Thriller – Nonfiction and Nonsense

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

I had high hopes for this book when I first started it, but the longer I read it the less I was into it. I feel like I only continued to read it because there were some mildly interesting things going on and I just wanted to know if certain characters were going to be alive or dead at the end of the story.

The main characters of the story are wife and husband, Maddie and Nate, and their son, Oliver. Maddie is an artist, she creates sculptures from recycled materials, Nate is a cop, and Oliver is an overly sensitive teenager. At once, it is very obvious that Oliver’s immense empathy is going to be a major focal point in the novel. Also established early on is how Nate’s terrible relationship with his father is going to be very crucial to the story. Additionally, I got the sense very early on that there was something wrong with Maddie, mentally. The story is part mystery, part thriller, part supernatural.

Now let me just get straight into all the things I didn’t really like about this novel. There were several different plots going on at once and sometimes it was obvious that you were reading the main plot. Sometimes the author would tell you outright that you were in the past. And sometimes at some point you would figure out for yourself that you were reading a passage that was not happening in the present, and the main characters were not actually the people you were reading about on those pages. I don’t mind a story that jumps between past, present, and even future events, but what made me not enjoy this so much was the fact that sometimes we found ourselves in the past or present of other realities. And some of the realities were so similar that it made it hard to keep track of which passages were part of the reality that the main characters were in, and which ones were the side plots.

Sometimes, you would think you were reading from a certain character’s perspective only to find out that no, you weren’t. It really interrupted the flow of the story in my opinion. I found myself questioning what I was reading often, and not in a good way. I think I would have enjoyed the story a lot more if the author had picked one way to exercise our brains. I think the back and forth between past and present, this reality and that reality, and both of those elements combined, was what made me slowly lose interest. It wasn’t that bad for the entire book, it started to get more and more jumbled around in the second half of the novel. So, yeah, the first half of the book was pretty decent, then it got messy in the second half.

Then there is the title of this novel. I find that it makes you think that ‘the’ Book of Accidents is going to be important and prominent. But it isn’t. It plays a very small part in the overall plot of the book. I think the author could have come up with something better.

Finally, I’m just going to say it, I think the character Edmund Walker Reese was redundant. I think you could have taken that character out of the story and it would have been exactly the same. He wasn’t needed and he didn’t add anything to the story. The fate of Nate could have reached its conclusion in another way, he didn’t need to have that moment of redemption in order to go through that door.

I think this could have been a better story. I think the author got a little carried away. It’s like he wrote this book based on a bunch of different ideas that he had, and he couldn’t pick one so he just tried to write all of them into one story. I think that if he separated some of his ideas and organized them better he could have written two or three better novels utilizing different parts of this story. Edmund Walker Reese and his obsession with numbers and murder could have been one book on its own. I am actually disappointed that the story didn’t get into him very much at all. Jed, his alcoholism, how he went about researching and writing his novels, the tragedy with his family, that could have been a book. And then the main plot with Maddie, Nate, and Oliver could have been a separate book, if it were thought out better. So even though this book got great reviews, it is not something I would read again or recommend.

The One by John Marrs

Fiction

I cannot find the right words to express to you how much I enjoyed this book. I feel like it has been a while since I found myself looking forward to spending all my free time reading. I finished this in less than three days, beginning the book on a Sunday, reading during my lunch hours at work on Monday and Tuesday, and picking the book back up as soon as I got home. I put off chores, cooking, eating, and even showering, all so that I could reach the end of this novel.

This story follows five different people, each of them in a different situation with their ‘one’. In this reality, science has discovered a way to help you find your perfect match. It turns out that there exists a gene within the human DNA that is the counterpart to exactly one other person. If you meet this person you are struck with an overwhelming sensation of joy, desire, and completeness. Meeting your one is followed by such strong feelings to be with them that it often ends existing relationships. Even just being aware that you have a match can make you doubt any certainty that you are truly happy with your current partner, if you have one. And knowing that there might be a match out there for you could make you reluctant to even consider dating anyone else. But matches aren’t always who you expect them to be. Sometimes people from other sides of the planet are matched, sometimes the people are decades apart in age, and sometimes your match ends up being of a gender that you have never been attracted to. Finding your match isn’t always a dream, sometimes it can end up being an absolute nightmare.

I wish I could read this book again for the first time, and that is praise that I do not hand out very often. I don’t even remember where I heard about this book, but I am glad that I finally bought it and decided that it needed to move to the top of my pile. The book also happens to have been developed into a show, which I am not incredibly interested in watching. If you aren’t much of a reader, maybe watch the show. If it is anywhere near as good as the book then I’m certain it has the potential to be very enjoyable.

