Tag: psychological

What Alice Knew Book Review (Blog Tour)

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I am so happy to be today’s host in What Alice Knew Blog Tour.
I really enjoyed reading this book and I am excited to share my review.
I’d like to thank Rebecca Hunter from Penguin Random House UK, for giving me this opportunity.

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About the book:

Alice has a perfect life – a great job, happy kids, a wonderful husband. Until he goes missing one night; she receives a suspicious phone call; things don’t quite add up.

Alice needs to know what’s going on. But when she uncovers the truth she faces a brutal choice. And how can she be sure it is the truth?

Sometimes it’s better not to know.

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My Review:

Right after finishing the last sentence of What Alice Knew, I knew reviewing this engaging debut won’t be an easy task to do.
This psychlogical thriller is full of discussion worthy situations.
There’s so many things that happened and I am not sure where’s the thin line that separates what can be mentioned in review, and what is considered as spoiler.

The story follows Alice, an artist married to Ed, who is an Obstetrician. Alice’s life was perfect until one night when her husband didn’t come home on time.
What happened that one night turns their both lives complitely around and Alice has to make a decision whether she’ll stay behind her husband and pretend everything is fine, or if she’ll tell the true and endanger lives of their children, torn her family apart.

What Alice Knew is a psychological thriller by all means, but it is also very different from every other pshyhological thriller I have read before.
It  makes the reader question character’s actions and intentions, as well as it makes him requestion the same with every new chapter, but what makes this novel special is how it blurs the difference between what is moral and what is right.

Cotterell approached impressively to every situation that happened in this story, making the reader see it from different perspectives, going into depth when it comes to what kind of consequence one way of behaving would have over the other.
At the same time, the story follows only one perspective: Alice’s, who’s thoughts we can observe from first person POV.

The writing style is admirable. From the very first chapter, it pulls the reader in and does not let go.
Although this is almost 400 pages long novel, it reads really fast.
It probably can not be read in one sitting (unless you’re a really, REALLY fast reader), but I truly believe it can be read faster then other books with similar page count.

Filled with tension, What Alice Knew is the story that talks about one’s inner strugle in making the right choice and trying to find peace when living with decission that was made.

It perfectly portraits how true can hurt and how lies can burn, and how in difficult situations there are no obvious right and wrong ways. Sometimes, in life, all the roads we  can take are gray, and it is on us to decide what shade of gray we can bare.

The end of this intense read is complete, but it is open to interpretation. One reader can see it in a totally different way then the other.

Because What Alice Knew examines situations and decisions from many different angles, it is a perfect book to be read in a book club or as a buddy read.
I believe people who read it together will have so many interesting topics to discuss.
Publisher made sure to provide some Reading Group Questions in a book proof copy I got, and I really hope those will be printed in finished book as well.

4,5

 

What Alice Knew comes out on December 1st (2016) in ebook format, and on April 20th (2017) in paperback.

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About T.A. Cotterell:

t-a-cotterell T.A. Cotterell read History of Art at Cambridge University. He worked in the City before resigning to become a freelance writer. He is now a writer and editor at the research house Redburn. He is married with three children and lives in Bristol.

 

 

 

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Follow the tour:

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Book Review: The Fire Child by S.K.Tremayne

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Title: The Fire Child
Author: S.K. Tremayne
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Date: June 16th, 2016
Pages: 400
Format: eARC
Source: from Publisher for a review

 

Synopsis (from Goodreads): The chilling new psychological thriller by S. K. Tremayne, author of the Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller, THE ICE TWINS.

When Rachel marries dark, handsome David, everything seems to fall into place. Swept from single life in London to the beautiful Carnhallow House in Cornwall, she gains wealth, love, and an affectionate stepson, Jamie.

But then Jamie’s behaviour changes, and Rachel’s perfect life begins to unravel. He makes disturbing predictions, claiming to be haunted by the spectre of his late mother – David’s previous wife. Is this Jamie’s way of punishing Rachel, or is he far more traumatized than she thought?

As Rachel starts digging into the past, she begins to grow suspicious of her husband. Why is he so reluctant to discuss Jamie’s outbursts? And what exactly happened to cause his ex-wife’s untimely death, less than two years ago? As summer slips away and December looms, Rachel begins to fear there might be truth in Jamie’s words:

‘You will be dead by Christmas.’

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Review:

 

„The doubting the doubt is the beginning of faith.“

 

In the blurb for this book, they said it was chilling.
And it was.
I got chills multiple times as I was reading this brilliant, in a good way disturbing novel.

