Tag: Narrator

Louise Candlish – The Other Passenger | Review

Title: The Other Passenger

Author: Louise Candlish

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 411

Rating: 4/5

I was sent a signed copy of this book for free as part of a bookish subscription box that reached out to me, but I don’t think that will influence my review. Still, I guess that’s a disclaimer for you.

The theme of the box that I received was all about the commute and this was pretty much the perfect book for it because it was mostly set on the commuter boats that people take to get into the city. As for the genre, it’s basically as close to generic contemporary thriller as you can get, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

We have a lot of the classics tropes here, from an unreliable narrator to tons of twists and turns, complex interpersonal relationships and of course that little technique of jumping backwards and forwards through time to advance what’s happening in the present by bringing up something that happened in the past and which changes the way we look at things.

Other than that, I don’t really want to say too much about the plot, purely because as with most of these, half of the point is being taken by surprise. And I will say that while there were one or two things that I called pretty early on, there were also a couple of twists here and there that I didn’t spot.

It probably also helped that I received quite a nice edition of this, a hardback with the author’s signature in it, and so it was quite an aesthetically pleasing read, too. I can’t say that I’m the biggest fan of thrillers in general, as I tend to prefer either cosy mysteries, private detectives or gritty police procedural novels, but it certainly did the job and was a pleasant enough read, keeping me going until the end to find out the truth about what happened.

And that brings us on to the question of whether I’d recommend it or not, and that really depends upon the type of reader that you are. If you’re really into modern thrillers and you loved Gone Girl and Girl on the Train, you’re probably going to like this one. There are a ton of twists, more than I’ve seen in a novel of this size in quite a long time, and the characters are just warped enough to keep them interesting.

Learn more about The Other Passenger.

 


Edward Lorn – Life After Dane | Review

Title: Life After Dane

Author: Edward Lorn

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 268

Rating: 4.5/5

I’m probably quite biased here because this book was written by a BookTube friend and because my name’s in the title, so I guess it would almost be weird if I didn’t like it. I was also given a copy as a gift from someone who’d seen my wish list. But it also has a lot of the themes that I like, and the story line itself is cracking, a sort of paranormal thriller following the weird stuff that our narrator starts to experience after her son, the Truck Stop Dentist serial killer Dane Peters, is put to death by lethal injection.

This was very, very good for an indie book, although I don’t like the cover much. But covers don’t matter, and I was impressed by everything from the quality of the writing to the interior layout. I was also a big fan of the way that Lorn told the story using Dane’s mother as a mouthpiece. She’s perhaps the only person in the world who knows why he turned out like he did.

And then there are the religious themes, as well as the recurring motif of the hymn Amazing Grace. It’s funny because while I’m not religious myself, I’ve always found it interesting to read about religion in fiction. I’ve even dabbled with writing about it myself. The bottom line is that I’d recommend this if you’re interested in thrillers in general, but especially if you’re keen to support indie authors in a difficult marketplace.

Learn more about Life After Dane.