2 Suspense Novels That Will Keep You Guessing

by Susan Roberts

I love to read a good suspense novel - one that keeps me guessing until the end of the book and keeps me up way past my bedtime because I know that I won't be able to sleep until I find out how the book ends.  Here are two suspense novels that I read recently that kept me guessing!

February 2017; Flatiron Books; 9781250075536
ebook, audio, print (320 pages)
psychology thriller
a free book was won at Goodreads.com

What You Don't Know by JoAnn Chaney

What You Don't Know is a psychological suspense book about a serial killer in Denver. It revolves around three main characters - Hoskins one of the cops who solved the case, Sammie a reporter who slept with Hoskins to get information about the case for her newspaper articles and Gloria the wife of the killer who claimed not to have any knowledge of his crimes. The story is told by these three voices and the reader learns what motivates them all and how they are handling the arrest of Jacky Seever - a serial killer who buried 33 bodies in the crawl space of his home. Seven years later, Hoskins is working cold cases in the basement of the police station, Sammie is selling makeup and Gloria is barely surviving due to the people who wanted to blame her too. All of a sudden,  with Deever behind bars on death row, a copycat killer starts to kill people from the original case - are all of their lives in jeopardy?

This is a fast paced, well done mystery. The case against Jacky was pretty cut and dried but the murders were so savage that the detectives suffered psychological damage from what they saw.  The copycat killer was a   mystery that needed to be solved as soon as possible before more people involved in the original case died.   I thought that the characters were well done even though they were pretty unlikeable due to all of their personal flaws. I hope that we see several of them again in a follow-up book but if not, I will still read whatever this author writes.

Buy What You Don't Know at Amazon

March 2017; St. Martin's Press; 978-1250107602
ebook, audio, print (320 pages); thriller
a free ARC was provided for this review

Almost Missed You by Jessica Strawser

Do we ever really know the person that we are married to? Violet believes that her marriage to Finn was meant to be, that they were soulmates who met by chance on the beach, lost contact and later met again. As the novel begins, she is sitting on the beach thinking about her perfect love with Finn and their wonderful 3-year-old son Bear. However, her world quickly changes when she goes to their hotel room and Finn and Bear are missing and her life quickly turns into despair and confusion. She calls on her best friend Catalain to help her but is she truly her friend or is she hiding secrets, too?

This is a fast-paced novel about trust and love, family and friendship. It's about the search for ideals - ideal family and ideal friendship and finding out that they may not exist in the real world. And what connects the entire story is Violet's love for her son.

I enjoyed this book and once I started, I had to keep reading to find out why some of the characters made the decisions that they did. There were several instances where I didn't agree with their decisions and I found Violet, through sympathetic, to be very naive. Overall, it's a fantastic debut novel from a new author and I am looking forward to her books in the future.

Buy Almost Missed You from Amazon

Susan Roberts lives in North Carolina when she isn't traveling.  She and her husband enjoy traveling, gardening and spending time with their grandson.  Susan reads almost anything (and the piles of books in her house prove that) but her favorite genres are Southern fiction, women's fiction and thrillers. Susan is a top 1% Goodreads Reviewer. You can connect with Susan on Facebook.

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