The story follows Rachel, a thirty years old woman who marries David, a rich widower, and moves into his big, beautiful house called Carnhallow, in Cornwall.

Cornwall is the place I read about in so many books, I can’t even count. But you know what? This was the first time I was reading a dark tale that was settled in that admirable place I’d like to visit one day.

I liked the atmosphere in this book. Nothing was perfectly clear and, often, it felt like I could picture the mist over the Cornwall and the whole story that S.K. Tremayne so talentedly presented to us.

What I liked the most was the fact that all characters, main and impotant side ones, were unreliable.
Jamie, Rachel, David, David’s mother Julie – they were all unpredictable and I couldn’t trust anyone.
Even the dead character, David’s first wife Nina, was untrustworthy.

This book messed with my head bigtime, and I welcomed it wholeheartedly.
It kept me on the edge of my seat, made me want to read faster and then made me feel angry I couldn’t.
It made me emotional, it made me scared for characters, it made me question my logic.
And those, in my opinion, are the signs of a well-done psychological thriller.

The story is written in two POVs: Rachel’s and David’s.
Rachel POV was written in first person and it had that power to pull you into the story. Majority of The Fire Child is written in Rachel’s POV, as she is the main character.
David’s POV was written in third person and even though there were only few chapters that told his perspective, they were important ones.

The writing style was pretty amazing. It was fast paced with some bigger words used from time to time.
S.K. Tremayne is one skilled writer who knows how to capture the intension and compel his readers.

This was my first time reading his work but it surely won’t be the last.
I already have his Ice Twins on my tbr and am happy to give it a go when I’ll be in a mood for something extremely thought provoking.

4

Book Review: Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell

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Title: Pretty Is
Author: Maggie Mitchell
Publisher: Orion
Date: May 5th, 2016
Pages: 320
Format: ARC
Source: from Publisher for a review

 

Synopsis (from Goodreads): Everyone thought we were dead. What else could they think?

One summer, nearly twenty years ago, two twelve year olds
were abducted and kept captive in the forest.

There they formed a bond that could never be broken.

What really happened in the woods that summer?

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Review:

„Pretty is what pretty does.“

A dark and disturbing psychological thriller debut – perfect for fans of ICE TWINS and I LET YOU GO. <– that’s how this novel was pitched.

Now, I will take some liberty and say that it was dark because my eyes closed multiple times while reading. No matter how hard I tried to stay awake, this disturbingly boring novel just had that effect on me.
I know ICE TWINS is a huge hit and that book is on my tbr list for months now. However, if it’s anything like PRETTY IS, I won’t mind if it stayed on that list forever.
Somehow, I believe it is better then this novel because, in my opinion, writing as boring psychological thriller as this one couldn’t be an easy task to do.

Pretty Is follows two women who, when they were twelve years old girls, were captured by a thirty-something guy and spent several months with him in the woods.

Sounds interesting, right? That’s what I thought too.
Boy, how wrong I was!

This book is based on actual events that happened in real life.
We can say it was a tool Maggie Mitchell used to tell herself the end of the story she read about in an article more then few years ago.

To be honest, I blame the writing style.
This story had some potential but it was presented to us in such a boring way that even when I wanted to be engaded and care about it’s characters, I was already bored to death that I could bring myself to care.

Pretty Is is composed of four parts: three of them being told from two alternative prospectives, Lois’ and Carly-Mae’s (or Carly’s, because that is the new name she gave to herself). One part, the second one, is a piece of Lois’ book that she wrote, in which she speaks about her and Carly’s experience in the woods, but packed in work of fiction.

My main critic would go to the fact that Lois’ and Carly-Mae’s voices sounded exactly the same.
Those two women took different paths in life and I expected from them to sound different.
Lous being an english professor at university and Carly-Mae being an actress, I really expected from Lous to use some bigger words and to basically sound more educated.

An excerpt from the book called „Deep in the Woods“ also sounded the same (and I get that it sounded the same as Lois POV, because she wrote it), and all four parts were just plain boring.

Fourth part had more action in it but when we came to it, it was too late already. I just couldn’t care less.

We never got the main answer we actually wanted but were left with the conclusion that, sometimes, there are no answers.
I get that, because that is what happens in real life sometimes, but in my whole honesty, I feel like I have been robbed for several hours I spent reading this book.
And I am sorry I feel that way, and I am even more sorry when I think that the author has put so many hours, days, maybe even months into creating this novel and here I am, giving you my honest review and not saying anything good.
But that is how honesty works.

The story ended with an opened ending but, as I already said, when I got to that point I didn’t care anymore. I was just glad it was over.

2