Thriller Thursday Reviews: The Midnight Man & The Wife Upstairs
I’m back!! That’s right, Sharon here with another edition of Thriller Thursday. Sorry that I have missed a few Thriller Thursday weeks, life just got in the way. But I was on vacation from work last week (well a staycation 🙂 ) and was able to relax, clear my head, and regroup. So today I am excited to share my thoughts on the spooky thriller The Midnight Man by Caroline Mitchell and Freida McFadden’s psychological thriller, The Wife Upstairs.
The Midnight Man (Slayton Thrillers, #1) Goodreads Author: Caroline Mitchell
Publication Date: October 13, 2021
Publisher: Embla Books
“If you open your door to the Midnight Man, hide with a candle wherever you can. Try not to scream as he draws near, because one of you won’t be leaving here…” As soon as I read that line in the synopsis for Caroline Mitchell’s The Midnight Man, I knew I had to read it. And I am glad I did. The Midnight Man was a spooky read with twists and turns and I didn’t figure anything out until the end.
Twenty-five years ago, Nigel Middleton shot and killed his wife, his 14 year old daughter and 4 year old son before turning the gun on himself. Ever since then their home, Blackhall Manor, has stood vacant and decaying. Fast forward to the present and it is Halloween night. Five teenage girls have been invited to Blackhall Manor to play the Midnight Man game, but only 4 of the girls make it home. The fifth girl Angelica is found brutally murdered and unfortunately for the other 4 girls, the game is still being played and their lives are in jeopardy.
Detective Sarah Noble has been on leave from the police force for about a year following a scandal involving her husband. Sarah grew up in the small town of Slayton and she more than anyone knows all about the hidden dangers of Blackhall Manor. As she is interviewing witnesses to try and find Angelica’s killer, it starts to become clear that Sarah’s past is coming back to haunt her and she is the killer’s real target.
I really wish I could say more about this book, but I feel that anything I say will spoil things. The story is told from the POV of Sarah and The Midnight Man. Getting the POV of the Midnight Man gave this book a really creepy vibe. I loved reading his thoughts as he observed Sarah and the investigation. I got the chills and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up a few times when reading his POV.
I really liked Sarah; she was a very sympathetic character. She has been through a lot in her life, starting when she was a teenager and then with the scandal involving her husband. The more I learned of her backstory and all that she has been through and overcome, I couldn’t help but root for her to solve this case and put all her demons behind her.
I also really liked the secondary characters we get to meet as Sarah is conducting her investigation. Especially 7 year old Elliot, who has the ability to sense things and is able to help Sarah track down one of the girls that goes missing. I just wanted to hug Elliot, he reminded me of the boy from The Sixth Sense and The Ring.
The Midnight Man is a very eerie and spooky story. From the very first page, which gave me an Amityville Horror vibe, I was glued to this book and couldn’t stop turning the pages. Caroline Mitchell gives us a well written story with characters that are very well developed. The Midnight Man is the first book in the Slayton Thrillers series and I cannot wait to see what Mitchell has in store for the next book. 4 stars
The Wife Upstairs: Goodreads Author: Freida McFadden
Publication Date: May 12th, 2020
Publisher: Dreamscape Media
Freida McFadden’s new book The Wife Upstairs follows Victoria Barnett and Sylvia Robinson. Victoria has it all, a loving and handsome husband, a job she loves and a beautiful home. But then she has an accident that leaves her unable to feed or dress herself, unable to walk and with only limited speech. She is confined to a room in her home and needs 24 hour care. Enter Sylvia, who has been hired by Victoria’s husband, Adam, to care for her. Victoria has a story to tell but cannot get the words out. Thankfully, she has kept a diary that Sylvia finds and what she reads inside is shocking.
When we first meet Sylvia, she is down on her luck. She has broken up with her boyfriend, is unemployed, and is about to be evicted from her home. A chance meeting with Adam Barnett is about to change all that for Sylvia though. She thinks her luck has finally changed, but little does Sylvia know that moving in to help take care of Victoria has possibly put her own life in jeopardy.
I love how McFadden told this story from Sylvia’s POV and also through Victoria’s diary. It made me not trust anything or anyone. From Sylvia’s perspective, Adam seems to be a very loving and caring husband who would do anything to help his wife. But then we read Victoria’s diary and the man she writes about is not the man we are seeing through Sylvia’s eyes. According to Victoria, Adam started off as loving but once they married, he turned into a very mean man. He never physically harmed her, but he did mentally.
