en-US Fri, 27 Jun 2025 10:24:30 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 33230889
Instant New York Times Bestseller

theSkimm Book Club Pick!

The stunning new novel from the international #1 bestselling author — a searing, spellbinding blend of cold-case thriller and psychological suspense.

Two girls are forced into the woods at gunpoint. One runs for her life. One is left behind…

Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father — Pikeville's notorious defense attorney — devastated. And it left the family fractured beyond repair, consumed by secrets from that terrible night.

Twenty-eight years later, and Charlie has followed in her father's footsteps to become a lawyer herself — the ideal good daughter. But when violence comes to Pikeville again — and a shocking tragedy leaves the whole town traumatized — Charlie is plunged into a nightmare. Not only is she the first witness on the scene, but it's a case that unleashes the terrible memories she's spent so long trying to suppress. Because the shocking truth about the crime that destroyed her family nearly thirty years ago won't stay buried forever…

Packed with twists and turns, brimming with emotion and heart, The Good Daughter is fiction at its most thrilling.]]> 519 Karin Slaughter 0062430262 Rachel 5 4.10 2017
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/06/27
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One of the best books I have ever read. From start to finish, every line is perfect. I remember telling a writer who was just beginning to learn the craft that she couldn’t find a book better than this one at creating immediate love for her characters—and immediate heartbreak at following them being dragged to hell. Slaughter is a queen of the trade.
]]> 21686 369 Dennis Lehane 038073186X Rachel 5 4.12 2003
author: Dennis Lehane
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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review:
Like everyone in my generation, I watched the movie when it came out. Loved it—what’s there not to love? The acting is great, the plot is STELLAR, and I still love the movie, mind you. It’s a great adaptation. Then I read the book, years later, and I felt as if my soul had been laid bare for the world to see. That is the beauty of art—a man I have never met, born in a country I had never stepped foot in, and who no doubt has very different life experiences from mine, made me feel as if he had not only looked down the darkest recesses of my mind, but told the world with righter words than even I could have come up with. No book has touched more deeply than this one.
]]> 10592
Make a date with terror and live the nightmare that is...Carrie
--back cover]]> 272 Stephen King 1416524304 Rachel 5 4.00 1974
author: Stephen King
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1974
rating: 5
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I remember reading this while finishing my master’s degree and thinking there were just as many layers to Carrie as to the classics I studied for school. I don’t know how King managed to say so much with such few words. A masterpiece.
]]> 391724
The tale centers on two matters, a black cat and the deterioration of a man. The man is one who enjoyed family life with his wife and numerous pets, but then he changed radically for the worse. The story is often compared to "The Tell-Tale Heart" because of the profound psychological elements these two works share. "The Black Cat" is a story you will never forget.

Librarian's note: this entry relates to the story "The Black Cat." Collections and other short stories by the author can be found elsewhere on 카지노싸이트.]]> 24 Edgar Allan Poe 1594561753 Rachel 5 4.07 1843
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1843
rating: 5
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Anyone who’s read my debut novel will know how influenced I’ve been by Edgar Allan Poe. Few writers can rival his ability to dive so fearless into the human mind. The way he writes obsession and guilt has haunted me throughout the years. And though it’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” that’s referenced in my novel, “The Black Cat” is the story where I think Poe’s exploration of guilt is at its starkest. In a way, you could say it’s referenced by the cover of No Rest for the Wicked—but I had no hand in that, I just fell in love with it like everyone else.
]]> 44890081
2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.]]> 373 Kate Elizabeth Russell 006294150X Rachel 5 4.09 2020
author: Kate Elizabeth Russell
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/06/27
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I remember reading the first page and wishing it would never end. I remember reading some passages and thinking ‘This has to end’. When I finished it, I was at once relieved for my body—which was a wreck—and sad because I knew I wouldn’t read a book half as good all year.
]]> 34454589 320 Margaret Atwood 1328879941 Rachel 5 4.28 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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I wrote my master’s thesis on The Handmaid’s Tale. It has haunted me ever since. What struck me most about Atwood’s writing wasn’t even how well she portrayed the reality of gendered violence, in a dystopia no less. It was her ability to nail the sometimes irresistible temptation we have to forgive our abusers. Only when we acknowledge the way our minds have been warped to excuse the everyday forms of male violence do we feel “their true power”.
]]> 18045891
Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0307341550 (ISBN 13: 9780307341556)]]> 254 Gillian Flynn 0297851535 Rachel 5 4.05 2006
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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review:
When I read Sharp Objects, I couldn’t sleep all night from how it had activated all the red lights in my sympathetic system. I remember staring at the ceiling, jumping at the merest noise, and thinking I would never get over how brilliantly brutal this book was. I never have.
]]> 10614 #1, #2, #3, #4

