3.78 AVERAGE


definitely written by a man

3.5 stars

This story kept me engaged even though I knew who the murderer was. Plot twist at the end! Didn’t see it coming at all.

Very enjoyable. Writes good female characters.

What are the odds that you’d love on a street where someone was murdered, then move, and end up living on the same street as the person who murdered them? Probably pretty slim, but that’s the premise of Before She Knew Him.

I was immediately hooked on the book, and eager to get to the end. The reader knows pretty quickly who the killer is, so I was curious to see how Swanson would play out the rest of the book since the premise was not a “whodunnit”. I was enjoying the storyline...up until the very end. While I didn’t see it coming, I’ve seen this particular ending done before, but better, so it ultimately solidified my 4 star rating, rather than being an ending that made me jump my rating up to 5 stars.

The writing in Swanson’s books is very good, and is definitely engaging. After reading The Kind Worth Killing, I knew I’d be a fan of his style, and this was no exception.

The last three thrillers I’ve read have had really implausible endings (at least in my opinion), and I’m starting to feel like authors in the thriller genre are trying to be so original in their endings that they sometimes go a step too far to try and make that happen.

All in all, I rated this one 4 stars. If you’re a fan of thrillers where the killer is revealed early in the book, and don’t mind endings that are a little less realistic, than this will be a great choice for you! I’d like to thank William Morrow for my copy of the book. It was my pleasure to provide an honest review.

This book was a little bit of a mess, and the characters were hard to like. In fact, I don’t think I liked a single one of them. It stirred very little emotion in me. It gets 3 stars for being an easy read, a decent story and being written fairly well. It was a decent beach read.

3.5. I truly enjoyed the twists but I guess it just fell a little flat for me. I think the ending made most of the story seem boring. But I enjoyed reading it until then!

jenn_unc's review

1.0

DNF I made it 44% through and could care less what happens or why. Terribly boring characters & really no thrill. I rarely DNF a book.

My husband listened to this one with me and we were both constantly wanting to hop in the car to hear what happened next.

chrissywichman's review

4.0

Disturbing. Creepy. Made me look twice at my neighbors. But I couldn’t stop reading it!