Thought Train to Pusan

A big, lavish wedding on a remote island off the Irish coast, featuring an intertwining ensemble cast of characters who may or may not be involved in a murder? Well, that actually all sounds exactly like the kind of thing that my sister would love! And you know what, I quite enjoyed this novel as well. It turned up the drama and uncomfortable situations where you just know something could happen at any turn, and it kept me interested the whole way through. The Guest List opens with a scene of a wedding in full swing on a remote island, during a big wind storm. The lights suddenly go out, a scream is heard, and we are left wondering what happened. Or, more aptly, we wonder what has happened to someone, and who that someone is. Flipping back and forth from the present and the day before, we get to know the people involved in this opulent affair: the bride is a digital magazine publisher, while the groom is an up-and-coming tv star of a survival show (not unlike Bear Grylls), and everyth...

“Welcome to dinner, and again, congratulations on being selected. Now you must do the selecting.” I hadn’t actually heard of this novel before, but saw it was a new offering on my library app, along with a comparison to One of Us Is Lying , a book that I reasonably enjoyed, coupled with a juicy-sounding concept. And given that I recently binged the Netflix Series, Elite , you might say I enjoy soapy teen dramas involving murder, secrets, the whole shebang from time to time. Yet, despite a really intriguing premise that could result in a range of focuses for the characters, I ultimately didn’t love this one, and felt myself heading towards what I suspected was a disappointing conclusion throughout the back-half of the story. This novel really wants to have some teeth to it, and while it presents a lot of serious topics (murder, drug use, bullying, suicide, abusive families, etc), the need for a surprise twist, along with a collection of characters that behave repetitively as little-m...

Like Gosford Park by way of Source Code , with a zest of Black Mirror . This might have been better as an actual read rather than an audiobook: due to the complexities of the plot and many many characters, if my mind drifted for even a second I would find myself confused as to what was happening or who was who. But then, with all the moving parts I might have had a time keeping everything straight even if I were to have read it. I know this book has been reviewed by a number of Cannonballers in the past couple years, so I’ll leave the recap brief: a man wakes up on the estate of an old manor with amnesia. After learning that he has been invited here among many people to attend a party that evening, he continues through a confusing day, trying to discover who is he and whether or not he really saw a woman being murdered in a forest the night before as he believes. At the end of the day, however, he wakes up in a new body, and the day starts all over again. He learns that he ...

So this novel was chosen on a whim, as it was sitting ready and waiting in the Audiobooks Available Now section of the library’s app. And upon reading the synopsis it felt like it had a similar energy to The Secret History by Donna Tartt, a book I definitely liked! If We Were Villains begins by introducing us to Oliver Marks, a man who is just being released from prison for an unspecified crime for which he served a 10-year sentence. The original detective from the case, however, still holds suspicions towards the official story of what happened, and wants Oliver to finally tell him the truth now that the detective is retired from the force. Oliver then tells the tale of his fourth and final year at an exclusive Shakespeare acting conservatory, and the events of one fateful night where he and the 6 other classmates in his graduating cohort host a party that goes awry, resulting in one the students, Richard, dead in a lake. While it looks like a simple accident that occurred in...

“If something seems too good to be true, it probably is”. This is one of the lines telegraphed at the beginning of Riley Sager’s Lock Every Door , which inevitably (and unsurprisingly) ends up being far too real for the young protagonist, Jules. Jules is a recently unemployed young woman, nursing a newly broken heart and living on a best friend’s couch, trying to figure her life out. When she finds an opportunity as an apartment sitter, getting to live in the fancy building (albeit with a notorious history) of her dreams, all while making cash for doing very little, she jumps at the chance. But as Jules moves in and starts to become acquainted with the old, gothic Bartholomew building, she finds that the rules are strict and some people strange; she can’t help but feel like something is not quite right in this big old building, and she may have just put herself into the crosshairs of something sinister. Lock Every Door is successful in setting up a mystery to unravel, with enou...

--> Like a mashup of the teen detective gang in Scooby Doo with the return-to-what-still-haunts-you-in-your-home-town vibes of It, Meddling Kids brings us a club of teenagers who would solve mysteries in their town over the summer; 13 years later, however, and their once-bright futures are all anything but, as the remaining members of the club all still affected by the last case they did together in some way or another. Their final case seemed straightforward enough, finding a man in a mask imitating an old legend of a lake monster in town as a way to scare people off as he tried to find gold supposedly hidden under a mansion. But what the kids say that night as they found their culprit stayed with them, and they feel they have no choice but to return and reopen the case (with, of course, a dog companion in tow!). First and foremost, this novel is definitely fun, and pays a lot of homage to all the teen-detectives on whom inspired it. Though to diverge on it’s ow...

I’m a little late on boarding this train, aren’t I? So I’m sure most of you know the story already (mild spoilers abound in this review): I myself have seen the movie adaptation! But it was a conversation about said movie that made me want to actually read Gone Girl in the first place. Basically, the conversation boiled down to most people simply dismissing the character of Amy in the story as a “crazy bitch”. And while, no, I don’t agree with her actions and she does seem sociopathic, I thought… that’s so reductive: there’s so much more to it than that! Because while I do think she takes things too far and don’t agree with her actions, both after watching and reading, I felt like I understood why she as a character felt she should do the things she does. And so I thought, maybe the book will dive into this mindset more, because it sure is super intriguing, though completely unlikeable. Actually, neither protagonist of Nick nor Amy is likeable, but you really ...