Tag: psychological thriller

4.5 star

Review: Denial by Beverley McLachlin

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

When everyone is in denial, how do you find the truth?

Jilly Truitt has made a name for herself as one of the top criminal defense lawyers in the city. Where once she had to take just about any case to keep her firm afloat, now she has her pick—and she picks winners.

So when Joseph Quentin asks her to defend his wife, who has been charged with murdering her own mother in what the media are calling a mercy killing, every instinct tells Jilly to say no. Word on the street is that Vera Quentin is in denial, refusing to admit to the crime and take a lenient plea deal. Quentin is a lawyer’s lawyer, known as the Fixer in legal circles, and if he can’t help his wife, who can?

Against her better judgment, Jilly meets with Vera and reluctantly agrees to take on her case. Call it intuition, call it sympathy, but something about Vera makes Jilly believe she’s telling the truth. Now, she has to prove that in the courtroom against her former mentor turned opponent, prosecutor Cy Kenge—a man who has no qualms about bending the rules.

As the trial approaches, Jilly scrambles to find a crack in the case and stumbles across a dark truth hanging over the Quentin family. But is it enough to prove Vera’s innocence? Or is Jilly in denial herself?

Thrumming with tension, Denial is a riveting thriller about the lengths we will go to for the ones we love and the truths we hold dear.

After reading the first novel in this series, Full Disclosure, I didn’t have the highest of high expectations. Yes, I was still interested in reading the second book in the series by the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, but I definitely readied myself for more of the same from the first book. However, I was actually completely blown away by this book. Since when has the second book in the series ever been better than the first?! Overall this was just dramatically better for me, and I do wonder if it was due to the feedback from the first book.

Denial follows our defence lawyer extraordinaire, Jilly Truit, in another set of proceedings once again. As usual, Jilly is fighting the uphill battle, as the case once again seems locked and done. In a locked house, with no alarms tripped, frail and old Olivia Stanton passed away in her sleep from a morphine overdose. The only person in the house at the time? Her daughter, Vera, sleeping soundly upstairs. Vera soundly maintains her innocence, even as the flames of the trial licks at her heels. Just how will Jilly be able to defend her client in such a tough situation?

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2.5 star

The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

Armed with only hazy memories, a woman who long ago witnessed her friend’s sudden, mysterious death, and has since spent her life trying to forget, sets out to track down answers. What she uncovers, deep in the woods, is hardly to be believed….

Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, mysteriously dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they’d been spending time with all summer.

Seven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is kicking the secret addiction that has allowed her to cope with what happened years ago, the gaps in her memories, and the lost time that she can’t account for. But her past comes rushing back when she comes across a recent YouTube video in which a young woman suddenly keels over and dies in a diner while sitting across from none other than Frank. Plunged into the trauma that has defined her life, Maya heads to her Berkshires hometown to relive that fateful summer–the influence Frank once had on her and the obsessive jealousy that nearly destroyed her friendship with Aubrey.

At her mother’s house, she excavates fragments of her past and notices hidden messages in her deceased Guatemalan father’s book that didn’t stand out to her earlier. To save herself, she must understand a story written before she was born, but time keeps running out, and soon, all roads are leading back to Frank’s cabin….

Utterly unique and captivating, The House in the Pines keeps you guessing about whether we can ever fully confront the past and return home.

This was one of the ones I picked out of a list of thrillers just to get started on for the season, and unfortunately it wasn’t a great hit for me. Maybe it was just the themes, but I didn’t find it particularly enthralling on any level. Just when it was going to redeem itself, it didn’t, so all in all it was pretty disappointing.

The House in the Pines follows our unreliable, memory-suppressed protagonist, Maya, who is brought back to a past she had run away from when a video pops up with of her ex-boyfriend. Two girls having dropped dead in front of the same man, with no explanation, and Maya has no recollection of how it went down the first time around. Seeking a resolution for her missing memories, Maya heads back to her home town to hunt down the truth.

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3 star

Review: The Husbands by Chandler Baker

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

Nora Spangler is a successful attorney but when it comes to domestic life, she packs the lunches, schedules the doctor appointments, knows where the extra paper towel rolls are, and designs and orders the holiday cards. Her husband works hard, too… but why does it seem like she is always working so much harder?

When the Spanglers go house hunting in Dynasty Ranch, an exclusive suburban neighborhood, Nora meets a group of high-powered women–a tech CEO, a neurosurgeon, an award-winning therapist, a bestselling author–with enviably supportive husbands. When she agrees to help with a resident’s wrongful death case, she is pulled into the lives of the women there. She finds the air is different in Dynasty Ranch. The women aren’t hanging on by a thread.

But as the case unravels, Nora uncovers a plot that may explain the secret to having-it-all. One that’s worth killing for. Calling to mind a Stepford Wives gender-swap, The Husbands imagines a world where the burden of the “second shift” is equally shared–and what it may take to get there.

This is one of those books that I randomly picked off the shelf because it was available, and had an intriguing enough premise. Unfortunately, it ultimately fell under the class of what I call underwhelming. The ultimate mystery explanation wasn’t satisfying enough for me, which kind of cast the rest of the book in an unfavourable light, unfortunately.

The Husbands is a book revolves around our protagonist, Nora Spangler, who is struggling with her slightly distant husband and her young child, all while trying to balance making partnership at her law firm. Nora is pregnant, and in contemplation of her second child, the family needs an upgrade in the living situation. Cue in Dynasty Ranch, a neighbourhood full of amazingly successful women that Nora looks up to. When Nora begins to help out with a wrongful death case in the neighbourhood, more and more secrets become clear, as if hiding just beneath the surface. Just what is going on in this seemingly idyllic neighbourhood?

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