I am a little late in the month getting this post out. But once again, all of these books were great. Maybe that is because I was recommended all three of them.
Turn of the Key - Ruth Ware
I started reading this book on the plane and I was hooked instantly. I wanted to know what Rowan was escaping from in the city and more about this weird house. The books starts off with a girl begging a lawyer to take her case. She writes him over and over in hopes he will hear her out.
The book goes back and forth between her being in prison and her in this house. Every nanny who came before Rowan had stayed for a short time and Rowan seeks to find out why. She finds clues in her bedroom and slowly pieces it together. But then a huge twist is revealed.
Just when you think you figured it out, you realize that you have not. This book keeps you gripped until the end.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Here is the synopsis:
When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.
What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.
Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant.
It was everything.
She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty—at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.
What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.
Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant.
It was everything.
She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty—at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.
Final Girls - Riley Sager
This book reminded me of old school horror films. I don't know why, but it just did. The books starts off with Quincy. She survived a mass murder ten years ago. The murder has plagued her since the day it happened, but Quincy lives a seemingly normal life. She is coined as one of the Final Girls. A final girl is someone who has survived a horrific tragedy. She was the only one to survive.
Quincy is a pretty well known blogger and after ten years, two other Final Girls come back into her life. But one ends up dead and the other two final girls are left to wonder what happened and if their lives are in danger.
This book was good. There are parts that are slower, and you just want to get to the root of what happened. You go back and forth between the night of the murders that Quincy survived and present day. But the end is really good.
Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5
Here is the synopsis:
Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls: Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet.
Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.
That is until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit; and Sam, the second Final Girl, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished.
The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides
I started this book on the flight home from Dallas and it gripped me right away. But once I was home, I had put the book down for a few days. I had mentioned it here on my blog and everyone said read it before the digital loan ended. So I finished it in a day and a half after that. Everyone was right. This is a good book.
Alicia is a brilliant painter and is married to Gabriel. Everything seems great until Gabriel ends up dead and Alicia is left to blame. After Gabriel's death, Alicia paints one last painting and ends up in a pysch ward. She never speaks again.
Enter Theo who is a pyschotherapist and he is intrigued by Alicia's case. He is also intrigued by her old works of art. Specifically the one she painted after Gabriel's death. Theo sets out to get Alicia to talk, so everyone can find out what really happened the night of Gabriel's death.
This books has twists and turns that are really good. I didn't see the ending coming and it was worth it.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Here is the synopsis:
Alicia Berenson's life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable areas. One evening, her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face and then never speaks another word.
Alicia's refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.
Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations - a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....
Love books with a twist and anytime someone recommends a book the five out of five rating, I am all in!
ReplyDeleteI am all in on those too!
DeleteYay, always love your book recommendations! I need to read the first one!
ReplyDeleteThank you. I am glad you enjoy them!
DeleteI agree about Final Girls! I still want to read The Silent Patient.
ReplyDeleteIt is soooo good. I definitely recommend it!
DeleteThe Silent Patient & Turn of the Key are so on the top of my list... I keep hearing great things about both of them!
ReplyDeleteThey are both really good. Definitely read them when you can!
DeleteTurn of the Key is on my list, I love that author.
ReplyDeleteI do too. She writes very well!
DeleteThe first two are on my TBR's so good to hear you enjoyed both of them so much.
ReplyDeleteI read the Silent Patient earlier this year and didn't love it as much. I hear it's going to be made into a movie.
It is being made into a movie? That is crazy. I hope it does ok.
DeleteOh those do sound good and so gripping!
ReplyDeleteThey are really good!
DeleteLoving all these thrillers that you shared! Ruth Ware is such a great author! xo, Biana-BlovedBoston
ReplyDeleteShe really is!! I loved all of these.
DeleteI'm intrigued by Final Girls - especially with it reminding you of an old school film <3
ReplyDeleteGreen Fashionista
Oh yes it very much did!!!
DeleteThe Silent Patient sounds like it's really creepy! I'm not sure I could get through it! I get easily freaked out by pyschological thrillers like that.
ReplyDeleteIt is creepy, but not in a scary way. It was really good.
Delete