Category Archives: Lisa Unger

October 7, 2021 · 12:01 am

Review: Last Girl Ghosted by Lisa Unger

Title: Last Girl Ghosted by Lisa Unger
Publisher: Park Row Books
Genre: Contemporary, Domestic Thriller
Length: 400 pages
Book Rating: B+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley

Summary:

Secrets, obsession and vengeance converge in this riveting thriller about an online dating match turned deadly cat-and-mouse game, from the New York Times bestselling author of Confessions on the 7:45

Think twice before you swipe.

She met him through a dating app. An intriguing picture on a screen, a date at a downtown bar. What she thought might be just a quick hookup quickly became much more. She fell for him—hard. It happens sometimes, a powerful connection with a perfect stranger takes you by surprise. Could it be love?

But then, just as things were getting real, he stood her up. Then he disappeared—profiles deleted, phone disconnected. She was ghosted.

Maybe it was her fault. She shared too much, too fast. But isn’t that always what women think—that they’re the ones to blame? Soon she learns there were others. Girls who thought they were in love. Girls who later went missing. She had been looking for a connection, but now she’s looking for answers. Chasing a digital trail into his dark past—and hers—she finds herself on a dangerous hunt. And she’s not sure whether she’s the predator—or the prey.

Review:

Last Girl Ghosted by Lisa Unger is a twisted domestic thriller.

Wren Greenwood is an advice columnist and podcaster who in the midst of a long dating drought. At the encouragement of her best friend Jax, she joins dating app Torch and she is disappointed her dates have so far just been so-so. But her dating luck is about to change with her latest match, Adam Harper.  Wren is immediately drawn to his intensity and for the next few months, their relationship is absolutely perfect. Which is why Wren is heartbroken after he fails to show up for their date one evening. Realizing how few solid details she knows about him, she turns to his social media in hopes of learning why he stood her up. But he soon deletes all traces of himself from Torch and the internet. Wren grows even more alarmed once a private detective shows up asking questions about Adam. Questions that Wren cannot answer…

Wren is the perfect narrator for this thrilling mystery. She is a very complex woman who understands keeping secrets because she has a few of her own. Wren has confided some of these secrets to Jax, but there are some things she just cannot bring herself to share. But she finds it talk to Adam. During the dark of night, Wren reveals details about herself to him that very few people know. Do these revelations have anything to do with him ghosting her? Or did he perhaps ghost because of  what Wren learns about him from private investigator Bailey Kirk?

Last Girl Ghosted is a superb domestic thriller with a well-developed storyline that is very clever. Wren is an extremely personable young woman who has overcome a great deal in her life. She loves her career and she takes it very seriously. Wren and Jax are more than just friends; they consider themselves to be family. Adam is extremely enigmatic with a magnetic personality. Wren has to find out the truth about Adam but is truly prepared for what she is going to uncover? With cunning twists and unpredictable turns, Last Girl Ghosted brings this captivating thriller to an absolutely shocking conclusion.

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Filed under Contemporary, Domestic Thriller, Last Girl Ghosted, Lisa Unger, Park Row Books, Rated B+, Review

October 5, 2020 · 11:58 pm

Review: Confessions on the 7:45 by Lisa Unger

Title: Confessions on the 7:45 by Lisa Unger
Publisher: Park Row
Genre: Contemporary, Domestic Mystery, Suspense,
Length: 368 pages
Book Rating: B+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley

Summary:

From master of suspense Lisa Unger comes a riveting thriller about a chance encounter that unravels a stunning web of lies and deceit.

Be careful to whom you tell your darkest secrets…

Selena Murphy is commuting home from her job in the city when the train stalls out on the tracks. She strikes up a conversation with a beautiful stranger in the next seat, and their connection is fast and easy. The woman introduces herself as Martha and confesses that she’s been stuck in an affair with her boss. Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena’s station, the two women part ways, presumably never to meet again.

But days later, Selena’s nanny disappears.

Soon Selena finds her once-perfect life upended. As she is pulled into the mystery of the missing nanny, and as the fractures in her marriage grow deeper, Selena begins to wonder, who was Martha really? But she is hardly prepared for what she’ll discover.