The Black Farm by Elias Witherow

Fiction

I think I picked the absolutely most perfect book to start off my reading for this month. Being that it is October, horror and thriller novels are the only ones that I thought would do for the theme. The first chapter was devastating, the couple having lost all hope and having decided to act on the only solution they could think of. The second chapter was disgusting, horrifying, and brutal. I was appalled and intrigued by what was to come if those first few chapters were only the prelude of upcoming misery and terror. What an opening, I was almost dreading what I was going to be reading if the first few pages grossed me out that much. The author was correct when they stated that this book was not for the faint of heart, I could tell that much was true only twenty pages in.

The first few chapters are indeed the most brutal, in my opinion. But I found myself saying ‘gross’ or ‘ew’ out loud several more times. I was more vocal while reading this book than I have been in a long time. This book literally has all the triggers, it was in turns stomach churning, depressing, violent, graphic, and hopeless. The entire time I was reading it I was thinking that there is no way anything good was going to happen to our lead character or any of the characters in the story. I was honestly shocked with the outcome, because throughout the entire story it just felt like things were leading towards a particularly grim resolution. I found myself wondering if the author was in an ok place when they wrote this, because it seems like only a very troubled mind could have come up with many of the scenes. You will know what I am talking about if you ever decide to pick this up. I would suggest that you yourself be in an ok place mentally when you read this because it can be off putting, and that’s putting it nicely. And maybe don’t read it right before bed. I didn’t have nightmares exactly, just very unusual dreams, when I did read it right before going to sleep. The story just fills you with an awful desperation in your soul along with feelings of dread for its entirety. I don’t know if I will ever be able to find another book like this. If you have suggestions, please let me know! I think that as of right now, this is officially the most disturbing book that I have ever read. Is it sinister that I want to try to find something to top it?

An Honest Lie by Tarryn Fisher

Fiction

I don’t know why I had this book in my pile, I can’t remember if it is something I saw in the store and thought it looked good, or if I heard about it from someone, somewhere. But I am kind of regretting my purchase. It’s not a bad story, it just wasn’t for me.

This novel is part thriller, part mystery, heavy on the past trauma trope, with a lot of suspicious behavior coming from all directions. Rainy is an artist, she recently moved from New York city to live with her boyfriend on the opposite side of the country. She was perfectly happy to do so because loves him more than anyone, including all the people she knew on the east coast, and she would have been completely happy building a life in her new home with him and only him. However, her boyfriend insists that she make some friends. He doesn’t like the idea of himself being the only person Rainy knows in town, and being that he has strong roots on the west coast he insists that she should start by building relationships with his friends. Rainy is both reluctant and uninterested in making connections with the neighborhood wives and girlfriends, an ongoing problem she has been struggling with ever since the events of her childhood. She has trust issues that you will understand once she starts to unveil her past, as well as a desire to remain hidden and unnoticed.

That’s all I really want to get into in regards to the plot. There was a twist at the end of the story that I wasn’t expecting and I’m not sure if it felt entirely believable to me. I’m not going to get overly worked up about it, it isn’t worth me getting irritated over. I won’t eb reading this again so it is worth my time to mentally rant over. There is one topic I do want to rant a little bit about, that being the cover art. I don’t usually get into the cover art too much, but I’m going to do it here because I had some problems with it. The main character, Rainy, is described as having long, black hair, just like her mother. However, the hair of the woman on the cover looks more like a shade of brown to me. I’m also not sold on the woman being in the pool, Rainy doesn’t even get in the pool during this story, she just sits on a chair next to it while she talks to one of the other women. And the shadow of the plane, and the palm trees, it just isn’t working for me. So little of the story had anything to do with the images portrayed I think that whoever was in charge of artwork could have made some much better choices.

Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak

Fiction

I was on the phone with my boyfriend this past Wednesday night. He knows that I usually read in the evenings, so he asked me what I was reading. I mentioned that I was enjoying a book that I had already read. He then asked, well, what about the book that I bought you on Sunday? I said that I finished it. He was astonished that I finished a book in less than two days. But it was that good that I couldn’t stop. I looked forward to my lunch breaks at work even more so than usual, because I couldn’t wait until being home at night to continue reading this story.

In the midst of recovering from a troubled past, Mallory gets a job that puts her one step closer towards fitting back in with society. An enthusiastic babysitter and lover of children, she transitions from her job at a daycare to a full time nanny gig with a well off family. The pay is great, she gets to live in her own small cabin next to the woods behind the family home, and the little boy she watches is well behaved. It’s a perfect job with a wonderful family. So of course something is going to go wrong.

This is an unsettling mystery that hooks you from the very start. I knew I was going to love it as soon as I saw the last picture in the first set of Teddy’s drawings that Mallory sorts through. I made a low whoosh noise because that one drawing was pretty creepy and kind of out of place from the others. I loved getting spooked, so I immediately got excited because I knew that there were weird and scary things in my future. It didn’t get as scary as I was hoping for, but I was not disappointed in the least because there were several twists that I thoroughly enjoyed. I also want to say how very impressed I was with the artwork. The author worked with two illustrators while writing this story, and the three of them together created a perfect illustrated tale.