Skye Thorn has given tarot card readings for years, and now her psychic visions are helping the police find the town’s missing golden girl. It’s no challenge—her readings have always been faked, but this time she has some insider knowledge. The kidnapping was supposed to be easy—no one would get hurt and she’d get the money she needs to start a new life. But a seemingly harmless prank has turned dark, and Skye realizes the people she’s involved with are willing to kill to get what they want and she must discover their true identity before it’s too late.
I received this book from the publishers for this blog tour in exchange for an honest review. I was in no way compensated for this review.
The Hanging Girl was my first book by Eileen Cook though I do have another of her thrillers in my TBR pile. I was intrigued with this one because for one thing, Skye is pretending to be a psychic in order to earn money to pay for an apartment with her best friend after high school. She gives tarot readings and while not having any real divine talent she's still pretty good at what she does.
Then suddenly one of her classmates is kidnapped and Skye is the one who had a vision of her being taken. No one knows why Paige was taken but it likely had something to do with her father, who is a judge, and also plans to run for senate. But there's something Skye is telling everyone, that she was in cahoots with the kidnapper and helped plan the whole thing in order to gain ransom money to help pay for her future. But then things take a dangerous turn when the plan changes and everything that was supposed to happen doesn't. Soon there is a real mystery going on with what happened to Paige!
This one was quite exciting! Things were kind of crazy, but in a good sense. You never once feel lost by what is happening. We know that Skye was in on the kidnapping and things are slowly revealed as to the whys of the matter. And when chaos reigns its ugly head into the matter and changes the game, things get very dangerous indeed!
I didn't realize how many books Eileen has written already! For some reason I thought her book last year was a debut, but it wasn't. It looks like she might have written a thriller-esque kind of novel before that as well!
I don't want to get too much into the thick of things where it comes to plot changes and monkey wrenches, lol, but just know that this was one wild read! And the ending! Which I will get to in a bit! One thing that kind of left me puzzled was the lack of suspects into the matter. Obviously we know that the whole kidnapping scheme starts out as a fake before the tables turn drastically, but in the whole mess of it all, I never felt like we had a good grasp of suspects. Granted I did have some speculations among the characters we had, but they never felt like concrete suspects, more like choosing from what was available. I'm not sure if that was meant to be the case or not, but with a mystery-ish kind of read I would've thought we would have more suspects to choose from in our cast of characters.
But that ending! OMG! I think at one point I might have suspected something to the ending, but never really gave myself time to flesh it out. Even then I still wasn't entirely sold on the reasoning, but I do get it. Then there was the resolution too which also left me feeling a bit unsettled. I suppose it's meant to...in a way? I don't know. Clearly I have conflicting feelings over it!
What I did miss was the sense of danger. We did have some, but I guess it wasn't the heart-racing danger I was looking for. The Hanging Girl was still a rather remarkable read and has a good sense of moral values to it too.
The Hanging Girl was definitely an intriguing read and though I wouldn't call it a fast favorite it was still very enjoyable! I definitely can't wait to check out the other thrillers Eileen has written and will write!
Overall Rating 4/5 stars
Eileen Cook is a multi-published author with her novels appearing in eight different languages. Her books have been optioned for film and TV. She spent most of her teen years wishing she were someone else or somewhere else, which is great training for a writer. Her newest book, WITH MALICE, will be out in June 2016. She’s an instructor/mentor with the Simon Fraser University Writer’s Studio Program.
You can read more about Eileen, her books, and the things that strike her as funny atwww.eileencook.com. Eileen lives in Vancouver with her husband and two very naughty dogs and no longer wishes to be anyone or anywhere else.
3 Winners will receive a finished copy of The Hanging Girl, US Only.
The Tour Schedule:
Week Two:
10/2/2017- books and photographs- Review
10/3/2017- Wandering Bark Books- Guest Post
10/4/2017- JustAddaWord- Review
I'm sad because I never read my eARC and it's been archived! I think you would LOVE With Malice Jessica!
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