Expertly plotted and reminiscent of the timeless classic Strangers on a Train, Confessions on the 7:45 is a gripping thriller about the delicate facades we create around our lives.

Review:

Confessions on the 7:45 by Lisa Unger is a perplexing domestic mystery.

Selena Murphy has been married to Graham for ten years and they have two young sons, Oliver and Stephen. She initially stays home with the boys but she returns to work after Graham is laid off from his job.  As luck would have it, the nanny she often chats with at the local playground is leaving her current position. Selena gratefully hires Geneva who is an absolutely perfect nanny. But Selena begins to suspect that Graham might be sleeping with the young woman.  When Geneva’s sister reports her missing, Selena holds her breath as she waits for her life to come tumbling down.

Selena works in the city and takes the train to and from work. After working late one evening, she catches a later train and when the train is delayed, she strikes up a conversation with her seatmate.  After the other woman confesses she’s having an affair, Selena confides her suspicions about her husband and the nanny at the same time.  Immediately regretting revealing such personal information to a stranger,  Selena tries to put the uncomfortable encounter behind. When the stranger from the train begins texting her, Selena’s uneasiness grows. But after the police begin asking questions about their missing nanny and Selena’s anger with Graham continues to grow, she makes a fateful decision that brings the woman deeper into their lives.

In the days after Geneva’s disappearance,  Selena is forced to confront the truth about some of her past choices. She is wrestling with a difficult decision as her life begins to bear eerie similarities to her childhood. Selena also comes to the realization that her husband is now a stranger to her and she does not know what he is capable of doing.

With chapters seamlessly alternating between different perspectives, Confessions on the 7:45 is a fast-paced and engrossing mystery. The characters are well-developed and quite intriguing. The storyline is engaging with plenty of tension. With shocking twists, Lisa Unger brings this riveting mystery to an unexpected conclusion. I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend this suspenseful mystery to fans of the genre.

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Filed under Confessions on the 7:45, Contemporary, Domestic Mystery, Lisa Unger, Mystery, Park Row Books, Rated B+, Review, Suspense

September 22, 2019 · 11:57 pm

Review: The Stranger Inside by Lisa Unger

Title: The Stranger Inside by Lisa Unger
Publisher: Park Row
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense
Length: 384 pages
Book Rating: B+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley

Summary:

Even good people are drawn to do evil things…

Twelve-year-old Rain Winter narrowly escaped an abduction while walking to a friend’s house. Her two best friends, Tess and Hank, were not as lucky. Tess never came home, and Hank was held in captivity before managing to escape. Their abductor was sent to prison but years later was released. Then someone delivered real justice—and killed him in cold blood.

Now Rain is living the perfect suburban life, her dark childhood buried deep. She spends her days as a stay-at-home mom, having put aside her career as a hard-hitting journalist to care for her infant daughter. But when another brutal murderer who escaped justice is found dead, Rain is unexpectedly drawn into the case. Eerie similarities to the murder of her friends’ abductor force Rain to revisit memories she’s worked hard to leave behind. Is there a vigilante at work? Who is the next target? Why can’t Rain just let it go?

Introducing one of the most compelling and original killers in crime fiction today, Lisa Unger takes readers deep inside the minds of both perpetrator and victim, blurring the lines between right and wrong, crime and justice, and showing that sometimes people deserve what comes to them.

Review:

The Stranger Inside by Lisa Unger is a mesmerizing, suspenseful mystery.

Rain Winter has seemingly moved on from the seminal event of her childhood: surviving a kidnapping attempt that left her best friend Tess dead. But an apparent vigilante murder brings her survivor’s guilt bubbling to the surface and Rain is compelled to revisit the traumatic event.  Although she is now a stay at home mom to baby Lily, Rain was at one time an extremely successful radio news producer.  Calling upon her former sources for insider information, she and her best friend and on air personality, Gillian Murray, begin tossing around an idea for a podcast in which they explore Rain’s past.  Rain’s husband, Greg, is worried about what how this investigation will affect his wife but he is soon on board with her decision.  What surprises await Rain as her quest for answers takes her back to the still unsolved murder of Eugene Kreskey, the man who tried to abduct her and murdered her best friend?

