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dig_the_plot's Reviews (98)
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This is a great book! Faye and Felix are celebrating their engagement at a cabin in Pale Peak. The prologue was a great intro to what was to come in the book. Felix, looking back, sees this story actually began years prior with an incident at his friends’ house in the mountains. He and Faye were housesitting and watching their pet bird Carrot and two dogs. Carrot would yell “knock knock” anytime anyone approached a door. After several nights of Carrot yelling in the middle of the night and Faye seeing things they fled with the bird and the dogs. So fast forward to Faye and Felix at the cabin. Faye wakes Felix up and says she hears someone outside calling for help. All the voices of someone they know trying to lure them outside. Not long after the voices began they both see a dark form of a person and each night it gets closer and closer to the cabin. Circling, wanting in, and talking in a multitude of voices. Faye’s parents are unbelievably frustrating. They have so many secrets about the cabin that they aren’t willing to share. I really enjoyed the Native American lore and superstition. It added a creepiness to what was happening and made it feel that much more real. As the book progresses so does the sights and sounds manifesting themselves people begin dying gruesome deaths at the hand of the “imposter.” He is obsessed with the number 5 and only Faye holds the answer to what it means. I was somewhat a little disappointed in the reasoning behind the five and there is some repetition as things progress. I didn’t give it 5 stars because there were some loose ends. Like the basement of the cabin, I was so intrigued by that and couldn’t wait for the answer but there wasn’t one. I wish the end had wow’d me more but it still was a creepy read.
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This story begins at the end and ends at the beginning. Have you ever wished your baby would disappear? A baby is stolen from a stroller in a supermarket on Mother’s Day. Many years later on Mother’s Day we meet Edith, 80, whose living in an assisted living home. Edith’s daughter Clio has placed her in the facility against her wishes. Patience works at the home and has become fast friends with Edith. Then there is Frankie who is looking for her daughter who ran away from home. All of these women find themselves linked to the stolen baby and a murder. Then throw in DCI Chapman which I didn’t care for at all. There were way too many women in this book. It got confusing at times. I really feel like with that many POV’s there is no character development. The story made the effort to end each chapter on a cliffhanger that’s suppose to propel you forward. It just didn’t deliver. There were one too many references to good people doing bad things. This is another book by one of my fav authors that let me down. It’s described as a thriller but should be categorized as a family/domestic drama.
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I have read several Mary Kubica books and this is my least favorite. It’s a very slow burn and at one point during the book I wasn’t even sure what direction it was heading or what the dominant story line was. Meghan is an ICU nurse and is taking care of Caitlin who fell from a bridge and suffered a severe brain injury. After a witness comes forward they now believe that Caitlin was pushed. Meghan herself is recently divorced and struggling to raise her teenage daughter Sienna. Along with that comes concern for her safety because a madman is loose and attacking women in her area. (This served no purpose to me whatsoever.) The prologue was misleading which set the tone for the book. I’m not one for spoilers and I don’t believe this is but it would have helped me tremendously if I had known this….a large portion of the book is taking place in the past. Maybe that was suppose to be a twist but it just fell flat for me and was annoying. I predicted the ending from the beginning. There’s several storylines and some of the “subplots” ended without a resolution. It’s described as a tense compelling thriller. It’s far from that but the idea behind the plot is very interesting. All that said if you are a Kubica fan don’t dismiss this book. It’s still a decent read I just would have done a few things differently. My last note on this book said “way too much is going on.”
