The Perfect Family by Shalini Boland

 

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Psychological Fiction, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller
Format - Paperback
Length - 282 Pages

*Amazon Blurb*

‘Mummy, she’s gone…’ 

Gemma Ballantine is getting ready for work one morning when her eldest child comes running down the stairs, saying the words every mother dreads. 

 The front door is open. And her six-year-old daughter has disappeared. Frantic with fear, Gemma starts a nail-biting search for her little girl. 

After what feels like forever, her mother-in-law Diane finds Katie wandering lost a few streets away. Relieved to have her youngest child back in her arms, breathing in the sweet scent of her hair, Gemma thinks the nightmare is over. 

But then her perfect family starts to fall apart. And she realises it’s only just beginning…

 

*My Review* 

 

This book was twisting throughout the whole thing. Is Gemma really just having the worst luck or is someone out to get her.....and if so, who and WHY? There really is no such thing as the perfect family. I did NOT see the ending coming and those are the ones that I love the most.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Psychological Fiction, Psychological Thriller, Murder Thriller
Format - Hardcover
Length - 336 Pages


*Amazon Blurb*


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....

*My Review* 

Alicia is found guilty of murdering her husband. The question is...did she really do it? No one can be 100% certain because she refuses to speak. Remember the saying, actions speak louder than words? What if the person won't even give any action or reaction to go on? She wouldn't give the police a statement, wouldn't talk to her lawyer and is now doing her time in an insane asylum. I mean she has to be crazy if she won't speak, right?

I am not one to be vocal while reading a book, but when the bomb drops I actually said "No way, that's so messed up." and then proceeded to rethink what I had already read. My husband looked at me like I had 2 heads. He isn't a reader, but I made he listen while I described what had happened and what I'd just found out.
I mean that book bomb...... WHAT?!?! If you are looking for a book with a major twist, then you MUST read this one.

What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Coming of Age Fiction, Psychological Fiction, Contemporary Literature & Fiction
Format - Paperback
Length - 336 pages

*Amazon Blurb*

Ten years ago, Izzy Stone's mother fatally shot her father while he slept. Devastated by her mother's apparent insanity, Izzy, now seventeen, refuses to visit her in prison. But her new foster parents, employees at the local museum, have enlisted Izzy's help in cataloging items at a long-shuttered state asylum. There, amid piles of abandoned belongings, Izzy discovers a stack of unopened letters, a decades-old journal, and a window into her own past.

Clara Cartwright, eighteen years old in 1929, is caught between her overbearing parents and her love for an Italian immigrant. Furious when she rejects an arranged marriage, Clara's father sends her to a genteel home for nervous invalids. But when his fortune is lost in the stock market crash, he can no longer afford her care--and Clara is committed to the public asylum.

Even as Izzy deals with the challenges of yet another new beginning, Clara's story keeps drawing her into the past. If Clara was never really mentally ill, could something else explain her own mother's violent act? Piecing together Clara's fate compels Izzy to re-examine her own choices--with shocking and unexpected results.

*My Review* 

This book!!! If I rated books with more than 5 stars, this would definitely get them. My love of reading started late in life (really just a few years ago) and it started with this book. I think I read it within 24 - 48 hours. I have just read it again for my book club at the library.

This book will make you wonder about how many people (mainly women) were institutionalized that were completely sane and no matter how hard they tried, they were unable to get out. Everything they did or said was twisted to make it sound like they were crazy.

The Perfect Girlfriend by Karen Hamilton

Availble on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘
Genre - Psychological Thriller, Suspense
Format - Audio book
Length - 11 hours 46 minutes

*Amazon Blurb*

Juliette loves Nate.

She will follow him anywhere. She’s even become a flight attendant for his airline, so she can keep a closer eye on him.

They are meant to be.

The fact that Nate broke up with her six months ago means nothing. Because Juliette has a plan to win him back.

She is the perfect girlfriend. And she’ll make sure no one stops her from getting exactly what she wants.

True love hurts, but Juliette knows it’s worth all the pain...


*My Review* 

Juliette is crazy, but she's a controlled kind of crazy. She knows what she wants and she will build her life around getting it. It's got to be hard living 2 perfect lives.
The story wasn't bad, but is seemed awfully slow to me. I got lost a few times with all her plotting and planning. The ending was definitely not what I was expecting at all.