Rain is torn between staying home with Lily and her desire to return to work.  But she cannot resist the urge to dig into her own past and take a hard look at all of the memories she has forced herself to neatly box up and put to the side.  Despite therapy, Rain has still not come to terms with the events of that horrible day but she has learned to live with what happened to her, Tess and their friend, Hank.  She is unable to resist her compulsion to investigate what happened to Kreskey but is Rain prepared for the answers she will find?

Interspersed with Rain’s investigation are chapters narrated in first person from the murderer’s point of view. These passages offer a fascinating peek into the mind of a killer whose need for justice is nearly overwhelming. The chapters are insightful and provide intriguing information about the chilling effects that trauma can wreak on a person’s psyche.  The murderer is a surprisingly sympathetic character who survived a horrific ordeal only to be unalterably transformed by violence.

The Stranger Inside is a clever mystery with a unique premise and an engaging cast of characters. Rain is a likable but sometimes very frustrating protagonist. The mysterious narrator’s chapters are compelling and utterly absorbing.  The storyline is riveting with shocking twists and turns.  Lisa Unger  expertly ratchets the tension to a fever pitch as the novel hurtles a jaw-dropping, stunning conclusion. I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend this multi-layered mystery to fans of the genre.

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Filed under Contemporary, Lisa Unger, Mystery, Park Row Books, Rated B+, Review, Suspense, The Stranger Inside

October 1, 2018 · 11:58 pm

Review: Under My Skin by Lisa Unger

Title: Under My Skin by Lisa Unger
Publisher: Park Row
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense
Length: 416 pages
Book Rating: B+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley

Summary:

From New York Times bestselling author and master of suspense Lisa Unger comes an addictive psychological thriller about a woman on the hunt for her husband’s killer 

What if the nightmares are actually memories?

It’s been a year since Poppy’s husband, Jack, was brutally murdered during his morning run through Manhattan’s Riverside Park. In the immediate aftermath, Poppy spiraled into an oblivion of grief, disappearing for several days only to turn up ragged and confused wearing a tight red dress she didn’t recognize. What happened to Poppy during those lost days? And more importantly, what happened to Jack?

The case was never solved, and Poppy has finally begun to move on. But those lost days have never stopped haunting her. Poppy starts having nightmares and blackouts—there are periods of time she can’t remember, and she’s unable to tell the difference between what is real and what she’s imagining. When she begins to sense that someone is following her, Poppy is plunged into a game of cat and mouse, determined to unravel the mystery around her husband’s death. But can she handle the truth about what really happened?

Review:

Under My Skin by Lisa Unger is an absolutely riveting mystery which brilliantly utilizes the unreliable narrator plot device.

One year after her husband Jack’s murder, Poppy Lang is self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Poppy experienced a breakdown immediately after his death and she still cannot recall what happened to her during the days she went missing. Undergoing therapy, Poppy is struggling to understand if her dreams are real and if so, what do they mean? She is also certain someone is following her, but can her account of events be trusted? Her best friend, Layla Van Santen, wants her to put the past behind her, but with Jack’s murder still unsolved and her lack of clear memories, Poppy cannot stop searching for answers. Will Poppy’s quest put her in the crosshairs of a killer?

Poppy is a very sympathetic yet frustrating character. Her unrelenting grief and guilt over Jack’s death is palpable. Unable to cope, she uses non-prescribed drugs and copious amounts of wine to numb her pain and quiet her mind. As her therapist tapers down the dosage of her sleeping pills, Poppy’s dreams become quite vivid and she desperately tries to figure out their meaning. During the day, she loses time and experiences terrifying holes in her memory.  Poppy also has great difficulty trying to figure out whether what is happening to her is real or a series of frighteningly realistic delusions. Her unrelenting sorrow is understandable but she is incredibly self-destructive as she tries to make peace with  her tragic loss. Once Poppy finally decides to take control of her life, many of her disjointed dreams and hallucinations begin to make sense.

With an incredibly tension-filled storyline, a possible unreliable narrator and a heartbreaking unsolved murder,  Under My Skin is a very intriguing mystery. Despite a bit of repetition, the storyline is engrossing and fast-paced. With unexpected twists and breathtaking turns, Lisa Unger brings the novel to an absolutely jaw-dropping conclusion. I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend this clever mystery to fans of the genre.

