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Book Review: The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth
Summary:
Tully and Rachel Aston look upon their father’s fiancée, Heather, as nothing but an interloper. Heather is younger than both of them. Clearly, she’s after their heart surgeon father’s money. They understand why he might want to date, given that their mother is in a care home due to rapidly advancing early onset Alzheimer’s, but it feels disrespectful that he’s going to divorce her to marry another. Meanwhile, they’re each struggling with a secret. Plus, Heather has secrets of her own. Will getting to the truth unleash the most dangerous impulses in all of them?
Review:
I have a soft spot for Australian psychological thrillers. This is the fourth Sally Hepworth one I’ve read. It ranks near but not quite at the top among her works for me. (My favorite being The Mother-in-Law). It’s pretty obvious early on that Heather is not the big bad, so then the main mystery remains – who is? And of course, what is Rachel’s secret? And when will everyone find out Tully’s secret?
We find out almost immediately that Tully struggles with kleptomania and that Rachel used to date but suddenly abruptly stopped. So the main issues surrounding the two sisters is when will others find out about Tully’s uncontrollable shoplifting and what exactly made Rachel stop dating. I thought the former was handled better than the latter. Tully seeks out therapy and her problems don’t disappear overnight. Rachel meets a nice guy and with him is able to overcome her trauma. That frustrated me a bit. Especially since Rachel is set up as being so strong. One can be strong and also find help in therapy. Or even in a support group structure. It shouldn’t all be on the significant other to help someone heal. So it was a little bit hit and miss for me with the two sisters.
I thought the main mystery of what was actually going on in the weird triangle of the dad, Heather, and the mom was quite well done. I especially appreciated the handling of Alzheimer’s. I do think this book falls prey to the old idea of alcoholism – that one can only have an alcohol problem if one is at rock bottom. Beating a spouse or getting delirium tremens (the shakes) when going too long without it. There are definitely characters in this book who display problems with alcohol, but the narration brushes off the idea that they might have a problem.
The structure starts with a bang – at the wedding, someone is injured, and we don’t know who. The wedding is put on hold, the police are called. We then flash back to Heather meeting the daughters and build back up to the wedding. This is a multiple point of view book. Rachel, Tully, Heather, even the mother get a turn narrating.
This book confronts the problem looming for a lot of new contemporary fiction – do we or do we not acknowledge the pandemic? This strikes a gentle balance of what to do. The characters talk about not shaking hands anymore, one character had a big career setback due to lockdowns, and another character’s marriage is a bit impacted by the work-from-home situation. No major details are mentioned (for example, masks are never discussed, no deaths from the pandemic are mentioned). I envisioned it as happening in 2021 or early 2022. Post lockdowns but not far flung future. I thought it worked fairly well.
Without any spoilers, let’s discuss the kind of gray ending. While it seems to be open to interpretation, for me it demonstrated how even when an abuser is gone, the impacts of the abuse continue. It shows how the voice of the abuser can live on in the mind(s) of the abused. Gaslighting from beyond the grave, but not in a supernatural sense.
Overall, this was a fun read with a different enough plot to keep me engaged. It was a little bit of a mixed bag, which is what kept me from loving it. I put content warnings in for this book over on Storygraph if you’re interested in those. I did wish I’d had them myself.
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 352 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
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Book Review: The Other Family by Wendy Corsi Staub
Summary:
It’s the perfect home for the perfect family: pretty Nora Howell, her handsome husband, their two teenage daughters, and lovable dog. As California transplants making a fresh start in Brooklyn, they expected to live in a shoebox, but the brownstone has a huge kitchen, lots of light, and a backyard. The catch: its previous residents were victims of a grisly triple homicide that remains unsolved. But all that is in the past and has nothing to do with them, right? Oldest daughter Stacey doesn’t think so. She thinks she’s seen a man watching her with binoculars from a neighboring roof. But will anyone believe her when she has an obsession with true crime, and she’s overheard her mother worrying about her mental state?
Review:
This is a slow burn with most of the action happening at the end. It is told through multiple viewpoints – daughter Stacey, mom Nora, and the man watching the house Jacob. You would think this many viewpoints would remove all surprises, but it does not.