I was all over the place on who I trusted and who I thought was telling the truth. The more we got into Victoria’s diary, the more I suspected that Adam was responsible for her accident. Sylvia was coming to the same conclusion, but when she talked to the housekeeper about Adam and Victoria, she gave a very different perspective on their lives. According to the housekeeper it was Victoria who was the aggressor in their marriage and she was the one that was mentally abusing Adam. I didn’t know who to believe, which is what I love in a psychological thriller.
As it got closer to the end the tension really picked up and just when I thought I may have things figured out, Plot Twist! And then right at the end there was another plot twist that I did not see coming.
With so many twists and turns, I cannot say that I really loved any of the characters. How can you when you don’t really trust them? LOL. Sylvia made a few questionable choices, but I did like that she was determined to figure out what went on and who was to blame. I did have sympathy for Victoria, because she was stuck in that house and her only way to communicate was through what she had written in her diary.
If you like psychological thrillers that keep you guessing, I recommend you read Freida McFadden’s The Wife Upstairs. 4 stars
Top Ten Tuesday – The One Where I Share Bookish Memories
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Top Ten Tuesday has been one of my favorite memes ever since I started blogging, so huge thanks to Jana for taking over the hosting duties!
This week’s TTT topic is Bookish Memories (Share stories of your reading life as a child, events you’ve gone to, books that made an impression on you, noteworthy experiences with books, authors you’ve met, etc. Reminisce with me!). I’ve never attended a bookish event or met an author so I decided to take a stroll down memory lane and share a few highlights of my bookish life.
(My post is also a little shout-out to Friends since I wrote all of my memories like they’re episode titles from the show.)
10 Bookish Episodes from My Life
- The one where my Dad taught me how to read using Little Golden Books. This will always be one of my favorite childhood memories.
- The one where I cried my eyes out because I thought I had lost a library book (Bambi by Felix Salten) and therefore would never be allowed to check out books from my elementary school library again. So traumatizing!
- The one where getting to go to the Scholastic Book Fair when it came to my school was like Christmas. So many books!
- The one where I felt so grown up in middle school because I was allowed to read To Kill a Mockingbird, which was banned in a lot of schools.
- The one where, as a young teen, I used to hide in my grandmother’s house so I could secretly read the steamy historical romance novels I had pilfered from her bedroom.
- The one where I took so many literature classes for “fun” in college that I ended up adding English as a Double Major.
- The one where I had such an addiction to collecting books that I convinced my husband to convert our formal living room, which never got used, into a home office with wall to wall built in bookshelves. My sanctuary.
- The one where I felt the need to find more people to share my love of books with so I started a book blog. 😊
- The one where I read the entire Harry Potter series aloud to my son because I wanted to foster a love of reading in him at a young age.
- The one where I realized that one of my bffs loves to read as much as I do, so I invited her to guest post on my blog. Hi Sharon! 😊
Reviews: HEARD IT IN A LOVE SONG & LOVE, LISTS AND FANCY SHIPS
Happy Monday all! I hope everyone who was celebrating Thanksgiving this past week had a lovely holiday. We kept our celebration small but I did get to spend some time with my mom and sister so that was really nice. I worked off and on the rest of the weekend and painted a room in my house yesterday, which is why I was mostly offline. I’ll be catching up on blog visits over the next few days. Today I’m sharing reviews for two excellent books I’ve read recently, one from a favorite author, Tracey Garvis Graves, and one from a new-to-me author, Sarah Grunder Ruiz, who is sure to become a favorite if this first book is any indication. And apparently my accidental theme this week, which I didn’t notice until I made the above graphic, is sunglasses with images reflected in them, lol.
Heard It in a Love Song Goodreads Author: Tracey Garvis Graves
Publication Date: November 9, 2021
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Heard It in a Love Song by Tracey Garvis Graves is a beautiful story about finding love again after having your heart broken. What I loved about this story is that although it focuses on two characters who are coming out of toxic relationships and trying to start over, there isn’t a lot of heavy drama filling the pages. Instead, the story focuses more on each character’s inner journey to find themselves again. There’s a lot of looking back and reflecting on what went wrong with their previous relationships, but it’s looking back so as to be able to move forward and I really enjoyed that angle.
