Book: The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (Thriller)
Written by Clara Wolfe
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
If you are looking for a creepy story to binge read on a rainy day, The Housemaid by Freida McFadden may be for you. I read it in three hours on a road trip; however, the story stayed in my mind for the days following.
The book centers around Millie Calloway, a young woman with a dark past that she is trying to put behind her. She gets a job as a maid for a wealthy family, the Winchesters. But what starts as a dream job begins to turn into Millie’s worst nightmare as she learns more about the dysfunctional home and its inhabitants. The twists and turns in this story will take you to both an unexpected and satisfying conclusion, and you will find yourself second guessing everything you think you have learned about the characters.
If you are a fan of high-stakes psychological thrillers, I highly recommend you add The Housemaid to your reading list this fall.
(Trigger Warnings: violence, domestic abuse, attempted suicide)
Book: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Mystery)
Written by Clara Wolfe
Rating: 5/5 stars
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is one of the most memorable and addictive mystery novels I have ever read, and its dark and fast-paced story would be beautifully coupled by a cool autumn day.
On his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne arrives home from work to find his home in disarray and his wife gone. As the novel progresses, a cliche tale becomes something darker as the dual-perspective narrative unveils the bitter truth of a seemingly perfect marriage. The stakes rise as police and media zero in on Nick, a doting husband turned evasive suspect, but Nick still insists on his innocence.
In this book, Flynn illustrates the catastrophic price of high expectations, and the ending will have you questioning even your own sanity. If you choose to read this book, be sure to clear your schedule, because you won’t want to put it down.
(Trigger Warnings: violence, rape, domestic violence, manipulation)
Book: “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami (Romance)
Written by Suna Erdim
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood is a unique, non-linear romance set in 1960s Tokyo. Starting in the crisp autumn of his freshman year, college student Toru Watanabe and his high school friend, Naoko, begin to lean on each other as they recover from the death of a mutual friend. Slowly, they develop their own intimate relationship. But when Naoko’s mental health takes a jarring turn for the worse, Toru finds himself alone in sorting through the havoc of his university’s environment and the array of strange people around him, including an outspoken and reflective fellow student named Midori.
Translated into over 30 languages from the original Japanese, the novel is internationally renowned and iconically popular in its home country. While sometimes criticized by readers of Murakami as safe and conventional compared to the unorthodox, fever dream-like plotlines of his other, less mainstream works, Norwegian Wood remains filled with emotional depth and is an ideal choice for those seeking an introspective approach on the nature of human relationships.
(Trigger Warnings: suicide, mental illness, rape, sexual content)
Book: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Realistic Dystopian)
Written by William Helser
Rating: 5/5 stars
I call this book “realistic dystopian” unfortunately, that is 100 percent true. Little Brother follows a teenage hacker as its main character. The book opens with him outwitting his school’s security, skipping school, ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and being unlawfully arrested as a suspected terrorist. After a merciless and unlawful interrogation he is released to find his home city of San Francisco turned into a police state almost overnight.
And that’s just the beginning. What follows is a tale of hacking, civil disobedience, constitutional violations, love and even journalism, written by an author with a habit of research, citing his sources and posting his books for free on the internet.
I am not kidding about that last one. This book is available online for free right now! And you don’t even have to pirate it. (https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/)
(Trigger Warnings: torture, violence, police brutality, sexual content, depictions of large scale constitutional violations)
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