There are a few main conflicts in the book. If you like how these conflicts sound, then you will likely enjoy the read even though it’s a slower burn.
First, there’s Stacey and her mom, Nora. Nora doesn’t like Stacey’s appearance and worries about her psychological state. From Stacey’s viewpoint, she’s just a geekier girl who happens to be into true crime.
Second, there’s Nora and her husband. Their marriage was on thin ice in LA, and they’re hoping the change of scenery to NYC will help. But will it? And who is this Teddy person that Nora keeps secretly calling?
Third, there’s Stacey and her new boyfriend Lennon. He falls head over heels really quickly, but it’s unclear to Stacey if the things he asks for are loving or controlling.
Finally there’s the neighbors down the street who are also Lennon’s moms. His moms seem a bit too pushily friendly to Nora. Is it really just friendship they’re after?
For most of the book, in spite of the watcher, it really reads more like a contemporary women’s fiction. It’s not until the last 10% or so that the thrills come out. They definitely surprised me, but I would have preferred more intensity throughout the book.
If a contemporary women’s fiction covering the types of conflicts described above that ends with a thriller style ending sounds engaging to you, give this one a chance.
3 out of 5 stars
Length: 384 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
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Book Review: Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney
Summary:
Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.
Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts – paper, cotton, pottery, tin – and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn’t randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn’t want them to live happily ever after.
Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget.
Review:
I have a thing for the themes for each anniversary year of marriage. I also have a thing for thrillers about marriages. So when I saw this one incorporating both, I knew I just had to read it. I can’t be the only one this appealed to because I waited for a few months for it at the library. This was definitely a unique and fun take on the thriller about a marriage theme.
The telling alternates between the anniversary letters Mrs. Wright writes to her husband and the present day Mrs. Wright going on the trip with Mr. Wright to Scotland. They are seeing a marriage counselor who suggest a trip away, and Mrs. Wright wins a weekend trip to a converted chapel in Scotland. One of the stronger scenes in the book is the late-night arrival at this Air BNB style home. If you have ever arrived late at night at an Air BNB or other vacation rental where you have to let yourself in and hope it lives up to your expectations, this scene will really set your spine to tingling!
Much as I was enjoying the present day explorations of the spooky getaway, I also really enjoyed the anniversary letters from Mrs. Wright. They were the perfect interlude because very quickly it becomes clear she is keeping something from him. So you end up with two different mysteries. What is going on at the weekend stay? And what is Mrs. Wright keeping from Mr. Wright?
I wasn’t sure at first how I’d feel about the face blindness aspect. But it is a real condition, and I like how the perspective sometimes shifts to Mr. Wright’s. We see how he sees his wife, and how he recognizes her anyway. I also really enjoy how important the title is to the book and how often it comes into play.
Now, this is a thriller so of course there is a twist. It is a major one, and I really wasn’t seeing it coming. I was a bit miffed because it was one of those situations where the only reason I didn’t see it coming was some information was withheld from the reader. But I so enjoyed the process of getting to that point that I ultimately didn’t care.
Overall, this was a fun entry into the thriller category. It delightfully combines a marriage on the rocks with a creepy vacation rental for a new feeling plot.
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 297 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
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Book Review: The Stolen Sisters by Louise Jensen
Summary:
Leah’s perfect marriage isn’t what it seems but the biggest lie of all is that she’s learned to live with what happened all those years ago. Marie drinks a bit too much to help her forget. And Carly has never forgiven herself for not keeping them safe.
Twenty years ago The Sinclair Sisters were taken. But what came after their return was far worse. Can a family ever recover, especially when not everyone is telling the truth…?
Review:
I really enjoyed this twist on the abducted children thriller trope. Instead of being told linearly from the moment of abduction forward, we meet the children as adults. We know they survived, but we also see what emotional and mental health impact being abducted had on them. Chapters alternate among characters and also among timelines . We see both the past and the present, and how they converge together at the 20th anniversary of their abduction.
