Beautiful Ugly

Feeney, Alice. Beautiful Ugly. New York: Flatiron. 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

 

If all we need is love, why do we always want more? I dial her number. Again. Finally she answers.

Description:

I think Alice Feeney is one of my favorite "soft" thriller writers. Author of the twisty, gripping books Sometimes I Lie and Rock, Paper, Scissors among others, she takes ordinary people, often couples, and explores their personalities, relationships, dreams, and foibles that lead them into very tense, maybe threatening situations. No ax murders here, just edge-of-your-seat, something-funny-is-going-on-here, don't-know-what's-behind-that-door-that-I'm-about-to-foolishly-open kind of situation found on every page.  

 

Feeney's newest thriller, Beautiful Ugly is another fantastic read, full of sudden surprises, quirky characters, unexpected plot twists, and slightly unnerving settings. It opens with an author, Grady Green, talking on the phone with his wife while she is driving home to see him. She suddenly says she sees a body in the road and will stop to help. Grady warns her not to get out of the car, to stay safe, but she gets out anyways. That is the last she is heard from.

One year later, Grady is struggling. He desperately misses his best friend wife. He cannot afford mortgage payments on their house, so moves to a cheap hotel while trying to write the second novel he is contracted to produce (and has spent the advance for).

Fortunately, his publishing agent has inherited a small "writing cabin" from a former writer/client on a remote island in Scotland. She feels Grady needs a quiet environment to produce his required novel, and the cabin might be just what he needs. She will sponsor him with her own money for a few months in hopes he can free himself from his block and produce a new book.

But once settled into the luxurious cabin Grady makes a discovery that might change his fortune, despite the far-ranging risks involved. While considering which path to follow, he begins to notice strange things about the island and its people. With no phone coverage, no internet, and not way of communicating with the non-island world, Grady soon feels an unease that makes him question his sanity.

All this happens in the first few pages, so I am not giving away the real plot that unfolds from this point. Alice Feeney is the master of her characters glimpsing things out of the corner of their eye, reading questions into seemingly ordinary situations, and misinterpreting everyday conversations. 

All this leads to a very tense, unputdownable story. It only reveals its secrets in the final pages, and even then there are several completely unpredictable revelations.

I really enjoyed letting this plot, characters, and environment engulf me completely. Pick it up if you like to follow a lead character experience confidence, questions, suspicion, anger, and uncertainty in his life among an unusual village full of quirky townspeople that he cannot quite figure out if they or he is crazy. 

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Feeney, Alice. Sometimes I Lie.   

A woman wakes from a coma without any memory of how she got there or anything about her past few months. She cannot talk or move, so people visiting her do now know she can hear them. Slowly from their conversations and foggy memories, she begins to piece together incidents that led to her hospitalization and current situation, and not everything she learns is positive. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 450 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Cross My Heart

Collins, Megan. Cross My Heart. New York: Atria 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

 

Hi,

I've decided there's no way to begin this message that isn't either [1] creepy or [2] awkward, so I'm just going to dive right into the Creepy/Awkward Pool and hope I don't drown.

One year ago today, your wife saved my life. And it breaks my heart that, in order for me to live, she first had to die. 

Description:

OK, I'm only going to tell you the premise of Megan Collins' Cross My Heart and what happens on the opening few pages. That's all you're going to get because this is a genuine thriller with more red herrings and twisty-turns than Perseus and the Minotaur together couldn't put together. Any more details from me would only spoil your own adventure into this riveting story, one that I highly recommend.

Here's some nutshell details to get your interest peaked. Rosie Lachlan, the writer of the opening text message above, had received a heart transplant over a year ago. Somehow, she learned the identity of the anonymous donor: the wife of a local celebrity author who happens to live in Rosie's own suburban town.

With her opening letter to Morgan Thorne, the author, and the clever, bantering return message from him, Rosie dreams this man definitely could be the answer to the depression she endures after her fiancé broke up with her before her heart transplant.

I didn't think of surviving as something I'd do -- actively, with intention. I thought of it as something that may or may not happen to me, a think like the weather, completely beyond my control.

This all is in just the first few pages.

What author Collins so skillfully presents then is how this relationship between the heart recipient and the donor's widowed husband plays out. Despite warnings from her best friend, Nina, the email exchanges continue. Rosie obsesses over Morgan in her mind, walks her parents' dog past his house to possibly catch a glimpse of him, and even sees him while in a local coffee shop, debating in her mind a scenario where she could "accidently" bump into him to actually meet and talk with him. She researches everything about him from his writings to interviews to podcasts in order to learn everything about him.

But Rosie dismisses the few rumors about Morgan's relationship with his wife and how her accidental death might not have been what it seemed. Other characters enter Rosie's life, each one contributing a bit more information (good and questionable) about the man, but she keeps her dreams about a potential relationship with him secret.

Or does she? Is she really just dreaming about him or is she actually meeting him on the sly, away from her co-workers', friend's and parent's knowledge? And is Morgan the perfect man she learns about or someone else?

The risk seemed worth the reward.

