What a mind blowing, captivating, truly surprising, soul crushing ride! Please be prepared and don’t eat something heavy, greasy before this gruesome, dark and wild journey (Don’t start with empty stomach either! The consequences could be painful) It will thrill the hell of you! It will freeze your blood! You’re gonna be paranoid and you go back to those days that you run to your bedroom as fast as you could as if being chased by a villain after turning off your house’s lights! You’d better prepare to sleep lights turn on!
This is remarkable mash up of True Crime podcasts- documentaries-memoirs. You’re reading a memoir hid inside a thriller book and getting inside of a serial killer’s brain at the same time like binge watching Making a murderer, Confession Tapes, Amanda Knox. The writing style is impeccably unique.
The last survivor of her family’s massacre Eve Black’s story is written as if it’s told by a podcast host and each chapter ends with another mysterious cliffhanger. It keeps you on your toes, makes you sit on the edge and force you hide under your blanket cuddling with your teddy bear (that’s what I did! I also cuddled with my empty Chardonnay bottles. This book increased my alcohol consumption!)
Eve Black was only 12 when the killer a.k.a nothing man (because he never leaves a trace and Garda found no clue about his identity. No DNA, no evidence, no eye witness!) killed her mother, father and her seven years old sister. She just hid in the bathroom and saved herself but she never get through the traumatic experience.
After she assigned the creative writing classes at the college, she started to come clean her secret identity and share her experiences in her articles which resulted with the start of her own investigation to fill the blanks and find the connections between the nothing man’s victims.
For nearly 2 decade, he disappeared and after two decades later, Eve releases her memoir about becoming survivor and the clues she’d found about the identity of the man who ruined her life and took her family from it. Nothing Man asks his victims: “Do you want to play game?” And now Eve is all in! She is not only going to play a life-death game with him, she’s also going to avenge her loved ones and give him the punishment he deserves!
Did I see how much I enjoyed the story-telling style of the book? Okay, I’m saying again. I loved it. I love to be introduced to Jim Doyle- our serial killer, once upon a time a member of Garda, now a supermarket security guard in his sixties at the first chapter. He finds out about the memoir and he is dying to know what Eve wrote about her.
We join him to read Eve’s memoir. We want to scream at him to keep on reading to learn more about his history and we also want to stop him so we can skip the gruesome details about his rapes, the traumatic experiences he caused with his torturing ways to ruin his victims’ souls forever.
Reading the chapters of memoir was like watching true crime stories and meeting with the real victims’ life experiences and witnessing Eve’s investigation and her corporation with ex-Garda officer Ed, how she gets closer to find the identity of the man.
And ending was remarkably satisfying, well-played, well-written. This is one of the highly original and well-developed, creative, playful, true to life, phenomenal, twisty thriller books! I enjoyed each page! I truly devoured them and I have to admit this is the best book of Catherine Ryan Howard! I highly recommend to genre fans and all readers who want to experience something remarkable, unique and splendid!
Special thanks to Edelweiss and Blackstone Publishing for sharing this one of the best thriller books’ ARC copy with me in exchange my honest review.