Happy Friday book people!
Do you like disturbing characters in your stories? Then do I have a book for you, some of the most deranged people I’ve read about in quite some time.🩸
My Thoughts
Dark and disturbing. Tents and atmospheric. I have not read a book that has made me cringe quite as much as this one in quite some time. There were SO many seriously disturbed characters it’s a wonder that Fern wasn’t more screwed up. Fern is summoned home by her less than stellar father to help him pack because he is moving to Florida. At the same time a woman goes missing. The missing woman Astrid went missing previously 20 years ago and Fern is convinced there is a connection, not only between these incidences, but between herself and Astrid. As fern reads Astrid’s memoir and is prodded by her father the pieces of the past start to come together. Can Fern help find Astrid and will this unlock secrets of her past?
OK… Fern had the most messed up parents ever. Her father was a psychologist who studied fear and used his daughter as a research subject, running experiments on her. I legit cannot understand why she was even there helping him move he was such an awful person. And her mom was just as bad she let all of this happen? Ugh 😫 This was a book bursting with unreliable narrator‘s, I don’t think anyone was honest about what was going on. The mystery of the missing woman Astrid was interesting, but I wish there was a little more tension. It also could’ve been a little more fast-paced, I like my thrillers to be a little more frantic. A well told thriller with some well developed deranged characters.
This book in emojis 🚪 🖼 📕 🐝 🩸 📱
*** Big thank you to Atria for my gifted copy of this book. All opinions are my own. ***
About the Book
The author of the “suspenseful, atmospheric, and completely riveting” (Megan Miranda, New York Timesbest-selling author) debut The Winter Sister returns with a darkly thrilling novel about a woman who comes to believe that she has a connection to a decades-old kidnapping and, now that the victim has gone missing again, begins a frantic search to learn what happened in the past.
When Fern Douglas sees the news about Astrid Sullivan, a 34-year-old missing woman from Maine, she is positive that she knows her. Fern’s husband is sure it’s because of Astrid’s famous kidnapping – and equally famous return – 20 years ago, but Fern has no memory of that, even though it happened an hour outside her New Hampshire hometown. And when Astrid appears in Fern’s recurring nightmare, one in which a girl reaches out to her, pleading, Fern fears that it’s not a dream at all, but a memory.
Back home in New Hampshire, Fern purchases a copy of Astrid’s recently published memoir – which may have provoked her original kidnapper to abduct her again – and as she reads through its chapters and visits the people and places within it, she discovers more evidence that she has an unsettling connection to the missing woman. As Fern’s search becomes increasingly desperate, she hopes to remember her past so she can save Astrid in the present…before it’s too late.
Featuring Megan Collins’ signature “dark, tense, and completely absorbing” (Booklist) prose and plenty of shocking twists and turns, Behind the Red Door is an arresting thriller that will haunt you long after you hear the last word.
Have a fabulous day! XOXO Berit🦋