In a way it may seem this twist removes all suspense – we know the sisters survived the abduction and were returned. But in fact it was still quite a suspenseful read. There’s still a lot of mystery. For example, we at first don’t know who did the abduction or why. We don’t know exactly what happened to the sisters when they were abducted and why that might have led to their current behaviors. And we also don’t know if Leah especially is correct to be anxious about something nefarious happening on the 20th anniversary or if it’s her PTSD and OCD tricking her.
I like how this book goes about exploring that what makes something traumatic isn’t necessarily the exact degree of physical trauma experienced but rather each individual’s own perception of the situation. Trauma is very personal, and what traumatizes some and not others is also personal. We see this very clearly in the sisters who had varying degrees of physical harm during the abduction, and yet their long-term trauma responses differed but not in direct proportion to the traumas they experienced. This is a very trauma-informed read.
The book also explores family and sisters. What makes us call someone a sister, and what makes us call someone family? Who gets to truly be our family and who doesn’t. What impact do those relationships have on us.
In general Leah’s OCD is well represented, although her magical number is a little low at 3. I understand why Leah’s number is 3 but a higher number is more common and obviously a higher magical number is more invasive in day to day life. Leah, for example, feels a compulsion to clean the floor 3 times. Cleaning the floor 10 times for a magical number of 10 is obviously more invasive in daily life. I also personally feel that she puts too much blame on herself for her OCD, and those around her let her. I’m fine with this happening but I’d like for it to be corrected by the end of the book. Instead she continues to blame herself for causing those around her to suffer from her OCD rather than understanding it’s not her fault.
Marie’s addiction is not explored as thoroughly as I would have liked but that’s my own personal preference. What is there is well-done. Carly’s feelings as the oldest who took on a lot of responsibility even at the age of 13 I found well-done.
Overall this is a creative exploration of the abducted children thriller trope that turns it on its head, following them as adults with flashbacks to childhood that still maintains suspense throughout. Recommended to those seeking a thriller more focused on the psychological than physical risks.
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 400 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
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Book Review: The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward
Summary:
At the very end of Needless Street lies a house. In this house lives Ted with his cat Olivia. They sometimes have his daughter Lauren with them. Ted’s cat Olivia believes the LORD sent her to take care of him.
This is the story of a serial killer. A stolen child. Revenge. Death. And an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.
All these things are true. And yet they are all lies.
Review:
Every review I saw of this book before I requested it on NetGalley promised an amazing twist that cannot be revealed or it will spoil the book. What I can say after reading this is….there’s definitely a great twist that cannot be revealed or it will spoil the book. I thought I had the twist figured out and was all ready to be disappointed at it being not that great. Turns out I had not figured it out, and it is that great.
So what can I really say in this review without spoiling things? This book is not what it at first seems to be (or even second or third) so if you feel yourself thinking you know exactly what type of book this is going to be and you think you won’t like it, keep reading, because it’s not that type of book.
Olivia the cat is by far my favorite character. A cat who believes she has a calling from the LORD to take care of her owner. Who reads the Bible by knocking it off a table sometimes and then lets those verses guide her actions. Who calls dogs brouhahas. There aren’t enough words for how much I love Olivia the cat.
This book explores trauma and survival. There are therefore some elements that may be disturbing to some readers, but there is never gratuitous violence or sexual violence. There is some cruelty to birds in the first chapter. This is not a repeated plot device of the book, and a character spends a sizable chunk of the book investigating who did such a thing.
If you are intrigued by the last house on Needless Street and its occupants, pick this one up. And keep reading even if you think you know what type of story it’s going to be telling. It will certainly surprise you.
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 335 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
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Book Review: You’re As Good As Dead by E.A. Aymar (Series, #2)
Summary:
Three years have passed since Tom Starks, a Baltimore community college professor and single father, tried to avenge his wife’s death by hiring a hit man. Tom is now hopeful that he has left the world of violence and murder behind. But he is drawn back into Baltimore’s criminal underground after he witnesses the assassination of an influential crime boss. To make matters worse, it appears the FBI has discovered Tom’s involvement, and they force him to work with them as an informer. Now Tom must navigate a deadly path between warring crime families and ruthless federal agents, even as he desperately tries to keep his involvement a secret from those closest to him.
