Roger's Reads

Author & Book Reviewer

Review of The Whisper Man by Alex North

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Whisper man book coverOkay, so I was hooked from the very first page of this book when I read the following lines of a letter from a father to his son:

“It’s not going to be easy and I need to start with an apology. Because over the years, I’ve told you many times that there’s no such thing as monsters.

I’m sorry that I lied.”

The story takes place in the town of Featherback, which has quite a gruesome past. Twenty years ago, a serial killer dubbed “The Whisper Man” abducted and murdered five young boys. He was so-named because each of the victims reported hearing whispering outside of their bedroom window at night before they disappeared. Eventually caught by Detective Peter Willis after the fifth murder, the Whisper Man, whose real name is Frank Carter, is now locked up prison.

Fast forward to the present day. Neil Spencer, a six-year-old boy, has been abducted and the crime bears a shocking resemblance to the Whisper Man’s crimes of so long ago. Still haunted by Carter’s grisly crimes, Detective Inspector Willis has always suspected that the murderer may have had an accomplice but could never prove anything. Now Willis can’t help but wonder whether the old crimes and this new one are related.

The story also revolves around Tom Kennedy, a grieving widower and his seven-year-old son Jake who recently moved into town and into a new house. Shortly after they move in, weird things begin to happen. Jake begins to act up and claims to hear whispering outside his window. Oh, and Jake also has an imaginary friend who tells him details about the Whisper Man that only the police know. Tom, of course, is beside himself and it’s evident that the two of them have an uncomfortable relationship. How do you relate to your son when he talks to people who aren’t there? Of maybe they are.

Now what’s interesting about this story, is that it’s told from the POV of several of the characters: Jake, Tom, Pete and another detective on the new case, Amanda Beck. In being privy to their thoughts, we can’t help but experience and be moved by the intense human element in this story, especially surrounding the dysfunctional relationships between fathers and their sons. I especially enjoyed being in Jake’s head as I found him quite a mysterious, precocious, and fascinating little boy.

And then there’s the broken detective full of regret who put the serial killer behind bars. Lastly, given the nature of the story — murders of young children and the loss of Tom’s wife and Jake’s mom – there’s also a powerful element of grief which really wrenched at my heart in places.

I felt that all these different character perspectives on the events in Featherback really added a richness and extra depth to the story, creating a genuinely well-round tale. The author certainly did an excellent job of ratcheting up the tension in the story, especially once those characters we’ve come to care about fall into danger.

Now I will say that though this book is eerie and downright terrifying, it isn’t gory, for which I was appreciative, given that the victims where all children. But still, just the situation of abducted children by a potential serial killer is more than enough to create an unbelievable amount of tension and get the heart pounding. And then there is the utterly chilling villain. This is the kind of villain that gives you nightmares and has you checking the locks on the doors and windows over and over again.

The Whisper Man is an intense heart-in-your-throat psychological thriller with a “Sixth Sense” vibe to it and a huge creep factor. The short chapters helped to increase the heart-pounding pacing and added a feeling of “urgency.”

This is a terrifying dark and twisty story that fills you with an ever-growing sense of dread and menace as you turn each page. It’s definitely the most unsettling book I’ve read in a while.

One thing that I found a bit odd though was that the author switched back and forth from first person POV and third-person POV. I did find this a tad jarring at times but eventually got used to it. Not quite sure what the stylistic reason for it was though.

But POV aside, I thought the book was flawless. It’s an engrossing, creepy and captivating read with fantastic, well-fleshed out characters, intricate world-building and excellent pacing that just might be my favorite book of 2019. I also enjoyed how the book also deals with trauma and grief, and how those can affect our actions and our choices. A solid 5-star read.

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Review of Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

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Lock every door book cover imageThis was a Book of the Month club selection and my first Riley Sager book. The synopsis intrigued me so I thought I’d take a chance on a “new for me” author and I’m so glad I did.