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

Availble on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘
Genre - Psychological Thriller, Crime Thriller
Format - Audio book
Length - 8 hours 40 minutes

*Amazon Blurb*

It all started at a dinner party...
A domestic suspense debut about a young couple and their apparently friendly neighbors - a twisty, roller-coaster ride of lies, betrayal, and the secrets between husbands and wives....
Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all - a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night, when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately lands on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story. Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds.
Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they've kept for years. What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family - a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist.


*My Review* 

To start with, who just leaves their baby home along even if you are next door with a baby monitor? I can understand running over or a few minutes, but definitely not hours. I didn't like any of the characters right off the bat because of this. I didn't real any sympathy for the parents at any point.

This isn't a book that'll keep you in suspense for the who did it, well initially. Turns out there's more than one bad guy in this book, but trying to figure out who that is may take some time. I honestly wasn't sure until the very end basically when they told me.

Before She Knew Him by Peter Swanson

Before She Knew Him

by Peter Swanson

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Psychological Thrillers, Psychological Fiction, Murder, Thrillers
Format - Hard Cover
Pages -

*Amazon Blurb*

Hen and her husband Lloyd have settled into a quiet life in a new house outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Hen (short for Henrietta) is an illustrator and works out of a studio nearby, and has found the right meds to control her bipolar disorder. Finally, she’s found some stability and peace.
But when they meet the neighbors next door, that calm begins to erode as she spots a familiar object displayed on the husband’s office shelf. The sports trophy looks exactly like one that went missing from the home of a young man who was killed two years ago. Hen knows because she’s long had a fascination with this unsolved murder—an obsession she doesn’t talk about anymore, but can’t fully shake either.
Could her neighbor, Matthew, be a killer? Or is this the beginning of another psychotic episode like the one she suffered back in college, when she became so consumed with proving a fellow student guilty that she ended up hurting a classmate?
The more Hen observes Matthew, the more she suspects he’s planning something truly terrifying. Yet no one will believe her. Then one night, when she comes face to face with Matthew in a dark parking lot, she realizes that he knows she’s been watching him, that she’s really on to him. And that this is the beginning of a horrifying nightmare she may not live to escape. . .

*My Review* 

This book...WOW!! Normally you spend at least half the book trying to figure out who the killer is. This book starts off by telling you who did it right away. Well, if you know who did it, then what's the point of reading any further? Trust me, you'll want too.

Hen and her neighbor, Matthew, end up having a deep relationship that is unlike any other. Is she really crazy or is Matthew telling her the truth about all the horrible things he's done. Is Matthew the bad guy, or is he a good guy helping rid the world of bad people?

Since I already knew who the killer was, I figured it was only a matter of time before the police were able to figure it out and then the book would end. Well, that's kind of what happens, but there's such a major twist that I had not expected. It made me think back about everything I'd just read and wondering how it was possible.

If you're looking for a a really suspenseful book, look no further.

The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison

The Silent Wife

by A.S.A. Harrison

Availble on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘 📘
Genre - Psychological Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
Format - Audiobook

*Amazon Blurb*

Jodi and Todd are at a bad place in their marriage. Much is at stake, including the affluent life they lead in their beautiful waterfront condo in Chicago, as she, the killer, and he, the victim, rush haplessly toward the main event. He is a committed cheater. She lives and breathes denial. He exists in dual worlds. She likes to settle scores. He decides to play for keeps. She has nothing left to lose. Told in alternating voices, The Silent Wife is about a marriage in the throes of dissolution, a couple headed for catastrophe, concessions that can’t be made, and promises that won’t be kept. Expertly plotted and reminiscent of Gone Girl and These Things Hidden, The Silent Wife ensnares the reader from page one and does not let go.

*My Review* 

I always enjoy books that are told from two different points of view. This one includes Jodi and Todd.  I give much credit to Jodi for being able to go that far in denial of her husbands infidelity that she is able to continue on like nothing is wrong. Then again, when you have nothing, there's not much to lose. The book didn't see to have much suspense to me as I was basically able to predict what was going to happen right from the beginning. I think it would've been better if Jodi had a bit of a temper in her or if Todd had some kind of backbone, instead of being pushed around by his mistress.