Domestic thriller
Annie Wolfe and her 12-year-old daughter, Coral, live in the isolated mountain town of Expanse, Colorado. They are on the run, hiding from some dangerous people. Their quiet routine is disrupted when Riven, a young woman raised by her psychopathic father, Coyote, arrives in town seeking revenge on the man she’s been told ruined her family. When Riven shows up at Annie’s door during a snowstorm, both women are forced into a standoff.
The premise sounded good, but the execution left me feeling totally flat. The setup strains credulity from the start as the characters are unlikeable and their behavior and actions never feel believable. Instead of a tight, suspenseful thriller, the story drags out endless stalemates where the conflict could have been ended. Instead, the talking. The shifting timeline makes the narrative seem disjointed as we get the backstory. And this could have been completely avoided. Like, hey, it’s the wrong house dude. Maybe just leave and go check next door? The chapters are super short and the point of view shifts mainly between Annie and Riven. Some of the sentences are also choppy and just a couple of words. I felt it was so predictable but then was mad when my early nagging suspicion turned out to be true. Nothing new here, didn’t really care if anyone made it out alive. So, overall, it was just OK.
Now I want to talk about the audio book that I was able to listen to while also reading along in the e-book ARC, both provided by the publishers. I’m sorry because, even though this book had two narrators, Allyson Ryan and Nicole Cash, one of the voices just made me cringe as it seemed so wrong for the character of Annie. I’m not sure who voiced Annie, but it got so bad that I finally had to quit listening altogether to avoid hearing her. The narrator for Riven did a fine job. I’m not certain but there may have even been a male voice. Usually the audio book makes me enjoy a novel more, but in this case I had to turn it off to get through to the end. The Annie voice sounded too gravelly and old and just not right to my ears.
This was a standalone and not part of any series.
Genre and tags: domestic thriller, psychological, revenge, family, survival
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