Thriller

In Deadly Company Review

Book: In Deadly Company
Author: L.S. Stratton
Publisher: Union Square & Co.
Year: 2025
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “As the assistant to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Nicole Underwood has plenty of tasks on her to-do list – one of which is the blowout celebration for her nightmare, on-percenter boss, Xander Chambers. But when the party ends in chaos and murder and Nicole is one of the survivors, suspicion – from the investigators to the media – lands on her. Was she the reason for all the bloodshed?
A year after those deadly events, Nicole tries to set the public record straight by agreeing to consult on a feature film based on her story. However, while on set in Los Angeles, she’s sidelined by inappropriate casting and persistent, bizarre script changes – and haunted by persistent visions of her now-deceased boss. It seems clearing her name ins’t so simple when the question of guilt or innocence is…complicated.”

Review : In Deadly Company is an enjoyable, inventive, and easy to read thriller with a truly unique plot that doesn’t fall into the trap of the unreliable female protagonist trope so many thrillers seem to adore. It’s well written, quick moving, and leaves you guessing all the way until the end. While I did find the final reveal to be a bit obvious and contrived, it was still fun to get there in the end. I thoroughly enjoyed this read, found myself wanting to slow things down so it wouldn’t end quite so soon, and have been chewing it over since I finished it yesterday – all hallmarks of a good book.

The narration jumps a bit, and doesn’t hold fast to a set-in-stone pattern which I found to be unnecessary, but provided some texture and certainly helped give context to the way events played out. Between Nicole’s present day and her past, we watch the fateful events of her boss’s birthday party unravel, not only the alluded to murders (yes, plural), but the behind the scenes goings on in Nicole’s personal life that we are only granted glimpses of throughout the book. In the present, Nicole is watching and “consulting” on the movie retelling of the events of her boss, Xander Chambers’ birthday – she wields almost no say in how the story gets told, but she’s been hired by the production team and so she’s there, on set, watching the events play out once more despite very clearly having PTSD. In the past, we simultaneously watch the events play out in real time, catching little bits here and there that might reveal who ends up murdered and why, but never enough to fully catch on to the carnage that would eventually play out by the time the birthday weekend was over.

This review will be short and sweet, nearly anything else I have to say would include spoilers that might truly wreck the ending for you, so I’ll leave things where they are. I will say, however, that I wish the ending had taken a slightly different turn – without giving you the details, you’ll have to read those for yourself, the final twist at the end felt contrived and forced, giving the power of the novel a bit of a lackluster finish. It didn’t feel well thought out, but it did feel a bit messy. Things could have tied up in a nicer way, been a bit less all over the place, and not included one of the most obvious plot twists in history. Okay, that’s all. If I say more, I’ll spoil it for you!

Advice : This was such a fun read! If you’ve been disillusioned by thrillers written from a female perspective, I think you should really give this one a shot! Be warned, there are graphic descriptions of blood, gore, and death; the author describes PTSD flash backs; and there’s mention of the date rape drug as well as what happens when it’s used.

Don’t Let Him In Review

Book: Don’t Let Him In
Author: Lisa Jewell
Publisher: Atria Books
Year: 2025
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Review : “He’s the perfect man. He says he loves you. You think he might even be made for you. Before long he’s moved into your heart – and into your house. And then he leaves for days at a time. You don’t know where he’s gone or who he’s with. And you realize – if you looked back – you’d say to yourself : Don’t let him in.”

Review : Don’t Let Him In is, in some ways, the quintessential scam story – a man gives just enough details to be believed, but not enough to encourage questions and in doing so he scams women out of their life’s savings, their home, and their dignity. In other ways, Don’t Let Him In suffers from an image crisis, namely, it doesn’t seem to know what it is – or rather, it wants to be too many things. Jewell does an excellent job painting picture for the reader, jumping back and forth between the present and the past, changing point of view from the victim(s) to a man with many names, guiding us from victim to victim, broadening the scope as she simultaneously narrows the field of vision. It’s an enjoyable suspense thriller with multiple female characters, deviating from the excruciating norm of the unreliable female narrator that so many suspense/thriller writers seem to clutch to with all their might. Jewell, instead, weaves a winding narrative of a man who manipulates, targets, and attacks with precision and ease. By the time it’s all said and done, it doesn’t come down to one (or several) unreliable women, rather, they’re logical, grounded, down to earth women who are worn down over a period of years until they don’t even know themselves anymore.

