Managed to get some reading done again over another cold, and thank goodness! wet weekend.
Finished off:
Against Their Will by Karina Kilmore
Started on:
Stay Buried
The claustrophobia of Room meets the camaraderie of Yellowjackets with a touch of Picnic at Hanging Rock in this dark, immersive, psychological thriller debut with a speculative/lite-horror edge.
Christmas Eve, 1974.
As Cyclone Tracy tears through Darwin, four girls disappear into the heart of the outback. No tracks. No bodies. No answers.
Decades later, one returns.
She claims to be one of the missing. But is she? There is no proof of who she is, only a keepsake that once belonged to another missing woman - Sally, a teen mother whose disappearance never mattered to anyone but Von, the daughter she left behind. Sally's return rekindles the cold case, as desperate families plead for answers - and a dark mystery begins to surface.
A hidden bunker ... a ghost ... scratches on a concrete wall ... pictures inside a View-Master ... and the little girl who understood the darkness better than anyone.
Inspired by true events, Stay Buried is the darkly thrilling tale of secrets unearthed, the will to survive and a legend that refuses to die.
Stay Buried, Jane R. Miles
Compelling, gripping, claustrophobic, and creepy as hell, STAY BURIED was a roller coaster of emotion from start to finish.
On Christmas Eve in 1974 Cyclone Tracy tore through Darwin, creating havoc. Thinking back to that time now, it's frightening how little we knew about it in either the lead up to or the immediate aftermath - communications have changed a lot. But in this story, it's important to remember that nobody knew for sure whether Tracy would hit Darwin, and the size that it would be when it arrived. Hence four young girls, teenagers and younger, went camping on Christmas Eve, in the bush on their own and post the cyclone - they had vanished. No tracks to be found, no bodies, nothing. The families took to referring to them as "The Angels".
There was also a known killer in the area - the bodies of two women had been found, and a third teen mother, Sally, had disappeared around the same time as well.
In the current timeline, Sally's daughter Von is now a young woman, desperate to remind everyone that her mother could also be an "Angel". Slightly different in age from the other four, and definitely different in lifestyle, Sally had been a bit of a wild child, a single mother, prone to working away from Darwin, and somebody that nobody seemed all that interested in searching for - except her daughter Von, who purposely inserts herself into every discussion about the Angels, every update from the police, and every media chance she can get, just to ensure that nobody forgets her missing mother.
Until the day that a woman is found, on the side of the road, near to where the bodies of the two women were dumped years before, naked, and barely recognisable. Is she the missing Sally, and can she cast any light on the fate of the Angels for their grieving (and complicated) families and loved ones?
This is one of those books that readers will find incredibly compelling, as well as decidedly discomforting. Especially if, like this reader, you're very claustrophobic. In that case, some of the earlier timeline might mean you're never going to turn the lights off again - it's very well written, very descriptive and realistic, without being exploitative. Suffice to say, what the four young girls go through is the stuff of nightmares. Balanced against that is the determination that all the women in this story exhibit. In the current timeline Von is as determined, and yet somehow incredibly vulnerable and engaging.
A debut novel, the writing in this is very assured, the dual timelines handled deftly and the inspiration, as explained in the author's notes, very sobering. There's a strong sense of Darwin, the people that live there, the weather that's part of their everyday lives, and the differences in social groupings and standings. There are also very timely reminders of the amount of restoration and recovery that was required post Cyclone Tracy.
It's very sobering to think that the basic premise of STAY BURIED was inspired by true events. Whilst it's mostly about the secrets that won't lay low and the legends or stories that refuse to go away, it's the sheer gritty determination of loved ones like Von, and her small group of collaborators and supporters, that will stay with me. The things that push people like them to work so hard to find an explanation, understand the past that has affected their lives so much, and find their own future.
Against Their Will
After walking away from traditional journalism, Danny Boyd is recruited to The Open—a covert investigative unit hunting the world’s darkest criminal networks. She proves herself quickly, until a mission against Kronos, a brutal trafficking syndicate, blows her cover. Ordered to stand down, Danny refuses. Children are still vanishing. Kronos is still out there.