Review:
Tom Starks is definitely an example of what happens when you make one grave error in a moment of passion. This man just can’t seem to learn from his mistakes. The book opens with him dropping off money to the crime boss to keep quiet, and he witnesses the crime boss being taken out. The FBI then approaches him to infiltrate the battle between two different crime families. It’s help them or go to prison. Tom chooses helping of course.
The most interesting part of the story to me was when one crime family sends twin Black woman assassins to live with Tom. It’s a bit unclear even to Tom if they’re there to keep him quiet or keep him safe. I liked the characterization of the sisters. Yes, they’re involved in crime, but we find out the crime family’s boss essentially found them as teenagers and saved them from the streets. So they feel obligated to the crime family. They can be violent but also kind. I was particularly fond of how the sisters interact with the family’s pet bunny.
Tom clearly thinks of himself as the good guy but to the reader he’s really not one. He did, after all, hire a hit man. It seems easy to push his boundaries and to get him to do ever increasingly ethically wrong things. He also, in his spare time, sleeps with his dead wife’s sister – who is still married. He tries to protect his adopted daughter by pushing her away out of the house and never telling her anything about what’s really going on or doing a particularly great job of listening to her. This book is a story of a man’s continual descent.
It’s been a long time since I accepted this review copy, and I feel my reading tastes changed in the meantime. I used to be more interested in violent books than I am now. Now I need the violence to be making a statement about something, and I don’t think this one is making a statement. Plus, there is definitely a lot of violence – beatings, murders, and tortures. (No sexual assault though).
This is a book about violence and an ethically questionable man falling further and further into a descent of the loss of light. There is no hope at the end of the book. There seems to be no way out. Does this count as a cautionary tale about the ever-reaching effects of choosing retaliation over transformative justice? I think maybe. For someone like myself who already believes in choosing transformative justice over retaliation, it wasn’t illuminating, though, simply a tale with an expected sad trajectory.
3 out of 5 stars
Length: 290 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review
Buy It (Amazon, not available on Bookshop.org)
Previous Book in Series:
I‘ll Sleep When You’re Dead, review
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Book Review: Safe In My Arms by Sara Shepard
Summary:
Three women whose children attend an elite preschool in coastal California find their lives intertwined when they all receive threatening notes in their children’s backpacks.
Review:
Sara Shepard is most famous for writing Pretty Little Liars, the series the hit tv show is based upon. In Pretty Little Liars the threat is text messages. Here it’s old school notes. Only this time, it’s the moms twisted into secrets and lies.
The three moms are at the center of the book, and I only actually liked one. Andrea is a trans woman who moved to California to be able to transition and live openly, away from her elite and judgmental family. Now, I will note I am a cis woman, and I would like to hear what a trans woman thinks of the representation, but I thought Andrea was written very well. I appreciated the realism of having to deal with some transphobia in her family but also being warmly welcomed by the other two women – both as a friend and as a woman. The author’s note at the end makes it clear she sought out a sensitivity reader for Andrea, and I could tell. If only the same efforts had been made for the other two women….
Lauren is struggling with postpartum rage (a symptom tied to postpartum depression). I just felt she was quite two-dimensional, and I just couldn’t bring myself to care about her.
Ronnie is a topless maid, formerly a stripper, who moved here from Pennsylvania with her daughter. It at first appears she did so to get away from an abusive man. I can’t talk about Ronnie without revealing a slight spoiler (it’s revealed about 1/3 of the way into the book), so be warned.
Ronnie’s “daughter” is actually her niece. Her sister was in a relationship with an abusive man and was addicted to something. It’s vaguely explained as drugs. Ronnie, after a violent fight with her sister’s significant other that ends with her discovering her sister wounded on the floor, takes the baby and runs with her. She never follows up to see if her sister is ok. No, no, she just steals her daughter, changes her daughter’s name, and decides her daughter is better off with her anyway. I just simply could not empathize with the child abductor here. Ronnie had other options to help her niece. She had never even tried anything else (beyond living with her sister to “protect” her). I’m ok with a book featuring a less than ideal character. I’m not ok with the whole tone of the book being that I should empathize with her or that what she did was a mistake.
