I’m sharing another instalment of my Mini Review Mondays, the most recent of which was last week. In case you haven’t seen any of my previous posts, I do ‘mini’ reviews of books that I’ve previously read and am now ready to share my full thoughts about.
First up, I’d like to talk about Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson. Thank you to Michael Joseph for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out.
The program is a who’s who of crime writing royalty:
the debut writer (me!)
the forensic science writer
the blockbuster writer
the legal thriller writer
the literary writer
the psychological suspense writer.
But when one of us is murdered, six authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime.
Or commit one . . .
But how do you catch a killer, when all your suspects know how to get away with murder?
Publication Date: 29th February
TW: murder, death, rape, child sexual abuse, sexual assault, blackmail, gaslighting, manipulation, hit and run, poisoning
My Thoughts:
Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect is another incredibly captivating and entertaining book with a good sense of both heart and humour.
Benjamin Stevenson has such a knack for crafting mysteries that root inside my brain and consume my every waking thought. This was hilarious, deftly written and incredibly twisty. While it works well as a standalone, I have an increased love for it after reading the first Ernest Cunningham (Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone). He is just a brilliantly bonkers protagonist and his voice is infectious.
Stevenson infuses every page with humour and a knowing wink to the audience – it is incredibly meta as Ernest tears apart the very conventions his story is following. I also thought the counting was an ingenious idea. Here is a blatant thread to follow where you should be able to follow along and easily solve, yet you are bamboozled and tripped up constantly. The whole conceit is just stellar. There’s direct references to Murder on the Orient Express, but with the added twist of a crime festival complete with superstar crime writers and megafans of the genre. It should be a doddle, right?
I also adore how unexpectedly emotional it was. At its core, these books are all about messy human relationships and the connections we form with one another. These may be familial, friendship and something more, but they are often knotty and complex things. Ernest is a bit oblivious when it comes to this side of things and I enjoy having a narrator that knows it all when it comes to the technicalities, but not necessarily in practice. He still has these absolute flashes of brilliance and the denouement scene is exquisite.
Everyone on This Train is a Suspect marries two ingenious ideas into a mystery that is all-consuming, addictive and just a cracker to read.
Next up, I’d like to talk about The Escape Room by L. D. Smithson. Thank you to Chloe at Transworld for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Everything is a clue.
Bonnie arrives on a remote sea fort off the coast of England to take part in a mysterious reality TV show. Competing against seven strangers, she must solve a series of puzzles to win the prize money, but this is no game – and the consequences of failure are deadly.
No one leaves.
Under scrutiny from the watching public, the contestants quickly turn on one another. Who will sacrifice the most for wealth and fame? And why can’t Bonnie shake the creeping sense that they are not alone?
The only way out is to win.
When the first contestant is found dead, Bonnie begins to understand the dark truth at the heart of this twisted competition: there’s a killer inside the fort, and anyone could be next. If Bonnie wants to escape, she needs to win…
Are you ready to play?
Publication Date: 29th February
TW: murder, death, violence, imprisonment, torture, gaslighting
My Thoughts:
The Escape Room was a fantastic thriller that really built on its captivating concept.
I make no secret that I am obsessed with the TV series The Traitors and have been devouring thrillers with similar concepts recently. This was a stellar thriller that was beyond brilliant in its pacing, tension and suspense. Smithson takes the always tantalising premise of reality TV gone very wrong and weaves into it an exploration of true crime and trauma. Throughout the book, there are podcast excerpts with the survivor and this instantly sets the stakes for what is coming your way. You know things will end tragically and yet you become deeply invested in these characters.
They fit some standard tropes of that form of media, but have hidden complexities and motivations. Bonnie is our protagonist and forms the heart of the novel – only in this situation to help her sister. She is smart, determined and driven, but also sometimes too guarded and mistrusting. You know from the start she’s there under a false premise, which makes you question everything and everyone else around her too. There are just so many layers to this mystery and I loved unpicking them. Smithson’s plotting is exquisite and the twists were next level too. I was left with my mouth agape at two distinct points in the book. They were just completely overwhelming and hit both character and plot wise.
I am also a sucker for a good puzzle and Smithson has plenty with jigsaw boxes aplenty. There is often a hidden undercurrent to these as well, which adds a new dimension to the mystery. I loved the social commentary about the price of fame and its fleeting nature, particularly in an age of social media and rapidly rising and falling shows.
The Escape Room is a rip-roaring, completely immersive thriller that does not let you out of its grasp.
Finally, I’d like to delve into The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste. Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.
Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.
Then an enemy’s iron bullet kills her mother, Venus’s life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother’s killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.’s most influential politicians.
As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it’s hard to tell who to trust…Herself included.
Publication Date: 5th March
TW: parental death, child death, grief, police brutality, racism, violence, gore, injury detail, coercion, gun violence, PTSD, anxiety, depression, self-harm for magic purposes, blood, drugs
My Thoughts:
The Poisons We Drink seethes with rage and fury and brilliantly complex, morally grey characters that I adored. This has everything I love in a YA fantasy and so much more.
This fantastical mystery had such a phenomenal world within its pages and I would happily read other stories within this world. The magic system was raw, embodying the consequences of one’s actions. It was also deeply fascinating and glimmered with the potential of something equally wonderful and deadly just around the corner. Baptiste opens each chapter with these snippets of information that are just intriguing and help build up this world, without feeling too much.
It is an incredible layered book, with lots of threads to unravel. Complex familial relationships and grief are central themes of the book with Baptiste sitting in those difficult ambiguities. The depiction of grief was crushing in its authenticity and emotional truthfulness. I loved how these wonderfully messy, complex and sometimes unlikeable characters just doing their best to survive. They are flawed and nuanced, allowed space to breathe on the page. The system around them despises them, trying to crush them at every given opportunity. When there is the tiniest glimpse of power, why wouldn’t they try and seize it in a miniscule tipping of the scales?
In particular, Venus is a new top tier character for me. She spends much of the book grappling with the weight of this power and the expectations around it. She is constantly under immense pressure and battling a complicated sense of grief, while also tapping into her restrained rage. You know there is an explosion coming and when it hits, it is catastrophic.
The Poisons We Drink pulses with an unrestrained fury that just pulls you in and invites you to unleash alongside Venus.. It is a book that goes there and cuts deep.
A Short Book Lover 
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