Review: Medea’s Curse (Natalie King, Forensic Psychiatrist, #1) by Anne Buist

“‘Let it never be said that I have left my children for my foes to trample on.’…Medea killed her children to punish her husband.”

★★★½

Text Publishing | 2015

Filed Under: “I won’t be ignored, Dan!”

This book wasn’t really what I expected it to be – it’s a mystery, but definitely not a thriller, and has a lot more erotic elements than I would anticipate from a story without any obvious tells that it’s got serious erotic content.

But Dr. Natalie King isn’t really what you expect a forensic psychiatrist to be either, so the vibe is consistent at least. She’s outspoken, emotionally dysfunctional and has no problem pushing a prosecutor down courthouse steps. She’s bipolar and irresponsible with her meds. She rides a motorcycle, fronts an amateur band and has a pet parrot. She lives in a warehouse and has affairs with married men. But she’s a fucking queen in her field – dedicated to her patients and to finding the truth.

I basically fell in love with her as a lead character.

It’s a good thing that this is the first in a series, because there is so much more that can be done with a character this badass and damaged.

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Top 10 Books On My Completely Arbitrary Buzz Index Scale!

What are books with buzz you might ask? Or maybe you won’t. Maybe you just inherently understand the concept of buzz and things having buzz.

If not, here’s the idea: these are the books I keep hearing about. They are also probably the books you keep hearing about.

It’s the incessant little noise that floats around you, that you’re picking up on without really even intentionally acknowledging it.

bzzzzzzz….read me….bzzzzzz

Son-of-a-bee-sting, these are the most buzz-worthy books around right now…

PS. my “buzz index” is a completely arbitrary scale that means basically nothing. Enjoy!

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Review: The Body Reader (Detective Jude Fontaine, #1) by Anne Frasier

★★★★

Thomas & Mercer | 2016

Filed Under: If a roller coaster was an onion.

I really liked this. It’s dark. It’s interesting. There are so many layers to the story, to the mystery. It’s never what you think it is.

I’ve never read anything by Anne Frasier before, though I do have a few of her books on my TBR. I will definitely be moving those books closer to the top of the pile.

Det. Jude Fontaine makes a daring escape after 3 years in captivity at the hands of a psychopath. She’s not herself anymore. She’s been subjected to unknown tortures and horrors. She sees everything in the world with new eyes, including herself.

Clawing her way back to some semblance of stable mental health, Jude goes back to work as a Homicide detective, while trying to find new ways to just be alive. (Sleeping on the roof, for instance.) Everything about Jude is switched off after her return. She has no sense of humour, she is flat and unemotional. She doesn’t know how to exist anymore. And this starting point requires that the plot elements, and secondary characters, have some A+ development.

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Review: I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

“This is how it ends for you. ‘You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark,’ you threatened a victim once. Open the door. Show us your face. Walk into the light.”

★★★★½

Harper | 2018

Filed Under: 12+ murders, 50+ rapes, 120+ burglaries

This is a beautiful work of non-fiction/true crime.

The East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, the Visalia Ransacker, the East Bay Rapist, the Dollner Street Prowler, the Diamond Knot Killer…

This killer has gone by many names, but the one you’ll be hearing the most is the Golden State Killer. A term coined by the late Michelle McNamara, a true-crime writer/amateur detective, whose life mission was to see this most prolific villain unmasked after a reign of terror that lasted more than a decade, and getting away with it for over 40 years.

Michelle McNamara died on April 21, 2016. She was nearly done with writing this. Her husband, comedian Patton Oswalt, as well as Michelle’s research partner and a journalist friend, finished the book for her. They knew Michelle needed to see this published. It was her life’s work, her greatest obsession. And I think that’s really beautiful.

There are parts of the book with editor’s notes and annotations to let the reader know Michelle hadn’t finished a chapter, or that Michelle had written a note to follow up on something, but never had the chance. These were constant reminders of this wonderful woman’s tragic passing and it made this a much more emotional reading experience for me than I usually would have with a true-crime book.

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Review: Any Man by Amber Tamblyn

★★★★★ (x infinity)

Harper Perennial | 2018

Filed Under: Stunning in its simplicity, ravenous in its message.

This book is unlike anything I have ever read, and I am utterly emotionally ruined by it.

Seriously. This book has fucked me up.

I started reading in the morning and I didn’t put it down until I read the last page that evening. I was completely obsessed, completely enthralled and emotionally enamoured.

I took a couple of days to think about this review before writing it because I want it to be coherent and not preachy, but I’m definitely about to go on a rant of epic proportions, so buckle up buttercups.

This is the story of five men, all of whom have been the victim of a serial rapist known as Maude. It is the story of how the media handles rape, and how society handles rape. How we speak about it, how we shame, how we lay blame. It’s about the questions we ask, how we ask them, the assumptions we make and how we try to make ourselves feel more comfortable in the presence of someone else’s trauma. It’s about how survivors grapple with their new reality and their upended perception of themselves, their relationships, their bodies and the world around them.

It’s about gender equality and gender roles and gender assumptions. It’s about the groups we align ourselves with, the lines in the sand we draw as tribes. The hate we have. The resentment we have. How women feel about our social history and how what happens to us doesn’t matter until it happens to a man. It’s about how blind we are to our shared wants and needs. And how if we just worked together we could change things.

It’s also creepy with elements of suspense.

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Review: The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager

★★★★★

Dutton | 2018

Filed Under: This is definitely not Wet Hot American Summer.

I honestly didn’t think it was possible for me to love a Riley Sager novel more than I loved Final Girls, but then I read The Last Time I Lied and well, spit on my neck and kick me in the crotch, because this has usurped Final Girls as my favourite Sager read, if not one of my favourite reads ever. Period.

