Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Petlik tõde

I loved everything about this book. I love thrillers and I love CoHo so I was confident this would be a win for me, but I’m always cautious going into hyped books.

There were multiple moments where I felt genuinely uneasy, tense, or even downright sick. To make me feel so strongly, I consider that a compliment to the writing. I think Colleen Hoover absolutely succeeded here. Every time I thought I knew what was happening, something shifted—right to the very end.

And the ending! Wow. I love that it was ambiguous and you can kind of decide how you feel—was the letter genuine or another manipulation tactic? I wish I had people in my life who’ve read this book because I could talk about it all day! I personally think the letter was disingenuous, but would love to hear other perspectives!!

I loved this book and I only wish I could read it again for the first time! I thought the ending was so worth it.
If you have any concerns though—definitely check trigger warnings! There were a lot of sensitive topics in this one.

Content Warnings

stephbakerbooks's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Whew, this book. I flew through it. Looking back at it, it didn't have any of the things I usually like in books, yet was somehow addictively readable. This was my first Colleen Hoover book—are all her books like this??

Okay let's talk about the characters first, because they are all pretty terrible. It's written in first person from Lowen's POV, but then we get snippets of the manuscript she's reading, which is written from Verity's first-person POV. Verity is endlessly mysterious and, much like Lowen, I wanted to keep reading her manuscript to see what terrible thing she'd do next. Lowen was less interesting, mostly because she made herself so by making dumb decisions that she knows are mistakes. There is a love triangle here, but it's the kind of weird love triangle where you find yourself rooting for the other woman...and then you find yourself rooting for none of them because they are all equally terrible choices lol.

The plot though...the plot kept me reading. Even as I only sometimes liked Lowen, I was just as curious as she is and I wanted to know what was going on in this house. And that ending...no spoilers but you've got to read to the end for that last plot twist!

I will say, there is a bit of "no one believes this woman and thinks she's hallucinating things and crazy" to this plot...which I am not a fan of. But I think the fact that there were so few characters to this story made it work better here. The story is pretty contained to the house and the main characters of Lowen, Jeremy, and Verity. But I still wish thrillers wouldn't rely on the "is she crazy" plot device, so I couldn't give this one five stars.

Overall though, I enjoyed finally reading this and I understand the hype around it now. I think it's worth reading if you also have FOMO, but do be wary of the content warnings, as this is a dark book.

Content Warnings

tianabooks's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I’m honestly still unsure about my thoughts and feelings for this book. It certainly reads really fast - the suspense pushes you to devour the story for sure.

I enjoy reading darker stories as I find morally ambiguous characters compelling. This is one of the cases where all the characters are unlikeable; some worse than others. Surprisingly, that wasn’t the reason for the rating. Initially, I was going for 4 stars. However, I felt like there were some variables of the story which didn’t make sense in terms of plausibility. This was written like a thriller so the resolution should’ve made sense, right? The ending wasn’t the issue - it’s how we got there. I doubt certain things could happen without ANYONE noticing.? Especially, the medical staff.

In terms of “teams”, I’m team manuscript. I think the behavior we caught a glimpse of outside the pages was eerily similar to the written persona. I think the letter is one last shot at maintaining control.

I think she wanted Lowe to find it and not Jeremy. One last game of securing her obsession

. Some of the manuscript pages made me sick and I honestly wish I could forget about them.

I don’t know if I’m keeping the rating as is but until I clear my thoughts fully, this makes sense to me.

Content Warnings