Paul Sheldon. He's a bestselling novelist who has finally met his biggest fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes and she is more than a rabid reader - she is Paul's nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house.]]> 370 Stephen King 0450417395 Rachel 5 4.22 1987
author: Stephen King
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/06/27
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review:
No better book has ever been written about writing than Misery. When I first read it, I was struck by a wave of pointlessness—why write, when everything that fascinates me in a novel and about novels had been written by the absolute King of writers? But as he puts it, writing is worth it just for the pleasure of disappearing in a hole in paper (or on a computer). It’s not (just) about creating stories people will love. It’s about escaping monsters by creating monsters, about letting them murder you and sometimes doing the murdering. Do the monsters ever die for real, or do we always have to kill them again and again? Is Annie dead in the end? What do you think?
]]> 200982373 Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him. Protect him. Lie for him.

Kill for him.

High school senior Andrew Perrault finds refuge in the twisted fairytales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality―Thomas Rye, the boy with perpetually ink-stained hands and hair like autumn leaves. And with his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to Wickwood Academy, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more.

But something strange is going on with Thomas. His abusive parents have mysteriously vanished, and he arrives at school with blood on his sleeve. Thomas won't say a word about it, and shuts down whenever Andrew tries to ask him questions. Stranger still, Thomas is haunted by something, and he seems to have lost interest in his artwork―whimsically macabre sketches of the monsters from Andrew's wicked stories.

Desperate to figure out what's wrong with his friend, Andrew follows Thomas into the off-limits forest one night and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster―Thomas's drawings have come to life and are killing anyone close to him. To make sure no one else dies, the boys battle the monsters every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew begins to fear that the only way to stop the creatures might be to destroy their creator...]]> 336 C.G. Drews 1250895669 Rachel 5 It’s a book about love and loneliness, about art and community, about monsters and monsters, and monsters, and monsters.
Don’t let them in.
Or do. But remember to grab something sharp with you to cut them out of your heart, too.
]]> 4.10 2024
author: C.G. Drews
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/06/27
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review:
How can I sum up this book? Don’t Let the Forest In is about a boy who rips out his heart. No. It’s about an author that rips out your heart, and they do it with such brilliant prose and memorable characters that you’ll finish the book saying, “Do it again.”
It’s a book about love and loneliness, about art and community, about monsters and monsters, and monsters, and monsters.
Don’t let them in.
Or do. But remember to grab something sharp with you to cut them out of your heart, too.

]]> 203579177 From the bestselling author of Hidden Pictures comes a breathtaking work of suspense about a father trying to save his daughter from a life-altering decision that will put everything he loves on the line.

Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would become permanent. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic, and determined to finally make things right.

He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate—very secluded, very luxurious, very much out of his league. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But it’s difficult: Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose Maggie forever.

An edge-of-your-seat thriller that delves deep into the heart of one family, The Last One at the Wedding is a work of brilliant suspense from a true modern master.]]> 338 Jason Rekulak 1250895782 Rachel 5 A father reconnects with his estranged daughter, as she’s about to marry into one of the richest families in the country. But sometimes, even when all that glitters is gold, you still need to worry. Rekulak’s prose reads so effortlessly. I got sucked in without trying. By the time I’d finished my Kindle sample, I couldn’t believe I’d been reading longer than five minutes.
Cannot wait for his next novel.
]]> 3.60 2024
author: Jason Rekulak
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/06/27
shelves:
review:
Hidden Pictures brought me here, as it’s one of my favorite reads ever. The Last One at the Wedding didn’t disappoint.
A father reconnects with his estranged daughter, as she’s about to marry into one of the richest families in the country. But sometimes, even when all that glitters is gold, you still need to worry. Rekulak’s prose reads so effortlessly. I got sucked in without trying. By the time I’d finished my Kindle sample, I couldn’t believe I’d been reading longer than five minutes.
Cannot wait for his next novel.

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