I didn’t know this was a book 2 when I requested it and I hadn’t read book 1, Some Choose Darkness. I found you need not have read it to follow along, but I loved this one so much that I will go back and read it now. This book was simply amazing, yet there was nothing simple about it. Normally I would sum up the book in my own words, but I will skip that and just get straight to gushing.
You know when you’re watching crime movies, and the detectives have these walls of information on all the suspects with their pictures and details? I imagine such a wall in Donlea’s house, but with plotlines and characters. There are multiple perspectives in this book, multiple writing styles, and alternating timelines which seem like it would be utterly impossible to keep track of. The result is a fantastically layered book that comes together in the way of a puzzle.
Let’s talk about the various writing styles. You get the brilliance that is Rory’s mind, a podcast in written form, a journal entry, and the storyline. Add in the multiple points of view, and alternating timelines, then you can see why I picture Donlea’s wall as I described. I think where others are complaining there are too many points of view, I see only the brilliance of how well executed it is.
So I was reading this and going: “hey, I can have more of Rory and Lane in book 1.” But then I got to the Author’s Note at the end and learned that some of these characters crop up in other works of Donlea, and he’s just hooked a reader for life. This was such a super fun read. I loved the multiple mysteries that arise, and I loved the characters and how each of them goes about solving them (or creating them). So well done! Thank you, Kensington Books for sending this along!
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The Suicide House is available on Amazon for $12.99.
Blurb:
Inside the walls of Indiana’s elite Westmont Preparatory High School, expectations run high and rules are strictly enforced. But in the woods beyond the manicured campus and playing fields sits an abandoned boarding house that is infamous among Westmont’s students as a late-night hangout. Here, only one rule applies: don’t let your candle go out—unless you want the Man in the Mirror to find you. . . .
One year ago, two students were killed there in a grisly slaughter. The case has since become the focus of a hit podcast, The Suicide House. Though a teacher was convicted of the murders, mysteries and questions remain. The most urgent among them is why so many students who survived that horrific night have returned to the boarding house—to kill themselves.
Rory, an expert in reconstructing cold cases, is working on The Suicide House podcast with Lane, recreating the night of the killings in order to find answers that have eluded the school, the town, and the police. But the more they learn about the troubled students, the chillingly stoic culprit, and a dangerous game gone tragically wrong, the more convinced they become that something sinister is still happening. Inside Westmont Prep, the game hasn’t ended. It thrives on secrecy and silence. And for its players, there may be no way to win—or to survive. . . .
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