Review: Tear Me Apart by J.T. Ellison

“The words I’ve heard in the past few days are ones I never expected – new, untried, untested. Casket. Body. Funeral. Viewing. Embalming. Autopsy. Severed. Seven-inch non-corrosive steel blade. Homicide.”

★★★★

Opening Hook: Broken bones, broken dreams

Main Character: Shouldn’t keep blood secrets when your sister works with DNA

Plot Twisty-ness: Are coincidences considered twists?

Okay, okay, OKAY. Y’all know I love me some J.T. Ellison.

It all started with her Taylor Jackson series a damn decade ago (ugh, that makes me feel old) and I’ve been a loyal reader ever since. I love tough women writing tough women, it’s a thing.

Ellison’s move from series writer to standalones started with Lie to Me, which most people loved, except for yours truly.

What can I say? I’m a picky fucking reader.

I had a few issues with the pacing of Lie to Me (the second half sucked the life out of it) and with the ending (“it was all for nothing, just a giant misunderstanding” doesn’t really work for me. that’s not a twist,) but I’m happy to say that I liked Tear Me Apart a lot. I didn’t love it. It’s not the best thing I’ve read this year, but it’s a good read. It’s not a waste of your time, at all.

And we all know how much I hate wasting my reading time.

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Review: Lie to Me by J.T. Ellison

★★★

“They built a life on lies.”

Okay, if you say so.

I was expecting a dark domestic noir thriller, and instead what I got was two assholes who married each other and could have avoided a lot of shit if they’d just, I don’t know, talked like people who got married for a reason. Failing that, try therapy.

Their marriage issues were all tales as old as time. Nothing really shocking – he has a wandering eye, she can be cold and distant. They don’t communicate well. Sometimes they love each other, sometimes they want to chuck plates at each other’s throats. Big deal, that’s marriage for a lot of people.

What’s not life for most of us, however, is the amount of money these two assholes have. Or the death of their child. Or the sinister events that engulf their lives very quickly.

Much of the more mundane “crumbling marriage” tropes take place in an over-sized, fantastical world of good looks, success, wealth and travel – extremes that are not realistic for the general population. So, somewhere between the banal (for the genre) issues of their marriage and the over-the-top baseline for their way of life, is where you will find me still deciding whether or not this book resonated with me.

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Cover Reveal: Tear Me Apart by J.T. Ellison

Happy Thursday, lovers! We are one day away from a long weekend. Praise Thor! I don’t really have any plans besides not wearing a bra and gorging myself on true crime documentaries. You?

Last night I finished up Evil Genius on Netflix. It’s a detailed look into the case of the Pizza Bomber from 2003, in Erie, Pennsylvania. Basically, a pizza delivery man showed up with an order for a mysterious location, and was then allegedly assaulted and a bomb was strapped to his neck. He was sent out on a scavenger hunt to find the keys to unlock the bomb, but not before he was made to rob the local bank.

That’s just the basics, the case goes so much deeper than that. For someone who knew about the case already – moi! – it was still a completely wild ride, and revealed a lot I wasn’t totally aware of, or at least, hadn’t realized the gravity of. It’s jam-packed with information, and nothing beats the footage and interviews they got their hands on. Super intense.

There is some graphic video of the victim, Brian Wells, being blown up by the neck bomb though, just fair warning.

I highly recommend this if you’re a Netflix true crime documentary and chill, kind of person like me.

Anyhooters, onto some book talk. The cover of J.T. Ellison’s new thriller was released today and I’m definitely into it!

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