Lock Every Door follows a young woman named Jules Larson who can’t believe her good luck when she lands a dream gig: apartment sitting at the prestigious and mysterious Bartholomew, the gothic home for the rich and famous, for $1,000 a week. There are some terms of employment, however:

  • No visitors
  • No disturbing the neighbors (especially asking them questions)
  • No spending nights away from the apartment
  • No being nosey
  • No sharing on social media

Not particularly bothered by the rules, Jules accepts the position because after all, this is an opportunity of a lifetime. Once there, she befriends another apartment sitter named Ingrid. Jules soon begins to hear odd noises at night, and Ingrid tells her that the Bartholomew may have some dark and hidden secrets and that the building is starting to frighten her.

Jules brushes off Ingrid’s concerns, but when Ingrid goes missing, Jules starts to wonder whether there really is something strange going on at the Bartholomew after all, especially once she learns that Ingrid is not the first sitter to go missing. Which, of course, brings to mind the adage, “If something seems too good to be true, it usually is.”

As Jules investigates, she learns that the building does indeed have a somewhat sinister history, complete with suicides, strange deaths, and other tragedies and if she doesn’t succeed in figuring out its mystery soon, she could very well be the next missing apartment sitter.

Lock Every Door is an intense, thrilling, suspenseful and compulsive psychological thriller with brilliant characters and a jaw-dropping mystery, and time seemed to slip away as I turned the pages. I found the plot both fascinating and inventive, and it reeled me right in, especially once the Bartholomew turned from quirky to menacing.

This was a super-twisty book with one surprise after another, and I did have a couple of theories on what direction it was heading toward, but boy was I wrong! There was no way I could have predicted the shocking reveal at the end. It was positively chilling.

Now I will say that the ending is a tad over the top and you may have to suspend disbelief a bit (there were a couple of occasions where I raised my eyebrows) but in the end, I thought it worked wonderfully in the story. There’s nothing I enjoy more than having an author pull the wool over my eyes and make me feel like an utter rube, and Riley Sager managed to do it with this book.

By the time the book concluded, I had experienced so many feelings – anticipation, dread, anxiety, hope, shock, surprise and although all my theories were wrong, the story was tidied up so nicely at its finish that I was not only happy I was wrong but was thrilled by it. What an unexpected gem this turned out to be! I ended up giving this book 5 stars, and I look forward to reading more by this author.

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Review of House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

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House of salt and sorrowsHouse of Salt and Sorrows is is supposedly a retelling of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale “12 Dancing Princesses” with which, unfortunately, I’m not familiar. Thus, I can’t comment on their similarities one way or another. But I found this book to be an utterly gripping story.

The story opens to a funeral and is told from the point of view of Annaleigh Thaumas. We learn that Annaleigh is one out of whom where once 12 sisters but tragedy (or, according to the villagers, a curse) has hit the family pretty hard resulting in the recent deaths of four of the sisters.

Shortly after the funeral, their Stepmother convinces her father that they all should stop mourning and dress in beautiful, bright clothing, attend balls, and enjoy life once again. Shortly after the girls receive new clothing and each a pair of “fairy shoes,” they discover a secret/magical passage that takes them to different towns wherever spectacular balls are being held. So each night, the sisters slip through the magical doorway and dance the night away, enjoying new adventures around people who aren’t aware of their so-called curse.

But then, another sister goes missing, and after a series of ghostly apparitions, Annaleigh suspects that her sisters’ deaths may not have been as accidental as everyone has believed. She then takes it upon herself to unravel the mystery, and it’s at this point that the story takes quite a dark turn, especially once Annaleigh realizes that she doesn’t know who to trust. She also begins to suspect that there may be something sinister behind the magic portal that whisks her and her sisters off to elegant balls every evening.

So first off, I loved how atmospheric this novel was. The settings have such an eerie and gothic vibe to them, and I felt that the author really did an excellent job of bringing to the reader a vivid and evocative sense of place. I thought the descriptions were moody, immersive, and utterly intoxicating, and I appreciated the lush attention to detail.

