Month: July 2024

Title: The Angel Maker

Author: Alex North

Genre: thriller

Thank you, NetGalley, for this book.

I’ve read and enjoyed The Whisper Man and The Shadows. Both were really well-written and kept me hooked. However, this book fell flat. I felt like it tried to do too much all within one plot. If North had pared down the story and focused more deeply on the major plot, I think that would have helped this book.

As a teen, Katie tries to protect her brother, Chris, but he is attacked and scarred and his life changes forever. As adults, he has struggled while Katie has been successful with a family. Chris goes missing and Katie has to try to find him. There are several alternate plots involving a serial killer who died decades ago, a mysterious book, the man who attacked Chris, and a missing 7-month-old baby. Whew.

Even though this one didn’t work for me, I’m still going to keep reading Alex North’s books because I did enjoy his others so much.

Title: Dark Corner

Author: Megan Goldin

Genre: thriller

Thank you, NetGalley, for this book.

I read The Night Swim when it came out, and although I don’t remember a lot about it, I gave it four stars, so I must have enjoyed it quite a bit. So when I saw there was a new book about the same main character, Rachel, Krall, I was excited to revisit this awesome podcaster. However, this book definitely fell flat.

Rachel is summoned by an inmate who tells her cryptic information. The FBI believes this man, who is incarcerated for breaking and entering, is actually a serial killer. Rachel and the FBI come up with a plan to send her to an influencer convention to dig into that world, who seems to have a connection to this inmate. Still with me??

This book relies way too heavily on convenient plot points to make connections, then in the last few pages, all the loose ends are tied up, rather than while the plot is happening. This book really made no sense in parts. The law enforcement characters relied on a random podcaster to do their work for them. And parts were like the writer knew an end point but had no idea how to get there, so invented random things to draw them together. I was just really disappointed with this one.