Where I struggle with Don’t Let Him In, is that this story is far from unique. And while that’s a sad portrait of our modern times, it’s more than that. Jewell seemed to have trouble reigning in her plot, it became muddied and she let slip a few holes because of it. ** Spoilers Ahead ** Jewell wanted us to buy that her scam artist main character was manipulating women, conning his way into their lives, and stealing their money on a slow but steady basis – yes, that I can buy. Consider it sold! But wait, that’s not all – next we have to buy that our main character is also a street stalker, potentially even someone who derives in-the-moment sexual gratification from his street stalking, that this gratification may be his sole sexual drive; okay, I guess I can believe both aspects of this guy’s personality, but again, that’s not all. Now we need to believe he’s also insanely jealous, prone to fits of vengeance and extravagent plotting; next, he’s a murderer; next, he’s faked his own death; next, he’s got a god-complex and delusions of grandeur; he’s an escort; he’s running business scams as a life coach; wait, now he’s also a master of escape. No. It’s too much. Don’t Let Him In suffers from a lack of editing, the plot is a disaster, and the story struggles to keep itself afloat beneath the weight of so many incredible personality characteristics. Pick two from the above list and go hard, do them well, I’ll buy that. This? I’m not buying what you’re selling.

As someone who partakes in pop culture, it wasn’t a struggle to see what podcasts and tv shows Jewell might have consumed prior to writing this book – Dirty John (a true crime podcast by Christopher Goffard) and You (a Netflix adaptation of a book series by the same name) come immediately to mind, I’m sure with just a few additional minutes of thought you or I could come up with more than a handful of others. It’s a storyline in the mainstream, it’s not new or unique and Don’t Let Him In doesn’t offer an inventive perspective beyond trying to encompass every perspective. I didn’t find this book to be very interesting or compelling, but I will say the ending was exactly what you’d hope it would be, without giving anything away. It’s satisfying and thank god for that, because if you’ve plowed through this nearly 500 page book, you deserve an ending that makes you happy it’s over. I didn’t find myself thinking about this book when I wasn’t reading it, or chewing on it after it was over, I simply read it. That’s all. The twists are easily spotted, the plot holes are glaring, and the plot itself is a messy, muddled fiasco.

Advice : If you’re looking for a book that showcases every possible scam available in one character – woo! This is it! If you’re looking for some substance, something that doesn’t read like every podcast you’ve listened to in the last 10 years or every tv show you’ve watched on your fav streaming platform, this is not it. Keep looking. And listen, suspense / thrillers only get better if we, the reader, demand more.

The Retreat Review

Book: The Retreat
Author: Elisabeth De Mariaff
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Year: 2021
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Synopsis: “Maeve arrives at the High Water Center for the Arts determined to do one thing: begin her own dance company. A retired performer and mother of two, time is running out for her to find her feet again after the collapse of a disastrous – and violent – marriage. And initially, there’s a thrill to being on her own for the first time in years, isolated int he beauty of a snowy mountain lodge. But when an avalanche traps the guests inside, tensions begin to run high. Help is coming, so the just have to hold on – right?
But as the days pass, strange deaths befall the others one by one. Soon Maeve must face how little she knows about anyone there…and how useless a locked door is if the darkness is already inside.”

Review: I was pleasantly surprised to find in my hands a thriller that didn’t fall into the same old drunk female narrator / unreliable female narrator trope. For once. De Mariaff successfully creates a story that genuinely thrilled me, kept me guessing, and found me on the edge of my seat which seems like a feat these days in the realm of thrillers. We find Maeve, the narrator, high in the Rocky Mountains at a nearly empty ski lodge as a blizzard moves in and blankets the entire town, effectively cutting the lodge off from the rest of the world. Phone lines are down, the electricity goes out, save for a generator at the lodge, and the threat of grizzly bears in the wilderness reigns supreme.
We get just enough background information on Maeve to know that she’s resilient, strong, and fierce – a protectress of anything she holds dear. Her fellow occupants of the lodge are mostly unknown, though they do eventually end up spending a bit of time together as the heat slowly escapes from their rooms and the occupants are forced to spend days and nights together in the main room of the lodge. We begin to realize all is not as it seems with her fellow artists and strange happenings start to occur. While the end doesn’t exactly present itself as a plot twist, we do spend much of the book wondering and guessing who the killer could be, and in my opinion that’s exactly how a thriller should be. There is little to know actual investigating that happens, though, the book is primarily comprised of survival, including the end.
The finale of the book left a bit to be desired, as it wrapped up with mere pages left. A trend I’ve noticed in the world of thrillers is a long and slow buildup to the climax and a brief conclusion that leaves you wondering why you just read 300-something pages for a single page ending. The Retreat was no different. We find ourselves at the end of the book with perhaps two pages left as Maeve finds the killer and wraps up the climax action and the books ends with essentially no conclusion. It’s up to the reader to decide whether Maeve truly survives in the end or not and personally, I don’t love that in a book. I can appreciate certain details being left hanging for a reader to wrap up in their own way, but I just did all the work of watching Maeve fight for survival, I’d at least like an epilogue that let’s me know she actually did get out after all.

