Ellery A. Kane

*Thank you NetGalley and the publishers/authors for a free audiobook copy in exchange for an honest review.*

Actual Rating: 2

I've read a few reviews that basically say that the synopsis for this book doesn't match its actual contents, and I pretty much agree. The synopsis paints a very sinister picture:

After years of searching for her biological father, she finally hears back of a DNA match. Robert Thompson is dependable and welcoming, inviting Hallie to his family's lake house, where she finally gets to see what a functional family looks like for the first time. But then things start to go wrong — a slashed bridge, a tampered car, a stolen necklace, a vandalized painting...and then Hallie finds out that there was a mistake, that Robert isn't actually her father. That last sentence of the blurb, that Hallie was "trapped," is what puts the finishing touches on my expectations, and I went into this expecting a psychological thriller.

Instead, she wasn't trapped by any means, and (spoiler alert) the Thompsons weren't the antagonists at all. The plot turned out to feel quite anticlimactic, as I didn't care much about the drama of the backstory.

I think the plot wouldn't have bothered me so much if it had been marketed originally that way, perhaps as a contemporary drama instead. Still, it wasn't a dealbreaker — I was still pretty curious about how the story would end.

I think the characters were the weakest part of the book. None of the side characters were very likable, and Natalie in particular felt like a complete parody of what adults think teenagers acts like. She seemed shallow from beginning to end; there's little, if any, character development on her part.

However, I had an even bigger issue with Hallie and reading the story from her perspective. She was, simply put, an extremely frustrating protagonist. I have nothing against imperfect characters — in fact, they're what makes character development possible and stories interesting. Hallie's perspective, however, was just really repetitive. Throughout the book her narration is interspersed with woe-is-me comments about her backstory every few lines. Her unlikeability and constantly poor decision-making makes the ending feels unearned, and I was also not that invested in the cooking plot to care about how it turned out.

Overall, the writing style was fine. The plot has potential here, and I liked the letters from all the Robert Thompsons that were interspersed between chapters. Perhaps with better-liked characters I'd have felt more invested overall.… (mehr)

3.75/5

Iris Duncan, an almost seventy-year-old widow lives alone in her posh Pacific Heights home. She is unable to take care of the property on her own and is in trouble with the HOA, a fact that she is constantly reminded of by her annoying neighbor in his pushy way. She also feels unsafe living alone and suspects that burglars enter her home frequently. A chance meeting with a clumsy waitress in a café leads to Iris offering Lydia and Seth McKay jobs as caretakers/house sitters to help her with the day-to-day work involved in the upkeep of her home as well as daily chores. She offers them room and board at her house and treats them, especially Lydia, like family, a feeling that is reciprocated, with Lydia taking care of her, cooking her meals and making sure she takes her medication on time.

Fast-forward a few months, the dispatcher receives a frantic 911 call for help from Iris and hears what sounds like a gunshot. When the police arrive there is evidence of a struggle and much more but no trace of Iris or her “house sitters”.

What happened to Iris? Are Lydia and Seth truly deserving of the special treatment they received from Iris or did they have hidden motives for befriending her? Was Iris truly as helpless as she projected or did she suspect Lydia and Seth?

With its crisp writing and well-paced narrative that switches between “Before” and “After” Iris’s disappearance, Ellery Kane’s The House Sitter is an engaging and suspenseful story that kept me interested till the end. I found the ending a bit lackluster and felt there should have more to the story. However, I enjoyed the build-up and the surprises along the way. Each of the characters was well fleshed out and I enjoyed former musician turned rookie cop Maureen Shaw’s trajectory and her dogged determination to unravel the mystery defying her superiors and risking her job to get to the truth. I hope we get more stories featuring her from the author. This was my first Ellery Kane novel and I would be interested in picking up more of her books in the future.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for the digital review copy of this book. All opinions expressed here are mine.… (mehr)

Daddy Darkest is the first book I've read by Ellery Kane. I do love a good thriller but I'm not a huge fan of police/FBI crime books, so hoped this one would work out for me, luckily it did.
When Sam’s best friend, Ginny, disappears in an airport bathroom while wearing Sam’s letterman jacket, it soon becomes clear that the kidnapper intended to take Sam. As she struggles to find Ginny, she starts to question whether everything she’s ever known is a lie…
This book is a huge, 'Who can you trust?' story. I was captivated from the get go and liked Sam as a character. But admit, the chapters in the past of Clare are what I really enjoyed.
The ending was intriguing, but I felt it fitted the events of the book. I think it is just an ambiguous ending, and that there will be no follow-up, but it works that way.… (mehr)

Daddy Darkest starts off in a fairly standard YA thriller format: introducing eighteen year old Samantha Bronwyn and her boy-crazy best friend Ginny on their way to San Francisco for a weekend trip. Soon Ginny disappears and it becomes clear that she was kidnapped, targeted because she was wearing Sam's high school letterman jacket. The boy Ginny had been chatting to on the plane, a cute and mysterious boy only a few years older than them, offers to help Sam.

Then the book veers off into much more adult material via flashbacks to 1996. Dr. Clare Keely, Sam's mother, is a therapist starting at San Quentin. We quickly learn that she was sexually abused and raped by a friend's father over a period of years in her early teens and that this has had a deep impact on her sexuality. She is unable to really connect emotionally to others and has internalized the words of her abuser so deeply that she believes herself responsible for the way men react to her.

Ellery Kane plays these narratives off each other well, with Sam's first person perspective almost chaste. Even at her most confused Sam is a confident if inexperienced young woman, drawing on her basketball training to keep her grounded in even the most extreme situations. Comparatively, Clare is an educated woman in her twenties, a doctor even, yet her third person narrative is splintered and unsure, the voice of her abuser often overtaking her own. In many ways Clare is the more interesting character, her dangerous fascination with a serial killer with a slew of female victims is compelling, but I began to look forward to Sam's chapters as I needed a break from Clare's constant bad decisions.

My biggest problem with Daddy Darkest is that I hated Clive "Cutthroat" Cullen, the serial killer that Clare is so captivated by. He charms her completely and they embark on a toxic love affair that brings her abuser's voice to her head more and more often. I'm not sure if I was supposed to find him charming or compelling or just feel repulsed but whatever it was, I spent most of the novel wanting to shake Clare and scream at her that he's a misogynist that kills women.

I enjoyed the way that Kane peppered the novel with different sorts of predatory men, from the obvious like Cullen and the misogynist prison gangs with their violence and slurs, to Clare's abuser and the way he manipulated her emotions to make her feel as though she was to blame for his vile actions, and even to Clare's colleagues and the way they undermined her, persistently asking for dates despite her lack of interest.

All in all, Daddy Darkest was an enjoyable read, a wild ride from start to finish with tension never really letting up. The plot is far-reaching, starting with kidnapping and expanding to prison gangs, child abuse, infanticide, FBI conspiracies, drug running, secret parents and many, many gunfights. It's a decent thriller to curl up with on a cold night while you're warm under a blanket with a warm drink and a pet on your feet.… (mehr)