suspense – Page 2 – Down the Rabbit Hole

Series: The Luminaries #1

From Susan Dennard, the New York Times bestselling author of the Witchlands series, comes a haunting and high-octane contemporary fantasy, about the magic it takes to face your fears in a nightmare-filled forest, and the mettle required to face the secrets hiding in the dark corners of your own family.

Hemlock Falls isn’t like other towns. You won’t find it on a map, your phone won’t work here, and the forest outside town might just kill you.

Winnie Wednesday wants nothing more than to join the Luminaries, the ancient order that protects Winnie’s town—and the rest of humanity—from the monsters and nightmares that rise in the forest of Hemlock Falls every night.

Ever since her father was exposed as a witch and a traitor, Winnie and her family have been shunned. But on her sixteenth birthday, she can take the deadly Luminary hunter trials and prove herself true and loyal—and restore her family’s good name. Or die trying.

But in order to survive, Winnie enlists the help of the one person who can help her train: Jay Friday, resident bad boy and Winnie’s ex-best friend. While Jay might be the most promising new hunter in Hemlock Falls, he also seems to know more about the nightmares of the forest than he should. Together, he and Winnie will discover a danger lurking in the forest no one in Hemlock Falls is prepared for.

Not all monsters can be slain, and not all nightmares are confined to the dark.

Overall Recommendation

The Luminaries sets a new secret society within our world that guards humankind from nightmarish creatures lurking in the forests at night. Beautiful worldbuilding and mystery subplots keep the momentum going that I couldn’t put this book down at all. The ending was abrupt and most things were not concluded in a satisfactory manner, but this definitely makes me all the more excited for what’s to come in the next book.

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2.5 star

Review: Magpie by Elizabeth Day

June 6, 2022 Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

She has almost everything. The rest she’ll take.

Single White Female meets The Perfect Nanny in this taut, psychological suspense novel about a perfect couple and their seemingly perfect roommate—that is until she threatens to destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to create.

Marisa and Jake are a perfect couple, and Kate, their new lodger, is the perfect roommate–and not just because her rent payments will give them the income they need to start trying for a baby. Except no one is perfect. Sure, Kate doesn’t seem to care much about personal boundaries and can occasionally seem overly familiar with Jake, but Marisa doesn’t let it concern her. Kate will soon be gone, and it will just be her, Jake, and their future baby.

Conceiving a baby is easier said than done, though, and Jake and Marisa’s perfect relationship is put to the test through months of fertility treatments and false starts. To make matters worse, Kate’s boundary-pushing turns into an all-out obsession–with Jake, with Marisa, and with their future child. Who is this woman? Why does she seem to know everything about Marisa and Jake?

In her quest to find out who Kate really is, Marisa might destroy everything she’s worked so hard to create: her perfect romance, her perfect family, and her perfect self. Jake doesn’t know the half of what Marisa has created and what she stands to lose. Magpie is a tense and twisting novel about mothers and children, envy and possession, and the dangers of getting everything you’ve ever dreamed of.

I received a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review from Edelweiss and Simon & Schuster. All comments are my own.

Exciting premise. And a classic case where I expected there to be a lot of intrigue, and confusion between what was real and what wasn’t. Unfortunately this kind of fell flat for me, and I will divulge why further in this review.

Magpie revolves around Marisa, who has moved in with her new boyfriend Jake, and everything seems perfect with their baby coming around. However, a new lodger comes in, Kate, who is acting quite dubiously, perhaps following Marisa around and being unnecessarily nosy for being a stranger. Just who is this Kate and what does she want with their lives? That is the question that the book attempts to answer through its suspense and intrigue.

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4 star

Review: Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena

January 19, 2022 Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

In this family, everyone is keeping secrets–especially the dead. Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there. And they don’t come much richer than Fred and Sheila Merton. But even all their money can’t protect them when a killer comes to call. The Mertons are brutally murdered the night after an Easter Dinner with their three adult kids. Who, of course, are devastated.

Or are they? They each stand to inherit millions. They were never a happy family, thanks to their capricious father and neglectful mother, but perhaps one of them is more disturbed than anyone knew. Did one of them snap after that dreadful evening? Or was it someone else that night who crept in with the worst of intentions? It must be. After all, if one of your siblings was a psychopath, you’d know.

Another Shari Lapena review! Although the previous books I’ve read by her weren’t my all-time favourites, she always delivered when it came to the suspense, and this book was no different. Of her novels that I’ve read so far, this one was so far my favourite. The elements of mystery and psychological suspense were well executed and I was wondering until the very very end what happened.

Not a Happy Family revolves around a very familiar plot. Two high status rich parents are murdered in cold blood, with three children who stand to gain a substantial inheritance. Was it a mere robbery gone wrong? Or is there something much more sinister at play? With a whole melange of suspicious characters without alibis, just who is telling the truth? Told through the POVs of almost all the characters (and even the detectives), Lapena takes us through a riveting whodunnit with twists and turns galore, all the way to its exciting finish.

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