This novel makes me want to go to summer camp and investigate mysteries, but you know, it might look a little bit weird to be a 30-something at a sleep-away camp for kids when you’re not one of the counsellors.

“Dear Husband, I am homesick. But today I went in a canoe for the first time. The tweens here are bullying me.“

Sager is a world-class writer. I do not say that lightly or without conviction, because if you know me or read my reviews, you know I’m a judgmental bitch. It’s okay, you can agree.

So, when I say Sager is THE SHIT. I mean it. He breezes through the art of storytelling like it is the most effortless, natural thing in the world to him. An automatic bodily function.

Breathe. Beat heart. Write. Repeat.

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#YAWeek: My TBR’d YA Mystery-Thrillers!

I’ll be honest, I enjoy YA fiction under specific circumstances. I am obviously no longer the targeted demographic for such novels, and sometimes that’s painfully obvious when I try to read them and find myself agreeing with the adults over the teen protagonist. And that’s why I try not to review them too much around these parts. They aren’t written for me anymore, like for ~~almost two decades~~ …a while. You know what, let’s not get into specifics about ages and dates. Those are all technicalities.

Sometimes, I can feel a bit weird when I’m interested in reading a YA novel. A sense of “I know I’m 30-something, but please don’t judge me for reading this” can wash over me. But then I remind myself that all books are for all people because books are how we experience situations we might otherwise never be in; that expands our empathy and worldview. It’s probably why right-wingers really don’t read. But I digress…

I try to let myself like what I like. The term “guilty pleasure” shouldn’t really exist because if it brings you pleasure why do we need to feel guilt about it? Unless, like, what brings you pleasure is something really fucked up on the dark web or whatever. Stop that. Get some therapy.

Anyway, I remain dedicated to my search for an amazing YA mystery-thriller that I will LOVE the same way I LOVE some adult thrillers. One that feels honest and genuine and manages to pull some real twisty punches has so far been hard for me to find. But in honour of #YAWeek, I’m going to be taking a look at the YAnovels floating around my TBR pile, giving me good vibes.

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Review: The Good Girl by Mary Kubica

★★½

Harlequin MIRA | 2014

Filed Under: I was playing mindlessly on my phone.

After all of the glowing reviews I’ve read for Mary Kubica, this was actually a disappointment. Whomp, whomp.

Someone has paid to have Mia kidnapped. Colin, her kidnapper, is hired to do the dirty work. But instead of taking her to his boss, he whisks Mia away to a remote cabin and keeps her for himself.

As one would if they were kidnapping another human being.

My god, doesn’t it just seem like SO MUCH WORK? Who would want to kidnap someone?

Like, I get home from work and all I want to do is take off my bra and lay face down on my mattress while I make exhausted noises and then my husband asks me what’s wrong and eventually rubs my back.

The last thing I want to do is get off of work and then take care of a person chained up in my basement. Then you have to empty their piss pots and make their food? I bet it smells down there, too.

No, thank you. You have to be a special kind of psychopath to want to abduct someone for the “joy” of getting to take care of an adult-sized baby.

But I digress…

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Review: The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1) by Jane Harper

★★★

MacMillan Australia | 2016

Filed Under: I didn’t want to be involved as much as the MC didn’t.

Ok, I’ll do it! I’ll go against the majority on this one! HERE I COME, MARTYRDOM.

But really, I have to say I found The Dry, to be, well, rather dry.

Yeah, the writing is technically good. The characters are fleshed out enough. The setting was different from the usual for me. There was a crime with a mystery to it. Past and present storylines were interwoven, and that can be tricky to do.

So, on the surface, it checked all the boxes. But, I just found it kind of boring. Again, I gotta say dry.

I think perhaps I’m not a huge fan of cold case-style mystery – where the predominant crime is old or closed. There’s no real crime to immerse yourself in. There’s no immediacy to the investigation. The crime scene is gone and you’re really just relying on people’s memories. That shit is iffy, at best.

Both crimes in this book fit this category, but the attention each was given felt lopsided. The murders of Luke Hadler and his family were the most recent. It is what pulled the MC, Falk, back to his shitty hometown. Their deaths are what he’s supposed to be investigating, it’s where the red herrings and misdirection come into play. But, the characters seemed too emotionally focused on the death of Falk’s friend Ellie from 20 years ago, while no one cared too much about Luke Hadler, except for his parents.

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Review: Caged (Agent Sayer Altair, #1) by Ellison Cooper

★★★★

Minotaur Books | 2018

Filed Under: Jigsaw meets the Unabomber

Okay, here’s my issue, I really over-hyped myself for this one.

I heard “police procedural” and “FBI agent” and “serial killer” and just lost my ever-loving crime fiction book nerd mind, expecting to fall rapidly in love with this; for it to be everything I need a book with those descriptors to be. I consciously recognized that I was doing it in the moment, but I made a decision to allow myself to be hyped for this.

…and almost immediately once I started reading, I needed to readjust my expectations because I knew I would be massively disappointed otherwise.

So no, this was not the mind-blowing read I wanted it to be. But, it was still good and I’m definitely on board for this as a series.

It has a very dark atmosphere with a Criminal Minds vibe. Profilers and some bureaucracy, but mostly disturbing puzzles that need solving. This completely connected with me, bringing together a lot of my favourite things, especially the psychology behind the murders.

It’s heavy on the procedural, medium on the twists (focused on the science side of the evidence, and less on physical events) and low on thrills. But that’s pretty typical for procedurals, and there’s room for all kinds of mystery/thrillers on my TBR.

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