July Book Reveiw

I'm a few days late writing this, but I didn't want to miss my July book review! I read 4 good books last month, but I will warn you that I didn't read a great variety. They were all thrillers! (What's wrong with me?! 😜) Anyway, here's look at what I read!

My first book of the month was another Gillian Flynn novel, Dark Places. This is a story about a mother and two of her daughters who were murdered in their home in the 1980's, the daughter who escaped, and the brother who was convicted of the murders. The chapters go back and forth between present day as Libby, the daughter who survived, tries to solve the mystery of what happened to her family, and the past where it tells the story of exactly what happened in each family member's lives on the day leading up to the murders. As the title suggests, this book was DARK! Like, too dark for me to say I really enjoyed it. The story was suspenseful, and there were several twists, but it was absolutely depressing. There were lots of explicit references to sex, drugs, and Satan worship that left me feeling kind of icky, and what happened at the end was so sad that I skimmed several pages. I just couldn't handle the descriptions of the murders and how the mother tried to help her children as they all lay dying. Talk about depressing! As always, Flynn's writing was superb, but this one just wasn't for me.

This next book, A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena, was one that I got for a dollar at our library's used bookstore. This book came highly recommended by a good friend and I was excited to read it, but I gotta say that it wasn't my favorite. It sucked me in right away because it starts out very exciting, but as the story unfolds it's just kind of boring and predictable. It's about a woman who crashes her car right after a murder has taken place in a bad part of town and gets amnesia, not even knowing why she was on that side of town in the first place. There end up being secrets that are revealed about both she and her husband, leading them to feel as though they don't really know each other at all. I felt like the mystery was basically solved right off the bat, so I expected some crazy twist, but no...there was no twist. Just an unoriginal plot that read like a soap opera.

Force of Nature is Jane Harper's second novel, and after reading The Dry in January, I knew I had to read this one! I waited a couple months for it to become available at my library, and then one glorious day earlier this month, I got an email that it was being held for me. Yay! It follows Federal Agent Aaron Falk (who was introduced in The Dry) as he works the case of a woman who went missing during a work retreat in the bushland of Australia. There are some references made to a few things that happened in the previous book, but it's definitely a stand alone novel. It's chapters go back and forth between Falk as he investigates the case, and first-person narratives from each of the women on the retreat on the day that one of them goes missing. I love this writing style because you learn SO much information about each person, and get the story from each perspective. The story was so suspenseful and I really had no idea how it was going to end. The sign of a good mystery for me is when I have to cover the bottom of my page with something so that I can't read ahead (which I will do because I have no self-control!) and I was having to do this with every page at the end. I loved it! 

The Lying Game was my 3rd Ruth Ware novel of the year, and it was by far the best! Oh my goodness, this one was good! First of all it was almost 600 pages long, so there was lots of time for really good character development (something that I found lacking in the previous two Ware novels I've read), and the story was really original. It's about four best friends who reunite after many years because of a tragic secret they all share. They went to boarding school together as girls, and ended up being kicked out over a misunderstanding, when in reality what happened was worse than the rumor. I liked this book because they're were kind of two mysteries in one; at the beginning I was trying to figure out what happened, and at the end I was trying to figure out who did it. This book was really, really good and intriguing!

So that's what I read in July! I think I'll put the thriller/crime novels away for a while and try to read more of a variety. I need something uplifting after a month of murder mysteries! :) Thanks for reading along!