'She wrote the book on escaping a predator… Now one is coming for her.
'Faith Finley has it all: she’s a talented psychologist with a flourishing career, a bestselling author and the host of a popular local radio program, Someone’s Listening, with Dr. Faith Finley. She’s married to the perfect man, Liam Finley, a respected food critic. Until the night everything goes horribly wrong, and Faith’s life is shattered forever.
'Liam is missing—gone without a trace—and the police are suspicious of everything Faith says. They either think she has something to hide, or that she’s lost her mind. And then the notes begin to arrive. Notes that are ripped from Faith’s own book, the one that helps victims leave their abusers. Notes like “Lock your windows. Consider investing in a steel door.” As the threats escalate, the mystery behind Liam’s disappearance intensifies. And Faith’s very life will depend on finding answers. '
Someone's Listening is one of those rare thrillers where I find myself trying to guess what's coming next, where I get sucked in and try to figure out what might be going on. I appreciate that this is something that most readers do when they read this genre, but I myself tend to be more passive in my journey in mystery books, enjoying the unfolding narrative and watching our heroes try to figure things out; as such, it tends to be a rare book for it to make me an active participant. But in this case I couldn't help but become so invested that I even cheered aloud at one point.
The book follows Faith, a successful psychologist with a popular radio show and book, who's ready to publish her second book. When Faith is accused of misconduct from a former patient she becomes harassed by the press, and found guilty in the court of public opinion. With her life spiralling out of her control around her, and everything she's doing being used against her, things become worse when she and her husband, Liam, are in an accident.
Faith wakes in hospital, having sustained serious injuries from the car crash, but there was no sign that her husband was in the vehicle with her. The police try searching for Liam, but find no trace of him. Months later Faith is trying to put her life back together, whilst searching for answers about Liam's disappearance. It's then when threatening notes begin to appear, passages taken from her own book. With this mysterious stalker closing in on her, Faith is pushed to the limit to try to find her husband, and stop whoever is trying to hurt her.
When I wake up, it’s black and still; I feel a light, icy snow that floats rather than falls, and I can’t open my eyes. I don’t know where I am, but it’s so quiet, the silence rings in my ears. My fingertips try to grip the ground, but I feel only a sheet of ice beneath me, splintered with bits of imbedded gravel. The air is sharp, and I try to call for him, but I can’t speak. How long have I been here? I drift back out of consciousness. The next time I wake, I hear the crunching of ice under the boots of EMTs who rush around my body. I know where I am. I’m lying in the middle of County Road 6. There has been a crash. There’s a swirling red light, a strobe light in the vast blackness: they tell me not to move.
“Where’s my husband?” I whimper. They tell me to try not to talk either. “Liam!” I try to yell for him, but it barely escapes my lips; they’re numb, near frozen, and it comes out in a hoarse whisper. How has this happened?
I think of the party and how I hate driving at night, and how I was careful not to drink too much. I nursed a glass or two, stayed in control. Liam had a lot more. It wasn’t like him to get loaded, and I knew it was his way of getting back at me. He was irritated with me, with the position I’d put him in, even though he had never said it in so many words. I wanted to please him because this whole horrible situation was my fault, and I was sorry.
When I wake up again I’m in a hospital room, connected to tubes and machines. The IV needle is stuck into a bruised, purple vein in the back of my hand that aches. In the dim light, I sip juice from a tiny plastic cup, and the soft beep of the EKG tries to lull me back to sleep, but I fight it. I want answers. I need to appear stabilized and alert. Another dose of painkiller is released into my IV; the momentary euphoria forces me to heave a sigh. I need to keep my eyes open. I can hear the cops arrive and talk to someone at a desk outside my door. They’ll tell me what happened.
There’s a nurse who calls me “sweetie” and changes the subject when I ask about the accident. She gives the cops a sideways look when they come in to talk to me, and tells them they only have a few minutes and that I need to rest.
Detective John Sterling greets me with a soft “Hello, ma’am.” I almost forget about my shattered femur and groan after I move too quickly. Another officer lingers by the door, a tall, stern-looking woman with her light hair pulled into a tight bun at the base of her skull. She tells me I’m lucky to be alive, and if it had dropped below freezing, I wouldn’t have lasted those couple hours before a passing car stopped and called 911. I ask where Liam is, but she just looks to Sterling. Something is terribly wrong.
One of the best things about Someone's Listening is that it almost feels like multiple books in one. There's the story of Faith's former patient accusing her of sexual misconduct and the affect this has on her career and personal life. There's the accident that she suffers through and Liam going missing. And there's this dangerous new stalker coming out of the shadows, leaving her threatening messages and shattering what little security she has left. Any one of these could have been the focus of the novel, and Seaphina Nova Glass is clearly skilled enough to take any of these plots and craft a novel around them; the fact that all of them are here though, is astounding.
Not only does she allow each of these stories have enough room to breath, to feel like full and satisfying narratives in their own right, but she weaves them in and out of the book to great effect. She's made it so that Faith is not only going up against one awful thing, any of which could ruin a person's life, but having to deal with them all at once. The effect is a series of events that's truly staggering, that would push any person to breaking point. Because of this, I can say with very little exaggeration that Faith Finley is one of the strongest lead characters I've read.
Over the course of this book Faith is pushed to some awful extremes, and as a result she does make some pretty bad decisions that I feel the character wouldn't normally make. She's supposed to be a well reasoned psychologist, a woman who is supposed to know better, yet repeatedly puts herself in dangerous and stupid situations. I've seen some reviews use this as a way to bash the character, to say that she's not very smart; but this is a woman who's at breaking point, who's lost damn near everything, and still has more awful stuff happening to her. Despite all that she not only manages to solve her problems but survives a killer. I'm pretty sure that's something that I wouldn't be able to do in her shoes. Even when close to defeated, when she's resorting to drink and drugs to survive she doesn't let things break her. She keeps on fighting throughout, and I found that astounding.
I was told before I started reading this book that it would be twisty, that I probably wouldn't figure out the ending. For a time I thought I had, and I actually cheered out loud when I thought my suspicions had been proven right to the point where I get a weird look from my wife. Unfortunately, I was too quick off the mark, and Seaphina proved to have completely tricked me. She set up a series of red-herrings and I'd blindly accepted them. When the real ending was revealed I was genuinely stunned, because it was something that I wasn't expecting at all. Not only had she drawn me into the mystery and made me actively excited to figure it out, but she then completely hoodwinked me. I loved it.
Someone's Listening was a book that I very quickly became invested in, with a lead who I was left wanting to see more from, and a mystery that had me scratching my head and left me stunned. Like I said earlier, not may mystery books manage to grab me in this way, so I was so grateful that this one did. I would definitely recommend it to any mystery and thriller fans, and am excited to see what the author does next.
No comments:
Post a Comment