You may think you can guess where this story is going, a kind of Play Misty for Me stalker tale that ends badly for the relationship. But I am here to tell you that Collins has a lot of surprises to spring on you throughout Cross My Heart at the most unexpected moments. Enough quirky plotlines that made me want to read this book straight through, trying to figure out what the next page would reveal.

That's it. Enough said on my part. I really loved this book and highly recommend it for its seemingly straightforward, if obsessive plot that halfway through turns everything on its head and doesn't let up until the very last page. 

Go get it and be entertained/duped/delighted in the most unexpected ways. Highest recommendation.

You have his wife's heart.....You can't have her life, too.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Feeney, Alice. Sometimes I Lie.   

A woman awakens from a coma with no memory of how she got there. She can hear everything that is going on around her, but cannot move or otherwise respond. Visitors talk to each other about her situation and slowly she begins to piece together her history and remember ... but what she remembers may not really be what happened, nor the people around her who they say they are. Riveting. (Previously reviewed here)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 450 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Hotel Lucky Seven

Isaka, Kotaro. Hotel Lucky Seven. New York: Overlook 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

 

It's Room 415 right? 

Description:

Ever since I read Kotaro Isaka's Bullet Train, I have been addicted to his four-book series about quirky Japanese Assassins. His newest thriller, Hotel Lucky Seven, continues the dark humor mis-adventures of Nanao, code-named "Ladybug." He is tasked by his superior to perform a simple task: deliver a birthday painting from his daughter to a man in Room 2016 located in the elegant Winton Palace Hotel. What could be easier for the self-described unluckiest assassin in the world? Well, everything.

 

First, the man in the room seems suspicious as to why he is receiving a portrait that is not of him. Nanao also is wary in general due to his profession as a hit man, and thinks this delivery may possibly be some sort of trap to harm him. Sure enough, when Nanao is leaving the room, the hotel man rushes at him with arms outstretched as if to strangle him from behind. But the hotel man trips, falls, and hits his head on a table, killing him. 

 

Was this man another "professional" tasked to kill Nanao or merely surprised by Nanao, and decided to end any possible threat to himself? Ladybug realizes he mis-read the room number as "2010" when it was actually "2016" where the true recipient of the portrait probably awaits. Nanao/Ladybug sees it as just another of his simple tasks unluckily complicated by circumstances, just like on the Bullet Train.

 

And so it starts. Ladybug's mistake and resulting accident occur in the first few pages, but set in motion circumstances that just keep building. While beating a hasty retreat to the elevator and escape, Ladybug rescues a young woman, Kamino, from nefarious pursuers. He learns from her that their mission is to kidnap her and then tap into secrets held in her perfect memory that forgets nothing. Especially passwords which someone would rather not have unleashed into the world.

 

Soon the hotel is crawling with assassins on different missions. Many have rather silly nickname, such as the teams of Blanket and Pillow who clean up criminal scenes, Soda and Cola, the explosive experts. Others are more straightforward in their identities: the blowgun-wielding Six and the elderly woman, Koko, who can erase your past and set a person up with a completely untraceable new life. 

 

All these deadly strangers chase after or try to escape each other, like an old film where corridor doors open and shut as occupants look for friends or enemies. While there is certainly some killing and always the threat of death, Hotel Lucky Seven  has a rather dry sense of humor about it, much like a Keystone Kops film as characters miss each other by seconds or are captured, only to reverse fortunes on their antogonist.

 

I admit, this kind of scenario is not for everyone. But for anyone who enjoy a thriller with oddball characters with uniquely deadly skills who are trapped in unusual situations, Isaka and his Assassins series of books are definitely for you. Well-written, gripping, unexpected, and overall satisfying, Hotel Lucky Seven is the right kind of read for the adventurous reader.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Isaka, Kotaro. Bullet Train.   

Unlucky Nanao/Ladybug is tasked with another simple job where absolutely nothing could go wrong. Just board a specific Bullet Train, pick up a suitcase from the rack, and get off at the next station. But unbeknownst to him, that particular suitcase has great value to many people, including a trainload of other assassins who encounter and try to deal with each other and the suitcase without other passengers being alerted. Fascinating. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

The Keeper of Lost Causes

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. The Keeper of Lost Causes. New York: Dutton. 2011. Print.

First Sentences:

 

She scratched her fingertips on the smooth walls until they bled, and pounded her fists on the thick panes until she could no longer feel her hands. At least ten times she had fumbled her way to the steel door and stuck her fingernails in the crack to try to pry it open, but the door could not be budged, and the edge was sharp. 

Description:

I'll start this book recommendation with a caveat: This book is not for everyone.  Jussi Adler-Olsen's The Keeper of Lost Causes is a Scandanavian noir thriller, full of exciting action, fascinating characters, and can-put-down writing style. But like other books in this genre, it depicts some shocking plotlines, stomach-churing situations and pccasionally graphic violence. So, if this type of reading is off-putting to you, stop reading now and move on to another book.

However, if you are drawn to police procedurals, gripping writing, Scandanavian settings, and flawed, complex  characters (both good and evil), then Adler-Olsen is your author. The Keeper of Lost Causes is the first of his ten novels in the Department Q series featuring the Copenhagen homicide police division assigned to take on unsolved murder and missing person cases.

