hiding place inside the walls of the house, how the six other candidates react to the news that a murderer is among them: Who will take control? Who will crack under pressure? But then a storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the real game begins….

Combining suspense, unexpected twists, psychological gamesmanship, and a sinister dystopian future, The Dying Game conjures a world in which one woman is forced to ask, “Can I save my life by staging my death?”

(Goodreads)

     I enjoyed reading this book and thought the ending - while frustratingly open and hazy - was one that fit the story. I would have hoped for a more conclusive and satisfying finish, but at the same time, I feel like the ending of The Dying Game was purposefully constructed this way to enhance the feeling of hopelessness and confusion, and in that it succeeded fully. 

     The action of this book takes place in 2037 Stockholm and on a remote Isola Island. It's a near-future totalitarian state that is part of Union of Friendship, and that brings to mind a dystopian society much like the ones described in Orwell's 1984 (absolute government control, manipulation, top secret projects ran in the background, surveillance, government organizations controlling everyone and everything). It's a scary, but completely realistic vision that is quite unsettling.

     The story revolves mainly around Anna Francis, a former foreign aid worker suffering from PTSD, who is asked to play the role of an observer during a top-secret test designed by the government to select one person for the intelligence position (RAN). It's a stress test for the other competitors. Anna is to fake her own death (it is staged as a murder by strangulation), and she then is hiding away at a secret level of the house, where she can observe the reactions of all of the candidates. 

     What's supposed to be a relatively simple 48-hour task quickly turns out to be a much more complicated and dangerous one when, one after another, all of the other contestants begin to vanish into thin air and Anna begins to suspect that something much more sinister is going on.

     The Dying Game, while set in a dystopian world, was more of a political high-stake thriller and a mystery than it was a typical dystopian novel. I'd go as far as to call it psychological thriller. The action was slow-moving and there was a lot of foreshadowing of Anna's character, but not much in terms of the other characters at all. We didn't get a whole lot of details about the society set up either, just the vague and bone-chilling impression of the government being all-powerful, unstoppable, manipulative and highly dangerous. 

     I enjoyed the plot of this book, the sinister atmosphere and the underlying, ever-present tension. It was a good read overall, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes political thrillers, mysteries and not-so-positive endings.