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noellelovesbooks's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
4.0
It’s been a while since I picked up a thriller/mystery, mostly because I didn’t know if I was in the right mental space to be able to handle triggers and the stress that can come with the genre. This thriller has actually been sitting in my Kindle for about a year, I bought it during a sale and then kind of forgot about it. After a few fantasy reads and countless contemporaries, I figure it was time to give a good old thriller book a go.
This book is set mostly in Portland Oregon, where I actually lived for about a year and a half back in 2016-2018, roughly. It was easy to picture the Pearl district and Old Town China Town and though I’m not sure if the locations (coffee shops, bars, etc) the author used are real it was easy to imagine them possibly sitting in all those neighborhoods.
About halfway through the book, I thought for sure I knew who the murderer was, and was already formulating the motivation and history behind the murders…only to find out I was wrong. I was left feeling a little disappointed as I’d already constructed an entire life history on who I thought was the murder just based on the little bit of detail we were given on them.
Overcoming trauma, and the past is just as big a part, if not bigger, than the murder mystery in this story which I really enjoyed. As someone who still hasn’t faced, or overcome, all of my childhood trauma, it seems therapeutic to see others overcome their pasts and look towards a brighter future. I’m currently still in the “gonna keep it all in a box until I feel I can really handle unpacking it all” part of my life. Sometimes we just need to live in the moment and continue pushing forward.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. Did I think it was the most thought-provoking, “hand to mouth gasp at the reveal”, story…no but it was a great book to curl up on a cold winter day with. Most thrillers/mysteries lose all their mystery once I finish reading and I usually don’t connect to any of the characters so the idea of a re-read never crosses my mind. In this story, however, I could see myself re-reading. Trying to see if I could pick up anything I missed during the first read as well as pay closer attention to all the different relationships that are shown throughout this story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement and Violence
Moderate: Addiction, Blood, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Self harm, Sexual assault, Stalking, and Violence
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