Advice: This book should come with some content warnings as it does deal heavily with domestic violence and birth trauma, so if those themes are sensitive for you to read, this is likely not going to be the right book for you. If you love a thriller, a locked room riddle, or a good-old-fashioned ski lodge mystery, I think you’ll enjoy The Retreat.

I Don’t Forgive You Review

Book : I Don’t Forgive You
Author : Aggie Blum Thompson
Publisher : Forge
Year : 2021
Rating : 2 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “An accomplished photographer and the devoted mom of an adorable little boy, Allie Ross has just moved to an upscale D.C. suburb, the kind of place where parenting feels like a competitive sport. Allie’s desperate to make a good first impression. Then she’s framed for murder.
It all starts at a neighborhood party when a local dad corners Allie and calls her by an old, forgotten nickname from her dark past. The next day, he is found dead.
Soon, the police are knocking at her door, grilling her about a supposed Tinder relationship with the man, and pulling up texts between them. She learns quickly that she’s been hacked and someone is impersonating her online. Her reputation – socially and professionally – is at stake, even her husband starts to doubt her. As the killer closes in, Allie must reach back into a past she vowed to forget in order to learn the shocking truth of who is destroying her life.”

Review : I Don’t Forgive You employs tired tropes that seem to be plaguing the suspense / thriller book world. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. Without any effort whatsoever, I can think of five recent thriller books that have the exact same plot – woman has a dark past, woman is too stubborn to share dark past with anyone in her life, woman drinks heavily and is considered unreliable by everyone in her life, woman is accused of crime, woman refuses to do anything to clear her name of crime, and finally, when the book is 99.5% complete, the truth comes out and within a page and a half the book is over. Throw in some blatant spousal gaslighting, police incompetence, a bumbling main character who somehow has no idea how the internet works, and you have yourself the outline of a brand new! never before seen! thriller novel!
Allie Ross is supposed to be somewhere around 35 with a slightly older husband, I’m guessing he’s older by 4 or maybe 5 years. At one point, when he asks her how to pay for an Uber, she rolls her eyes and calls him “such a gen-xer” and yet, when Allie’s home computer (not laptop, somehow) is taken from her house by the police, she wonders to herself how in the world she’ll pay her bills – all of which she pays online. She wonders this to herself as she holds her cell phone. But the epiphany doesn’t come in the form of her phone, it comes when she realizes they’ve left behind her laptop. We’re supposed to believe this woman in her mid 30s has zero concept of computer hacking, trolling, or that fake accounts using your name and likeness is something that happens on a regular basis. She bumbles her way through google searches, contacts Facebook and Tinder like they’re real people she expects to have conversations with, and ultimately acts like she’s never seen this new fangled thing called the internet before. As a woman who’s just a few years shy of Allie, I find this to be exceedingly unbelievable.
Laughable, even.
Can you tell I wasn’t impressed? I’m sick and tired of the “woman with a dark past who cannot open up to anyone in her life including her husband/boyfriend/family and in doing so ultimately makes things much worse for herself” trope. I’m even more sick and tired of the “woman drinks moderately but everyone in her life believes she’s an alcoholic because she has three glasses of wine occasionally and therefore becomes unreliable” trope. Surely in the year 2021 we could come up with more impactful plot lines for a thriller. Perhaps I’m asking too much.
I do not find solace in the online reviews for this book. On GoodReads, I Don’t Forgive You is rated 4.4/5 and on Amazon it’s called “a terrific page turner” both of which I profoundly disagree with.

Advice : I have little to say other than don’t waste your time or your money. If a thriller is what you’re looking for, you could walk into your nearest bookstore, go to the thriller section, close your eyes, choose a book at random, and you’d likely find yourself reading a book with the exact same plot.