Following Matthew in the middle of the night is one of those illogical things that, as you read the book, becomes more and more logical. Although not fully realistic, the storyline had me hooked and engrossed throughout. I was rooting for the manipulative, selfish characters and had a lot of fun following along their paths. George is an ordinary guy, maybe so ordinary that you might even think he is extraordinary. He is in his early forties. He keeps the accounting books for a Boston literary magazine. He made himself indispensable, so even when the inevitable downsizing started to leave empty desks and tragically orphaned coffee mugs in it’s wake, he survived. fulfilling my 2019 goal to read (at least) one book each month that has been digitally moldering, unread, on my NOOK for years and years and years.

Not just as an unnecessary sequel to my favorite thriller of all time, but just in general... it was bad.

Customer reviews

From one of the hottest new thriller writers, Peter Swanson, a name you may not know yet (but soon will), this is his breakout novel in the best-selling tradition of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train - now a major movie directed by Agnieszka Holland. I was one of the few people who didn’t understand the cult following of Peter Swanson’s first book in the series. While I enjoyed some of the twists, it was a three star read for me. After reading the second book in the series, I have realized that the reason I struggled to enjoy it was because the plot glorifies murder and killing. Regardless of the fact that it is fiction, I just can’t get behind that. Additionally, one of the major plot points in this book is a school shooting. This is a hard NO for me. We are brought up to believe that murdering someone is the worst thing we could ever do, but is it? If a person is leaving a wide wake of broken hearts and battered spirits and in some cases much, much worse, is it really the worst thing we can do for all of humanity to give that person a nudge towards the afterlife? Of course the question remains, are any of us capable by ourselves of being the defense, the jury, the prosecution, and ultimately the judge? The characters are frustratingly stupid, the dialogue cringy, the motivations are either stupid or none existent. We essentially retcon the original ending of the kind worth killing.

Thank you to Harper Collins and Edelweiss who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own. Ted meets a mysterious woman at the airport and, thinking he would never see her again, spills all his secrets to her right then and there. He confides that his wife Miranda is cheating on him, and that he secretly wishes he could kill both her and her lover to teach them a lesson. Once Ted and the woman arrive at their destination, they part ways, but that turns out to be only the beginning.

Peter Swanson’s highly anticipated sequel introduces new characters, but also continues with Henry Kimball and Lily Kintner’s story. It contains some recap, but will likely leave readers confused without knowledge of the previous book. The first time I read this book was (yikes) eight years ago!🙈I loved it but never wrote a review. And to be honest, I remembered nothing about the book! Private Detective Henry Kimball is hired by an ex-student from his days as a teacher at Dartford-Middleham High. Enter Joan Grieve, now Joan Whalen who reminds Kimball of an event he’d prefer to erase from his mind. Joan wants him to follow her husband Richard to prove that he is cheating on her. He takes the case, it seems a simple one but oh boy, is he ever wrong. It becomes clear he needs to revisit the past to discover the truth about the present.