Because that’s the thing. The book kind of wraps up with the message that all moms make mistakes and it’s ok to not be perfect. I mean, sure, within reason. But there’s it’s ok to not be perfect and then there’s you’re only in the mom club because you stole someone else’s child.
Also as someone who cares about addiction and recovery, I found the depiction of Ronnie’s sister Vanessa to be heartless. She isn’t given the same chance and possibility to recover and change and learn from her mistakes as the other mom’s. In fact, the whole “moms don’t have to be perfect” scene features the moms describing all the reasons their children make them drink alcohol. The hypocrisy of this scene sickened me.
Contemporary books are approaching the pandemic in a variety of ways. This one chose to set the story “post-pandemic.” I’m fine with that optimistic choice, and I understand why it was made. But the strange thing is it mostly seems to acknowledge the impacts of the pandemic as purely economic – there’s a lot of talk about economic challenges from when we all stayed home but almost zero mention of anything else. I think there was one mention of face masks? This is set in California. There was way more impact than just economic. It rubbed me the wrong way how it made it out to be all about economic issues, and also how things just immediately snapped back to normal. If one wants a normal contemporary book, fine, just don’t acknowledge the pandemic at all then. Include an author’s note that this is for escapism and move on. Don’t acknowledge it as an economic downturn like 2008 and nothing much else…..
Beyond this, the actual main issue going on at the school was interesting and twisty. I had my suspicions early on, but I still enjoyed the twists. What really saved the book for me, though, was Andrea. We need more positive trans rep in psychological thrillers, and Andrea was very well-done.
3 out of 5 stars
Length: 304 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
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Book Review: They Never Learn by Layne Fargo
Summary:
Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away with murder. Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. But as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation and charms the woman in charge, Dr. Mina Pierce.
Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year – and her crush on her roommate, Allison. When Allison is sexually assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay.
Review:
This felt like a woman-centered, queer Dexter, and I really enjoyed it.
The book seems straight-forward at first, but midway there is a plot twist that made me make the shocked Pikachu face. From there on, the plot just kept surprising me. In a good way. It’s not exactly what it seems it might be at first.
Although my own ethics don’t agree with revenge seeking, this is just the right mix of campy social commentary and revenge violence to work for me. I was able to view it as a cautionary tale of what could happen if we don’t start working to solve the academia culture that breeds violence against women. There are certain moments when the tide could have been turned if someone, anyone, had listened to the violated women. To me, this is what the takeaway from the book really is supposed to be.
For me, the queer content was delightful. There are multiple bisexual women characters. This means, instead of suffering from tokenism, bisexual characters get to come into full expressions of themselves. The word bisexual is used frequently in the book (or the short version bi). There are even multiple coming out stories present in the book.
I read this in audiobook format, and the narration of both voices was well done. It was easy to tell them apart but also not jarring to switch back and forth. I also thought both actresses did a solid job with accents.
A quick content warning that sexual assault, violence and murder are all described on-screen in this book.
Overall, the plot compelled and surprised me, and the characters were engaging with multiple different bisexual women present. A delightful addition to the thriller genre.
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 378 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Audible
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Book Review: The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth
Summary:
Fern and Rose are fraternal twins. Rose is smart, driven, and Fern’s protector. Fern doesn’t understand the world and so Rose has protected her, ever since they were small. For example, Fern didn’t understand that they spent every day in the library one year when they were little because they were homeless. Just one example of the many ways their mother failed them. In fact, Fern even became a librarian, she remembered that year so fondly. It’s a good thing she has Rose. When Rose struggles with infertility with her husband, Fern hatches a plan to repay Rose for being such a good sister. She’ll get pregnant and give the baby to her. But of course, not everything goes according to plan.
Review:
Sally Hepworth writes psychological thrillers starring casts of women in Australia. Sometimes they feature larger casts of women and other times it’s a couple of women pitted against each other. This is mostly the latter category.
