Author: Riley Sager

Summerween Reviews | Middle of the Night and One Perfect Couple

Posted July 9, 2024 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Summerween is a readathon hosted by GabbyReads that runs in early July each year. This year’s readathon was hosted July 5th through 11th with the following prompts: read a book in the dark, read a thriller or horror book, read a book with a night sky on the cover, read a book with 5 words in the title, and read a book set during the summer. For more information click HERE. I read one Riley Sager book before and didn’t love it as much as I had hoped. MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT was much better for me – I’m a big true crime consumer but only if it’s about missing persons and unsolved cases. This book scratched that itch for me for sure. The story follows Ethan as he returns to his childhood home 30 years after his best friend Billy was kidnapped from the tent they were camping in in the backyard. The crime remains cold and unsolved… until Ethan begins noticing some hints of Billy around the neighborhood. He sets out to solve the mystery with the help of old friends and neighbors. I really enjoyed this! The way that Sager structured the book is alternating chapters between present day and the day in 1994 when Billy went missing. There were a lot more POVs in the past chapters, which I really enjoyed – they were well-timed with what Ethan was discovering in the present. I was always itching to keep reading; Sager had some kind of cliffhanger or dramatic […]

Review Roundup | Confessions, The Golden Spoon, and Lock Every Door

Posted April 13, 2023 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments

I recently shared that there are a number of books I planned to read this year based purely on the hype and their popularity in the community. A bunch of my favorite booktubers have read and loved this one, claiming that there is a twist or big reveal at the end of each chapter (there are 6 chapters across a quick book of 240 pages). I was curious (based on the premise) how they would pull that off and decided to finally go for it. After all, I don’t read a lot of backlist books and this looked promising based on everyone’s feelings! Unfortunately this book wasn’t what I expected and the hype was REAL. I couldn’t get everyone’s voices out of my head while reading. I expected wild jaw-dropping twists but it didn’t really read like that to me? Yes, it is definitely twisty and very well-plotted and well-written, but not in the same way people had built it up. Each chapter reveals some new information from a different person’s point of view so the backstory starts to slowly come together. My jaw literally dropped at the end of the first chapter and the build-up of reveals throughout the rest of the story was pretty great. The ending was strong – surprising and very clever. Again, the plotting made a big difference here and the order in which the author included the different character POVs. I expected a new favorite and ended up with a solid four-star read that […]