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Well this book is seriously disturbing. And I loved it. How did I not know this book existed!?! It was published in 2016 and I just happened to see it at the library. I love Tarryn Fisher and have read The Wives, The Wrong Family, and an Honest Lie. This book is all kinds of cray cray. It’s giving Fatal Attraction and Single White Female vibes. So Fig Coxbury (I couldn’t love that name anymore than I do) sees Jolene Avery and her daughter Mercy at the park and becomes obsessed with them. She thinks she can be a better mom to Mercy than Jolene. Basically Fig wants everything Jolene including her husband Darius. Fig begins stalking them and slowly integrates herself into their lives. She moves next door, wears the same shoes, dies her hair, goes through their mail…you get the picture. The book is told from three different POV’s, Fig the psychopath, Darius the Sociopath and Jolene the writer. I really thought Fig was going to be the craziest until I got to Darius. He turned out to be exactly who I thought he was going to be while reading Fig’s section. Darius has pica….and I’ll let you google that for yourself. Darius has sex with his patients and is being sued by a former patient. The only positive about him is that he sees straight through Fig for who she is. Jolene on the other hand is a snooze fest. Does Jolene figure it all out in the end? You’ll just have to read to find out. I will tell you that you need to prepare yourself for the last sentence. I was shook. Perfect ending. All three of these people are unreliable narrators which I love. This is a dark, twisted psychological thriller that will leave you guessing until the end. Initially I was confused because while reading reviews I kept seeing this book called Bad Mommy. The book was originally named this and then later re-named with a different cover. I’m just going to say it….the cover is terrible. I typically judge books based on their covers but because it was by Tarryn Fisher I knew it would be good. This is a must read despite the bad cover.
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I thought this was going to be spooky. I was so disappointed. It had all the makings of a spooky story but just failed to deliver. An old deserted mansion converted into a medical hospital for soldiers with PTSD was the perfect atmosphere for this scare tale. Not only was it a deserted mansion but the family who lived there had just disappeared into thin air. How could this go wrong? Katherine Weekes applied to be a nurse at Portis House, a hospital for mad men. She had absolutely no experience but her boss was desperate for nurses so she hired her anyway. Immediately Kitty feels that things aren’t right at the hospital and not just the men. She feels cold drafts, sees a shirtless man in the hallway, patients screaming about a man coming to get them. Kitty becomes friends with Patient 16 who turns out to be Jack Yates a war hero. They become fast friends and try to discover the truth of what’s going on at Portis House. This is described as gothic fiction. There just wasn’t anything scary about it and I didn’t enjoy the romance aspect at all. The best part of the story is what happened to the family that lived there and it wasn’t a huge part of the story. The story is very slow paced and I had a hard time connecting to the characters. I really thought it was going to be a chilling story and it just wasn’t. It’s an enjoyable book just not what it’s described to be which is why it was a let down. The haunting wasn’t scary or believable which made for an underwhelming book.
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Francis, Emily and Rose live in Castle Knoll and on February 10, 1966 they visit a fortune teller and she tells Francis her future contains dry bones. In a year’s time the girls have drifted apart and one of the girls has disappeared….and it wasn’t Francis. Fast forward to present time and Francis has called for her great niece Annie to be present for the reading of her wishes at the time of her death. But before they can speak with Francis they find she has been murdered. I struggled with this one. I loved the plot. It seemed different from anything else I had read but I was so bored with it. The book moved so slow. The author just didn’t deliver on the story. It’s told in a dual timeline and I had a hard time keeping up with all of the characters. The story alternates between Frances’s diary in 1965 and present day Annie trying to solve Frances murder. I really did enjoy the diary excerpts. At first I cared about who killed Frances and then it took so long to get to the clues that I found I really didn’t care who killed her. I skipped a whole bunch to get to the end and didn’t feel like I missed out on anything.
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book is all the things - spooky, scary, creepy, thrilling, shocking, dark humor, suspenseful and so much more. When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian home on Hawthorne Street they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then came the hauntings. Every September the walls dripped blood, moaning turns into non-step screaming, and the ghosts of former inhabitants appear and all of them are terrified of something in the basement. Most people would move. But Margaret is not most people. This was her house so she adapted. After 4 years Hal couldn’t take it anymore so he leaves abruptly. Kathryn, their only daughter, returns home to find out what happened to her dad. This book was an easy 5 stars. It might not be the most horrifying book but it had plenty of horror for me. It had bleeding walls, Fredricka the housemaid (trust me you want a Fredricka), a boy who likes to bite, killer birds and of course the pranksters. This book explored so many unexpected topics like abuse, mental health issues, alcoholism, and survival. This story is told from Margaret’s POV. She is hilarious and I really liked her and admired how she handled everything to stay in her house. Her story was heartbreaking at times. Kathryn was a lot. I didn’t care for her because she seemed unhinged at times. But the two personalities is what made for their mother/daughter relationship. This was a perfectly stunning debut book for Carissa Orlando. I read with trepidation because I wasn’t sure who was alive and who wasn’t. It’s the perfect book to read in October!