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Filed under Contemporary, Lisa Unger, Mystery, Park Row Books, Rated B+, Review, Suspense, Under My Skin

June 12, 2016 · 11:57 pm

Review: Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger

Title: Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger
Publisher: Touchstone
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Thriller, Supernatural (Ghosts & Psychics)
Length: 352 pages
Book Rating: B

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley

Summary:

An instant page-turner (Lisa Gardner) that straddles the line between thriller and horror…sure to appeal to a wide range of readers, including Stephen King fans. (Booklist, starred) A young woman’s mysterious gift forces her into the middle of a dangerous investigation of a little girl’s disappearance.

Twenty-year-old Finley Montgomery is rarely alone. Visited by people whom others can’t see and haunted by prophetic dreams, she has never been able to control or understand the things that happen to her. When Finley’s abilities start to become too strong for her to handle – and even the roar of her motorcycle or another dazzling tattoo can’t drown out the voices – she turns to the only person she knows who can help her: her grandmother Eloise Montgomery, a renowned psychic living in The Hollows, New York.

Merri Gleason is a woman at the end of her tether after a ten-month-long search for her missing daughter, Abbey. With almost every hope exhausted, she resorts to hiring Jones Cooper, a detective who sometimes works with psychic Eloise Montgomery. Merri’s not a believer, but she’s just desperate enough to go down that road, praying that she’s not too late. Time, she knows, is running out.

As a harsh white winter moves into The Hollows, Finley and Eloise are drawn into the investigation, which proves to have much more at stake than even the fate of a missing girl. As Finley digs deeper into the town and its endless layers, she is forced to examine the past, even as she tries to look into the future. Only one thing is clear: The Hollows gets what it wants, no matter what.

Review:

Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger is an intriguing mystery with supernatural elements (ghosts and psychics).

Hoping to gain some type of control over the psychic phenomena she is experiencing, college student Finley Montgomery moved from Seattle to live with her grandmother in The Hollows, NY.  Eloise is a well-known psychic who often teams up with private detective Jones Cooper to help solve unsolvable crimes.  With her grandmother advising her, Finley is beginning to gain control over the whispers she hears and the ghosts she sees, but she is still struggling to accept that these experiences are a “gift” instead of an unwelcome curse.

Finley has a bit of a troubled past but things have begun to turn around for her since she moved to The Hollows.  Somewhat of a wild child who rides a motorcycle to escape the ghosts and their whispers, she is plagued by an odd squeak/clink noise that she is having trouble identifying.  Some of her efforts to track down the source of the sound temporarily quiet the clamor but it never completely vanishes.  Equally puzzling is the spirit of young boy who quietly sits in a corner playing with a toy train.  Her grandmother believes the two things are related to the missing persons case she is working on with Jones.  Eloise is certain that Finley is physically connected to the case and she convinces Jones and Finley to work together.

Jones has recently been hired by Merri Gleason to find her eight year old daughter Abbey who was kidnapped during the family’s vacation in The Hollows. An intense search and subsequent investigation turned up little evidence and the case has long since gone cold.  Certain Abbey is still alive, she turns to Jones and Eloise to find her missing daughter.  With Eloise failing to feel any psychic connection to case, Jones reluctantly teams up with Finley to see what they can uncover.  Used to working alone, he grudgingly agrees to let her tag along when he revisits the scene of the kidnapping and he is slightly unnerved by Finley’s unexpected reaction.  Following her rather vivid experience, she is convinced the police overlooked vital clues during the search and she finally persuades Jones to concentrate their efforts in the rural area that is inhabited by locals who are essentially living off the grid.  Before they get too far into the investigation, another person goes missing and they cannot help but wonder if this latest disappearance is just a coincidence or if it is somehow related to their case.

Despite its rather slow start, Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger is an engrossing mystery with an eerie supernatural element.  The characters are superbly developed and imbued with vibrant, life-like traits and human frailties. The tension builds to a fever pitch as the investigation hurtles to a thrilling climax that is full of shocking plots twists.  An absolutely outstanding mystery with a mystical touch that fans of the genres do not want to miss.

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Filed under Contemporary, Ink and Bone, Lisa Unger, Mystery, Rated B, Review, Supernatural Elements, Thriller, Touchstone