I had my suspicions about the mystery early but thought that must not be it because it was so simplistic. I am sorry to report – it was indeed it. Some psychological thrillers lean a bit too heavily on the trope of – one person in this world is “crazy!” and did unpredictable “crazy!” things and there is no helping them because they are just so “crazy!” so let’s lock them up. I’m not a big fan of this trope for two reasons: 1) people are more complex than that 2) it’s a bit of a cheat to the reader because then things can happen that are unpredictable and make no sense. However, I get it that it’s a trope in psychological thrillers and am usually willing to give it a bit of a pass. In this case, however, the reader is told this character probably has Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder. There’s a character who has told their therapist all about them, and that therapist hypothesizes that this character might have one of these two illnesses. Everyone else in the book just accepts this and moves on. I am not saying people with these personality disorders never do bad things or hurt others, but the same can be said of all types of people. Plus, the character’s actions aren’t made out to be about them as a person but rather a symptom of their illness. It reminds me of how Schizophrenia used to be treated in literature. This character doesn’t even get the decency of having the state investigate their mental health or a clear diagnosis. It both unnecessarily maligns two of the most maligned types of mental illnesses and creates an entirely two-dimensional character.
Then there’s the representation of Autism. From the beginning, it’s clear that Fern is Autistic (I am not using person-first language as many in the Autistic community prefer claiming the word as a part of who they are, rather than as an illness), but she is depicted in such a stereotypical way that it hurt to read. For example, constantly bringing up how she doesn’t like to look people in the eyes and belaboring the point at random times when she might make eye contact. Her sensory episodes felt as if they were written by someone outside of her body rather than by her – problematic since it was written in the first person. The whole first half of the book has a lot of anti-Autistic sentiment, including wondering whether or not Fern could actually be capable of raising a baby. Are these reversed at the end of the book? Somewhat. But to me the damage is done by wondering about it in the first half.
So why am I still giving this book three stars? I have to admit that it was a page turner – I had to know what happened to Fern and the baby growing inside her. I couldn’t stop reading until I knew. The energy of must-find-out that is needed in a thriller was there, even if I was disappointed by the characterization, representation, and ultimately found the solution to be a bit flat.
3 out of 5 stars
Length: 320 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
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Book Review: Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
Summary:
Virgil Wounded Horse does his best to find his way making a life and a living on the Rosebud Indian Reservation (the Lakota people) in South Dakota – newly sober from alcohol, the legal guardian of his teenage nephew, and working as a hired vigilante. When heroin finds its way onto the reservation and directly impacts his nephew, he finds himself working to stop the threat of the cartels to his people alongside his ex-girlfriend.
Review:
This is simultaneously a wholesome and gritty thriller. Wholesome in that Virgil’s commitment to his sobriety, his family, and his people is full of honor and family values in the face of so many challenges. Gritty in that there are colorful depictions of violence as Virgil does his vigilante work and pursues the cartel. In a way it reminds me of Breaking Bad in the early seasons – someone doing something outside of the law for his family – only it’s outside of the law to stop the drugs, not to make them.
There was a lot I enjoyed here. The different setting and voice for this gritty mystery kept me engaged in a genre I’ve read a lot in. The mystery is solid. I had my suspicions but I didn’t have everything figured out before the end. So, yes, it’s not quite as simple as an outside cartel but it’s not a super obvious answer either. I also really like how the ex-girlfriend becomes such a key part of the story. Virgil listens to and respects her, even when he doesn’t immediately agree with her, which was so refreshing to read. I similarly like that we come into Virgil’s life after he’s already sober. This allows the book to explore him putting his life back together as a sober person and dealing with some really tough shit – demonstrating that things don’t get easy automatically just because you’re sober. I appreciated very much how thoughtfully the author shared his Lakota culture with the readers while simultaneously respecting what aspects of it need to stay private and sacred. As a person who has the Sioux Chef book, I appreciated so much the inclusion of Indigenous cuisine via an Indigenous chef and food truck coming to the reservation.
While I wouldn’t call the depictions and discussions of violence gratuitous as they are necessary to the plot, they are graphic. I thought it never went further than it needed to. However, it is important for potential readers to know they are there. There are discussions of off-scene cartel vengeance and rape of women and underaged girls. There are on-scene descriptions of fist-fights and gun fights.
Those who like grittier thrillers and either want a unique setting in the genre or want a mystery investigator who is sober will enjoy this read. I hope we’ll see more of Virgil in the future.
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 336 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Library
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Opinions of a Wolf 