Heard It in a Love Song follows Layla Hilding, a 35-year old elementary school music teacher. Layla is recently divorced after her 10-year marriage to Liam ended. When we first meet Layla, we learn that although she has a passion for music, her dream was not to become a music teacher. Instead, her dream was actually to be a professional musician and, prior to getting married, she was actually the lead singer in a band. Although Liam was initially enamored by watching Layla perform, once they were in a relationship, he became quite toxic, often belittling her performances and her musical skills. He basically sucked the life right out of her dream. One of the first things Layla purchases once she is on her own again is a guitar, and it’s with that guitar that her journey to self-rediscovery begins.
Although being a music teacher wasn’t her first choice, it is at her elementary school that Layla first meets Josh Summers, a 35 year old electrician with a 5 year old daughter who is in Layla’s class. Josh is coming out of a failed relationship. He had married his high school sweetheart, but after 20 years together, it was like living with a stranger and so they had separated. Like Layla, Josh is trying to move forward and figure out what’s next for him. When Layla and Josh meet, it’s obvious that they have major chemistry, but they’re both still reeling from their previous relationships and hesitant to start a new one.
I had tremendous sympathy for both Layla and Josh, who are both very likable and vulnerable characters. It was easy to understand why they were both so cautious about getting involved with someone new, but at the same time, it was also obvious that they would be so great together so I was definitely rooting for them to open their hearts to each other.
I also loved how Graves chose to present Layla and Josh’s journey. Although the story mostly stays focused on their paths forward, Graves gives her readers several flashbacks as Layla and Josh reflect on the highs and lows of their previous relationships. Seeing some of the more painful moments from their pasts had me rooting for these two all the more because they both deserve so much better than what they had.
Heard It in a Love Song is a poignant story about love, second chances, and about finding yourself. 4 STARS
Love, Lists, and Fancy Ships Goodreads
Author: Sarah Grunder Ruiz
Publication Date: November 23, 2021
Publisher: Berkley Books
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Love, Lists, and Fancy Ships by Sarah Grunder Ruiz is a contemporary romance that follows Jo Walker, a soon-to-be 30 year old yacht stewardess. As a way to commemorate the last year of her 20s, Jo decides to come up with a bucket list of 30 things she wants to do by the time she turns 30. It’s a list that really focuses on stepping out of her comfort zone – get a tattoo, go skinny dipping, run a marathon, visit ten foreign countries, etc. For the past year, Jo has been completing her list and humorously documenting her efforts on her blog.
It is when Jo works up the nerve to complete item number 5 on her list – kissing a stranger – that Jo’s life takes an unexpected turn. After she kisses a handsome stranger at the local bar, she’s mortified to learn that said stranger, whose name is Alex, is actually her new neighbor, which she learns when he accidentally comes across her late one night in the community pool, checking off another item on her bucket list, skinny dipping. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, it turns out Alex is also the new chef on the yacht where she works so, as much as Jo would like to forget about their previous encounters, there’s just no avoiding him, which leads to some awkward but entertaining moments. Even though Jo swears she isn’t interested in starting a relationship with anyone, Alex is pretty irresistible to her so the temptation is definitely there. I loved their scenes together, both the fun, flirty ones and then later, the more serious ones when they discuss their families, etc. I really enjoyed the romantic aspect of this story because Jo and Alex have amazing chemistry and could be so good together if Jo would just let herself take another big step out of that comfort zone of hers.
While Jo’s blog and her adventures with Alex as they got to know each other provided lots of fun moments, what really made this a special read for me was the more emotional and personal journey that Jo faces. Because while there is definitely a potential romance, this is also a story about grief and loss. In Jo’s case, it’s the loss of her beloved nephew, who was killed when he was hit by a car while riding his bike. Jo has been repressing her grief by trying to stay busy and not think about it, but when her two nieces come to spend the summer with her and she realizes they are struggling with the loss of their little brother too, it brings all of Jo’s grief to a head. I found this part of the story so incredibly moving and well written and my heart just ached for Jo and the girls as they try to process such a devastating loss.
As much as I enjoy a good rom-com, a contemporary romance that makes me feel all the feels is what I’m really a sucker for and Love, Lists, and Fancy Ships by Sarah Grunder Ruiz really delivers in that department. 4 STARS