The story also has plenty of twists — most of which I didn’t see coming — which kept me glued the page throughout. The world-building was terrific with well-developed characters, plot, and sense of place, resulting in an ethereal and beguiling story. The author creates here an atmosphere of constant tension and unease as you begin to suspect, along with Annaleigh, that there is something seriously wrong with her sister’s apparent “accidents.” We then learn that not everyone is as they seem, and this is where the creep factor really begins to escalate. I actually found it a lot of fun to unravel the mystery along with Annaleigh and was definitely gobsmacked when I learned the truth of it all.

All in all, I loved House of Salt and Sorrows and finished it in just two sittings. It was a gripping and super spooky story, and while reading, I felt as though I’d been enraptured by an old-time dark fairy tale that, strangely, had a modern feel to it at the same time. A great book to read on a dark and stormy night!

A huge thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a review copy of this book.

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Review of Keep This To Yourself by Tom Ryan

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Keep this to yourselfKeep This To Yourself follows 18-year-old Mac Bell who is still reeling from his best friend Conor’s murder the year prior. Conor was the fourth victim of a serial killer named The Catalog Killer that terrorized Camera Cove for a few months and then vanished, with everyone being confident that the killer was a random drifter who had moved on after the killings.

Now a year later, everyone is trying to move on with their lives, including Mac. But when he finds a cryptic note from Conor that was written on the day of his murder, Mac is once again thrust into the case, determined to find out what happened to his friend. Mac also now believes that because of the note, Mac might have been able to prevent his friend’s murder, this belief making Mac all the more determined to solve his friend’s death when the police could not. I think there was some survivor’s guilt going on here.

So this book hooked me right from the get-go, and once Mac decides to reopen the serial killer case himself, the tension and the pace never slow down as Mac becomes more and more obsessed with uncovering the truth. The tension really ramped up once Mac began to suspect that the killer never left Camera Cove at all and has been here the entire time.

I loved how chock full of twists and turns this story was and how everyone ends up being a suspect at some point during the story. I loved journeying along with Mac and he slowly uncovered clues and reopened old wounds by interviewing the survivors’ families, and along the way, we’re introduced to a multitude of rich characters which added to the realism of the setting. So through these characters, it becomes quickly evident that many in the town are keeping secrets which might have hampered the original murder investigation. I always love the trope where nobody can be believed, and that was certainly the case here.

My only niggle with the book was the romance. I just didn’t feel it, and I don’t think it was developed enough to be realistic. It felt kind of unnecessary in this story actually, and it seems like it was thrust in as an afterthought with not all that much chemistry between the two of them.

As for Mac, he’s a delightfully flawed and realistic character with many layers. Here we have a young gay man who is not only struggling with guilt from his best friend’s murder but is also trying to come to terms with his feelings for Conor — that is, feelings for his friend which may have been much more than mere friendship. Mac is quite a relatable character I thought, and I enjoyed seeing his character growth throughout the story.

All in all, I thought that this story was an absolute gem. It was a terrific thriller that kept me guessing right until the utterly shocking — and chilling — ending. It was a clever and solid whodunit, with plenty of red herrings and misinterpreted clues to throw the reader off track from guessing who the real killer is. This story had kind of a “Murder She Wrote” vibe to it except we have a busybody teen boy taking the place of Jessica Fletcher and I thought this aspect of it was a lot of fun. Mac turned out to be a delightful young gay detective. But most of all, I love the fact that I didn’t figure it out and was totally taken by surprise by the huge reveal.

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Review of Where I End & You Begin by Preston Norton

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Where you end I beginSo first off, I’ll mention that I love the body swapping trope and some of my favorite films include Freaky Friday, Big, 18 Again, Vice Versa, 17 Again and the like. Now I’ve read a few body swapping books, and my experience has been that this trope doesn’t translate all that well to the written form. Body swapping novels often end up being frustrating and confusing, so though I was intrigued by the synopsis of this book, I was also a bit hesitant. But I needn’t have been because the author managed to pull it off here.