Forced to moonlight as a PI, Danny takes a case a bit closer to home: a wealthy Ohio family unraveling after their patriarch, real estate developer Bob Wilson, is killed in a botched robbery. His will exposes shocking betrayals and a secret heir, so the Wilsons hire Danny to dig deeper. What begins as a privileged family succession dispute soon unearths deadly secrets, financial schemes, and a legacy of bitter revenge.
But someone is watching her. Is it Kronos? Or the Wilson family’s enemies? With two ruthless forces closing in, Danny must expose the truth—this time with no backup and nowhere to hide—before she’s silenced for good.
Against Their Will, Karina Kilmore
AGAINST THEIR WILL opens with a bang, and keeps up the pace, tension and jeopardy right to the very last page. Centred around Danny Boyd, a journalist who had been recruited to work for "The Open", a covert investigative unit hunting the world's worst criminal networks, she's very close to a breakthrough on a child abuse, trafficking ring known as Kronos, when her cover is spectacularly blown, and her future exploded before her eyes.
Forced to moonlight as a PI whilst lying low close to home in the US, she's assigned to the case of an Ohio family who have major problems after the death of the patriarch who was shot to death in what appears to have been a botched robbery. The reading of his will opens multiple cans of worms, and Boyd is tasked to find out the truth about an unknown son, revealing a hell of a lot more about a really screwed up family and just what vicious man the not much mourned Bob Wilson was along the way.
Meanwhile Boyd is completely incapable of stepping away from the Kronos investigation, torturing herself watching video's of children, looking for clues, working on setting up a major sting, bringing up a lot of guilty memories from when she was a child. She's also being watched - it's hard to tell if it's Kronos or something to do with the Wilson case, but the threats get very close and dangerous quickly, and Boyd ends up in a race to reveal truths about the Wilson's, and Kronos, before it's too late.
AGAINST THEIR WILL turned into a couple of sittings read, which seems wrong with the subject matter being so flat out awful. The Kronos trafficking ring is handled sensitively and cautiously but there is absolutely no getting away from the thought that kids are being trafficked into horrendous circumstances to this day, and ... what the hell is wrong with people. Mind you, families like the Wilson's make you wonder ... what the hell is wrong with people as well. Bob Wilson is one of those characters that is unmournable (not a word I know), a representative of the sort of reprehensible human being that the world could do without.
Balanced against the awful there are some really admirable characters in this outing as well - Danny Boyd is ruthless, talented and determined, beside her is the now disabled wife of Bob Wilson who, despite being in a wheelchair without speech, turns out to be the sort of strong female character that makes you feel better about the world. The story in AGAINST THEIR WILL is very much a rollercoaster - one where you could quite easily despair of the world and the disgusting behaviour of people, and one that makes you realise that there are some good ones out there - long may they conquer.
Happy Woman
Gwynne Hogg is an enviable woman – until she discovers her beloved dad is a serial killer.
As her dad’s decades-old secrets finally catch up with him, Gwynne struggles to reconcile the man she trusted most with the crimes he’s accused of. She tries to process it all while keeping the wheels of her ‘normal’ life turning. That means caring for her depressed mum, enduring the stares of other parents on the nursery run, and showing up for clients at her PR firm, all under the relentless gaze of the media.
But as the court case unfolds, Gwynne can’t shake the fear that a murderous gene might live inside her too.
Her thoughts grow darker, her once-happy life unravels, and she begins to wonder what she herself might be capable of …
Dirty!
Jen is seventeen, traveling under her older sister's identity, and married to a bikie. No one knows her real name. No one knows her real age. And no one suspects what she's capable of.
She has a secret. And that secret has a name.
By October 1983, she's executed the perfect crime.
Not with violence—though she's capable of that too. Not with chaos—though she leaves it in her wake.
The birth certificate says one thing. Biology says another.
The adoption is fraud. The mother is erased.
And everyone who witnesses it believes they're watching an act of mercy.
DIRTY! is the second book in the Bloodline Series—a cold-eyed examination of sociopathy, manipulation, and what happens when monsters wear the mask of mothers.
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