Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! This is not what I expected and yearned for reading!

I don’t know how quick I clicked the request button when I see Victoria Helen Stone’s name and find titles section on NetGalley! And as you may imagine, I gloated and gathered my friends to celebrate with early happy hour 9:30 am in the morning.

I couldn’t wait to jump into her new thriller even though its blurb was a little evasive.

I read 100 pages, nothing intriguing happened so I thought this was slow burn thriller so I decided to give more chance.

I was introduced with Lauren, the heroine who moves to her 90 years old grandma’s estate because her grandma had a stroke and she cannot live in this grandiose house by herself and she’s adamant to leave this place to her granddaughter with reasonable mortgage payment deal.

Lauren was raised by her mother Donna who thinks her grandma and father were dangerous people. She even testified against her father about killing a young waitress and put him behind the bars. Later her father was exonerated, got remarried and started from fresh as soon as he left the prison and of course Lauren formed a healthy family relationship with he and her grandma despite the worries of her mother.

The story is told by going back and forth between Lauren and Donna’s narrations: present time to read Lauren’s renovation plans, YouTube videos, Instagram stalking to her ex Bastian which made me yawn and get me bored to death.

We’re also moving back to 1985 to see the life of Donna who just moved to Sacramento after getting pregnant and Michael who is the father, trying to divorce from his wife who is not mentally stable. Donna wants to trust the man but we can hear the alarm bells from the beginning he is not telling the truth about his marriage. This part is a little more intriguing but it is still repetitive. Donna questions Michael’s motives and Michael acts like liar douchebag then she forgives him and he does something unacceptable again. Oh! Too much unnecessary angst and more yawning!

Only the last %2 of the book gets a little faster and as soon as tension starts building, the book ends. Yes, it’s not even slow burn because nothing is burning or flaming about this story. It’s a women’s fiction. This is not a thriller. Mystery parts are already foreseeable from the first chapters.

I gave three stars for my respect of the author’s previous works. Don’t get me wrong. This is not a bad book. The flawed, unreliable characters, dysfunctional family dynamics, abuse, estranged mother- daughter relationship are well-told and developed but I was expecting something more exciting, riveting,action-packed after reading Jane Doe series!

So this is too light, action-less, flat, slow for my taste. I’m still looking forward to read more works of the author but unfortunately this is not my favorite work of hers.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for providing me this digital arc in exchange my honest opinions.

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. Lauren returns home to her grandmothers place after her stroke. She does not talk to her mother since she sent her father to prison many years ago. While doing construction on the house she finds some strange things which makes her think about the past. This book kept me guessing from the beginning to the end

Lauren wants nothing do do with her mother, the woman who sent Lauren’s father to jail, claiming he was a serial killer. It’s only after the real killer confesses, years later, that Lauren’s father is released. Now, Lauren is returning to the Sacramento estate where she was raised by her father, but she may not be as safe as she believes. Donna, Lauren’s mother, lied about her ex boyfriend, but she also knows something is seriously wrong with her ex and his home. Creepy