It's a hopeless assignment for Carl Morck, the abrasive detective who, since no one in the Homicide force could get along with him, is kicked downstairs to to tiny basement office and a one-person staff named Assad. Carl is prepared to nap and quietly avoid any work until the five-year-old missing person case of Magete Lynggard is randomly selected to appease his boss that he is actually working on something.

Magete was traveling with her younger brother, a mute, damaged young man who, along with Magete, had survived a terrible car crash that killed their parents and several other people. When her ferry was unloading, Magete's car was left untouched and she was nowhere to be found. Because she was a noted political figure, news interest in her spiked for awhile until it was concluded that probably she had either fallen overboard or committed suicide.

But as we read in the opening paragraph, she is very much alive, but trapped in a hopelessly impenetrable prison, in complete darkness, with only an occasional voice over a PA system to fill the silence. Why she is there and what her outcome will be are a mystery until the final pages.

What drives this book and others in the Department Q series are the characters. Detective Morck has become deeply uninterested in his job after an unexpected shoot-out where one of his partners was killed and another paralized by a stray bullet. Assad, Morck's assistant, slowly shows special talents that take him away from his copying, filing, and cleaning jobs to providing valuable insight and help with the Lynggard investigation. Then there are themembers of the homicide division: some brilliant, many incompetent, all of them to be avoided by Morck at all costs.

This is a book that is impossible to put down. I read it during every spare moment, and late into the night, always regretting whenever I had to stop. It is thrilling on every page, providing questions and, little by little, possible answers as Carl begins to peel away confusing layers of this long-dead case.

Highest recommendation for lovers of thrillers, procedurals, unsolved mysteries, and absorbing characters.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. Locked In.   

Carl Morck, fresh off of solving the nail-gun murder case, is thrown into jail when a suitcase full of money and drugs is found in his attic. Can Morck and the Department Q team unravel the reasons behind this situation and get him out of prison before he is murdered by one of the inmates he had put into the same jail? (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Locked In

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. Locked In. New York: Dutton. 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

The predicament in which Carl now found himself reminded him of childhood, of the moment when its haze of innocence had been cruelly and definitively lifted. When, for the first time, he had come to see everything a little too clearly,to feel the sting of lies. It was the experience of injustice burning itself into his cheek after an unearned slap.

[**Note: I strongly suggest you read the first Deparrtment Q book, The Keeper of Lost Causes (see below) before reading Locked In as there are spoilers in Locked In involving characters, situations, clues and references from previous cases. FR]

Description:

In the opening chapter of Jussi Adler-Olsen's Locked In, Danish homicide detective Carl Morck finds himself in handcuffs while being driven to the "bleak, mammoth" Vestre Prison. He and his Department Q team, assigned to work on a cold murder case, had just successfully investigated and stopped the person responsible for a brutal crime spree involving nail guns, kidnapping, and other atrocities. 

But instead of congratulations, Morck is heading to prison. His crime? A long-forgotten suitcase was found in his attic containing copious amounts of drugs and cash, with Morck's fingerprints on the bills. Years ago, Morck had agreed to hold that suitcase for his partner who was relocating his residence. Unfortunately, this partner was killed and Morck eventually forgot about the suitcase. Morck never had any knowledge of what was in the case, assuming it to be clothing and personal property of his partner.

Now, he is thrown into a prison full of men who he had been instrumental in solving their crimes and putting them behind those same bars. Worse, for some unknown reason, Morck is not put into a protective solitary area, making his life vunerable to any attack. Communiction with his department, family, and friends is completely cut off.

Survival is key. Will he be able to fight off any attackers inside the prison? Can his team figure out what is going on, and who is behind the program to imprison and potentially kill him? And why, after his years of dedicated service on the Danish police force, is Morck accused of corruption?

This plotline revisits several ancient Department Q cases, especially the nail gun murder spree that left one of Mork's partners dead (the man with the suitcase) and one parnter paralized by a bullet in a police raid gone wrong. Morck has carried the guilt from that raid and the results because he hadn't pulled his gun out in time to stop the criminals from shooting his friends.

Slowly, painstakenly the Danish police, Department Q, and others work on Carl Morck's situation, some trying to free him and others seeking to hold him responsible for corruption, drug-dealing, and other criminal activities. All the time, Morck sits locked in to his prison cell, unable to defend himself much less get to the bottom of the accusations.

It's a gripping, thrilling, and twisty-turny police procedural, one that is unusual because the Danish force is investigating one of their own stars. I loved it as one of those novels not easily put down, grabbing a few pages to read during any moments of free time.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

  

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. The Keeper of Lost Causes.   

Carl Morck, the crusty Danish police homicide detective, is banished downstairs to form a one-man, unsolved crime division, Department Q, where he will be buried in impossible cases. He is immediately involved in a missing woman case. This is the first in the Department Q series. Clever, powerful, sometimes violent, and always totally engrossing. 

Happy reading. 

Fred

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).