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Molly Gray is back and we all know I love her. But….I didn’t love her as much this go around. This is now a “series” and series books are not my favorite. I always feel like they are repetitive and it’s the same story over and over. I felt the same way about this book. I’m not sure Molly needed a sequel or any more books that might follow. I do feel like you need to read The Maid first before reading this one. There are lots of references from the first book and you might get lost otherwise. Molly is now the head maid at The Regency Grand. Lily Finch is her maid-in-training and has quirks just like Molly does. Author J.D. Grimthorpe is at the Regency to make a huge announcement about a secret he has been keeping. As he is getting ready to announce it he falls over dead. This is a cozy, cute murder mystery and it’s a quick read. It’s just very similar to The Maid and there aren’t really any huge twists to it. I enjoyed the “before” story a lot more than the murder of J.D. Grimthorpe. Maybe if the book had just stuck with Molly’s childhood I would have enjoyed that more than another murder mystery. All of that said I still adore Molly and if there is another one then yes I’ll read it. It reminds me of the Finlay Donovan series and they are pretty predictable.
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
I flew through this book! It’s a really quick read at just under 200 pages. It can easily be read in one sitting. I enjoyed reading this from Lucy’s perspective only. A wife of 30 years who wants nothing more but to believe in her husband. But now as allegations of sexual assault fly she looks back and sees the signs were there. I do wonder if the thought was always there but she suppressed it time and time again to keep her marriage intact. Sitting on the couch with high school girls in the dark watching a movie is not normal. Samuel is a true picture of a narcissist and was obsessed with power. Including power over his wife. I do think this story could have been developed into a much longer story but I didn’t necessarily feel like I was lacking in anything when I finished it. I wondered why he named it Death By A Million Papercuts. I listened to a podcast he was interviewed for and “Lucy” actually said it. She said the assault charge was like the millionth papercut in her marriage. She couldn’t take it anymore. I really liked Lucy and felt like she did everything she could for her husband and her husband and even more proud she stood up for herself in the end. Even if the end of this story won’t go how you think.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My love for Liz Nugent runs deep. We all know how much I loved Molly Gray in The Maid because she was quirky, weird and socially awkward. Enter Sally Diamond. She is just as different, strange and I love her. Although her circumstances for being weird were much more extreme and dark than Molly. Sally’s dad had always said when I die just “put me out in the bin.” So she did just that. She drug his body to the incinerator to burn like the rest of the garbage. Sound sick and cruel? You’ll have to read to understand why Sally thought that was perfectly acceptable. The school had always said that Sally was autistic but her dad Tom said she was socially deficient. As Sally got older she began telling people she was deaf so she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. Her dad left her detailed letters to read after he died which left instructions for his funeral. If only she had read the letter first. (If you don’t find that funny then you might not love this book.) The second letter detailed Sally’s life and how she came to be adopted by Tom and Jean. I’m not going to spoil that for you because it’s quite a story and you will anxiously anticipate that chapter. While you are reading about present day with Sally you’re starting at the beginning for a little boy named Peter. A sad gruesome story for both Peter and Sally. This is a very dark although sometimes funny story. I loved Sally and how she learned to make friends and have conversations with them. You also see the darker side of Sally and her mental illness brought on by abuse and neglect. But there is another character in this book whose storyline is just as shocking….Peter. His is a hard story to digest. This story involves mental and physical abuse, kidnapping and captivity, rape, pedophelia. When I type out those words I know you’re thinking why the heck is she recommending it but trust me. If you are a true fan of psychological thrillers you don’t want to miss this one. I loved the ending. I couldn’t have seen it ending any other way.