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Hey guys! Welcome back to BB&B. I know it's been a while since thrillerathon ended, but I still wanted to write a wrap up for the 3 books I read. Well, 2 books and a third I DNFed. So here we go!
First up is Final Girls by Riley Sager. If you want to see a description of the summary for this one, check out my previous blog post. I really wanted to like this book more than I actually did. I think it started so well and was super intriguing, but something about the pacing and/or the "twist" just left me thinking "umm.... huh??". The character did some
strange things and made some weird decisions that just weren't very believable as well. I know the author was trying to have the main character, Quincy, be dealing with PTSD and dissociative amnesia, but she just made stupid decisions. We have a character that is pretty meek and could even be described as "fragile" and understandably so, I mean she saw her friends murdered right in front of her in a cabin in the woods when she was in college. This woman meets a complete stranger and decides to just jump down the rabbit hole and shoplfit from a mall, abuse her anxiety medication, and beat up random men in the park at night vigilante-style with nothing but a slight nudge from this stranger. Overall this book was just meh. I don't really understand why it has such rave reviews, but maybe I just couIdn't give the suspension of disbelief required to get through the problems here. I also learned that the author of this book is a man who decided to write under a pen name that sounded more feminine because he believes books in the thriller genre written by women are more well recieved?... yeah I gave this one 3 out of 5 stars. It definitely wasn't boring to read and the whole "slasher-film-in-a-book" thing was kind of fun. I will give a content warning for some graphic violence.
This next book was my favorite I read during thrillerathon: The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison. This one wasn't on my original TBR so I'll give a short synopsis: it's is about a girl (Maya) who is kidnapped by this man who goes by The Gardener and put in to a hidden greenhouse/ prison along with 20 or so other women between the
ages of 16 and 20. The Gardener tattoos each of his captives with the wings of a different butterfly and assigns them a new name to go by while in the garden. The story is told in alternating narratives between Maya's time in the garden and afterwards as one of the investigators is interacting with her after she and some of the other girls have escaped. This story is super dark and has a bit of an unreliable narrator thing going on (which you all know is my FAVORITE plot device!) as we know throughout the story that Maya has a secret that effects all of the events that take place in the book, but we don't find out what that secret is until the end. I really loved this book and even though there were a few plot holes, I didn't mind them too much and allowed a little bit of suspension of disbelief to carry me through those things. I gave this 4 out of 5 stars. I will definitely put a content warning here for gore and graphic violence as well as a lot sexual assault.
The last book that I had to DNF was really a bummer for me. I found it so strange that I couldn't get through this one because all the themes in this book are totally up my alley. I even read 70% of the book and just kept pushing through because I was sure it was going to click and get better, but it just didn't. That book is The Three by Sarah Lotz. This book is about the three children survivors of 4 simultaneous plane crashes that happen on different continents across the world. it is told through interviews, transcripts of audio recordings, and instant message conversations from people who are all tied to the events
in some way. There is a religious fanatic who ends up gathering a cult following who claims that the three children are harbingers of the apocolypse and that there is a fourth survivor. There is also a bit of a supernatural twist as the three children start to exhibit some strange behavior and strange things start happening to their caretakers. Like I said, I really wanted to enjoy this book, but it was just so dang boring! I think the writing style of this was what really lost me. I normally don't mind stories told in the article or interview style, but I feel like it just broke the story up too much. and whenever I would start to get in to it, the interview or segment woud end and it would switch to another about one of the other children. I gave this one a solid try, but I just couldn't get through it.
So that's what I read for thrillerathon. Although the books I read weren't all that great, I did enjoy participating in the readathon and I would definitely do another. I would love to hear what you guys read for thrillerathon, if you participated or if you've read any of the 3 books mentioned. See you in my next post!
