psychological thriller

Review: The Stranger Game by Cylin Busby

Posted on by kellyvincent

The Stranger Game book coverI was excited to read this book, as it sounded like a nice psychological thriller, a genre I enjoy but don’t read much of. Nico Morris’s older sister, Sarah, disappeared four years earlier when she was fifteen and Nico was eleven. And now she’s back.

Or is she? That’s the question. Nico isn’t sure if it’s her sister or an imposter.

As I’m trying to write this, I’m noticing that it’s actually kind of hard to describe the story without giving anything away…

Still, when the book opens, Nico tells us she knows in her bones that her sister’s dead, despite desperately wanting to believe she was alive. That there was a chance. She talks about the early days after the disappearance and all the false sightings and false hopes. Now, four years later, they learn that a girl claiming to be Sarah has been found in a Florida shelter. She’s damaged and is suffering from retrograde amnesia.

Nico’s story is interspersed with chapters from Sarah’s life that start to hint at who she is. So even before the big reveal, you basically know what’s going on.

Most of the book is comprised of the developing relationship between Nico and her returned sister. Because Sarah’s definitely different. But that’s to be expected, considering what she went through. Throughout, Nico wonders if it’s Sarah or not. Then some of Sarah’s old friends come onto the scene and shake things up a bit, making Nico choose sides.

Despite my high hopes for the book, I have to admit I was underwhelmed by the end. I didn’t feel particularly surprised at the revelation of what actually happened when Sarah disappeared, even though I hadn’t specifically anticipated the exact circumstances. I think that’s one of the things with psychological thrillers and mysteries. So much hinges on surprise (but only surprise that in retrospect was inevitable). I also didn’t find the voice that engaging—I wasn’t totally drawn in by Nico, even though I did sympathize with her plight—and it made the book drag a little for me. Out of curiosity, I peeked at some other reviews on Goodreads and found that the book did totally work as intended for a lot of people. So it’s going to come down to individual taste.

You might enjoy this one if you enjoy psychological thrillers/mysteries and don’t mind kind of knowing the what even if you don’t know the why.

Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Posted on by kellyvincent

We Were Liars book coverLockhart is definitely a writer I admire, and one of the things I like most about her is the fact that she is so versatile. All her books (or series, at least) are so different from each other. That’s some skill.

So I was looking forward to reading her psychological suspense. We Were Liars is about Cadence Sinclair and the rest of the Sinclair clan. Specifically, she spends all her summers on the family island with her cousins (Mirren and Johnny) plus the nephew of her aunt’s live-in boyfriend, Gat.

Cadence gives us a quick history of her childhood on the island, which is where the families come together for the summer only—they don’t see each other at all outside of summer. Then we get to “summer fifteen” when she and the others are fifteen and they hang around, swim, and talk. Just generally laze. But there’s more going on. For one, Cadence is in love with Gat, who supposedly has a girlfriend back home, but the two start up anyway. Everything is grand.

And then one day it’s not.

Cadence is narrating the book as a seventeen-year-old. She suffered some traumatic brain injury in summer fifteen and all she knows about what happened was that she’d been found basically washed up on the beach in her underwear. Now she gets horrific headaches and is half-addicted to pain pills. She doesn’t go back to the island until summer seventeen, when she’s still desperately trying to remember what happened. It starts coming back in bits and pieces until we finally get the final fragment.

We Were Liars seems to be kind of a polarizing book, looking at Goodreads. So I feel a little odd reporting that I wasn’t super-wowed by the book. I liked it and I’m glad I read it, but I didn’t really feel strongly about it. Everyone knows there’s a twist near the end and some people see it coming and some don’t. My experience was kind of odd—I didn’t specifically see it coming, but once I hit it, I didn’t feel particularly surprised. Maybe I was in a weird mood when I got there. I don’t know. Still, it’s the kind of story you think about even after you put the book down.

If you like psychological thrillers and YA, or Lockhart, give this one a shot.