This story follows a somewhat shy, young man named Ezra Slevin who is obsessed with a girl named Imogen and is working up his courage to ask her to the prom. The only problem is Imogen’s overly protective best friend Wynona, a loud and annoying girl who has made Ezra’s life miserable for as long as he can remember and seems to derive enjoyment from tormenting Ezra whenever possible.

But on the night of the total solar eclipse, something weird happens to Ezra and Wynona — they wake up in each other’s bodies. But what’s especially strange is that they begin randomly swapping back and forth every day. To make things even more interesting, Ezra learns that Wynona has a crush on his best friend, Holden.

So the two enemies are forced to come together to form an alliance as they need to pretend to be the person whose body they’re inhabiting. They also agree to help each other with their crush — Ezra will help Wynona with Holden and Wynona will help Ezra with Imogen, with the body swapping adding in all sorts of additional hilarious complications.

There’s also the problem of the play all four of them are in, a rendition of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in which a bit of gender swapping itself is part of the story. But also what’s comical here is the whole issue of learning your lines and being expected to perform while in the wrong body.

The entire novel is told through Ezra’s perspective, which helps to keep track of the body swapping. Also helpful, is that when Wynona is in Ezra’s body, he refers to her as Wynezra, which is super useful in keeping everyone straight.

I was never confused or overwhelmed by the swapping and was delighted when the author turned up the tension a couple of notches by throwing in themes of gender fluidity and homosexuality into the works. This additional complexity worked well in this story, especially as various characters developed feelings for each other, and I thought that this added to the richness and depth of an already gripping plot.

What especially worked for me with his book was the hilarity that would ensue if you found yourself not only in the body of the opposite gender but of someone whose personality is night and day different from yours — and all this taking place while in high school. There were so many laugh-out-loud moments in this book, and I thought it was so much fun to go on this journey with Ezra and Wynona as they struggled to figure out how to live in each other’s bodies, and navigate the challenges associated with the other’s sex and personality.

I thought it was interesting how the story follows Ezra but is still able to give a more in-depth inside look into Wynona’s life through Ezra swapping bodies with her. Likewise, it gave Wynona a deeper peek into Ezra’s life with each of them developing empathy and understanding for the other person’s issues and baggage in the process. That being said, this is also a story about how both people manage to find new wisdom by being in the other’s shoes.

I like how this story teaches empathy and understanding. By using a body swap as a tool, the author gets to show the world through the other person’s eyes resulting in a comedic contemporary with a heartfelt emotional relationship between two people who couldn’t be more different. It also succeeded in illustrating how we cannot judge or make assumptions about others based solely on outward appearances and Norton provides a means of exploring one’s own preconceived notions about others without being preachy.

I also loved how the author dealt with sexuality in such a unique and interesting way, a way that I haven’t come across before in a novel. This book is a new twist on body swaps and with it come themes of sexual preference, gender fluidity, and figuring out who you really want to be.

There are also themes of family, friendship, forgiveness, grief, and self-acceptance that also rendered this quite a serious novel as well. What worked nicely for me was how Wynona and Ezra learned to be their authentic and best self at the end of the day.

I liked how real and authentic these characters felt to me. The author gives us real teenagers with real problems and in so doing, provides us with a cast of flawed, lonely, impulsive, and quirky individuals that are totally relatable.

Where I End and You Begin is as inventive as it is moving and ended up being a beautifully rendered story of love, attraction, sexuality, family, and friendship. It’s a clever, engaging, and wildly entertaining read, and I felt that the author did an excellent job of bringing his characters to life, allowing all of them to thrive in their complexity. All in all, a lovely, subtle thought-provoking blow-me-away kind of book that I’m still mulling over. Needless to say, I loved it.

A big thank you to Netgalley and Disney Hyperion for providing me with an advance reader copy of this book.

This title will be released on June 4th, 2019 but it is available for pre-order now. Link is below.

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