April 30, 2023

[Review] The Revenge List - Hannah Mary McKinnon

Summary:
The people in Frankie Morgan’s life say she’s angry. Emotionally stunted. Combative. But really, who can blame her? It’s hard being nice when your clients are insufferable, your next-door neighbor is a miserable woman and the cowardly driver who killed your mother is still out living it up somewhere.

Somehow, though, she finds herself at her very first anger-management group session—drinking terrible coffee and learning all about how “forgiveness is a process.”

One that starts with a list.

Frankie is skeptical. A list of everyone who’s wronged her in some way over the years? More paper, please. Still, she makes the pointless list—with her own name in a prominent spot—and promptly forgets about it…until it goes missing. And one by one, the people she’s named start getting hurt in freak accidents, each deadlier than the last.

Could it be coincidence giving her the revenge she never dared to seek…or something more sinister?

If Frankie doesn’t find out who’s behind it all, she might be next.
(Pub Date: May 23 2023)

 

YES! Yes, yes! It's been a while that a book kept me almost captive. I really, really had to know what was going on, because I was starting to think we were all going crazy. And maybe I did go crazy.

When Frankie's father tells her to attend anger management therapy, she didn't know one of the silly exercises given to her group would be capable of turning her life upside down to any point, much less that her forgiveness list would become some sort of hit list. And among the persons she can't forgive listed there, she might be the next target. With no one she can count on, she needs to go after each of the names and gather the clues to understand why the people she's angry about the most have been in accidents soon after she listed them.

Of course, we have plot twists. But I don't think that was what kept me going. I didn't need them, actually. The whole thing was such an enigma, Frankie's life just suddenly became such a mess, it was hard not to want to help her by understanding how all that was happening. Not that I could whisper it to her, but the feeling was huge that someone—even if it was me—had to relieve some of her burden. I don't even know how I could connect so much with someone so angry and out of control, but I did. Even as I begged her to calm down, I was feeling with her the anxiety of each turn she took.

Surely, this isn't a perfect read. It did give me feelings, it glued me to its pages, and it was fast-paced, easy to read and follow, thanks to how organized Hannah Mary McKinnon is with all her plots. But in the end, the content isn't so new. It's just very well executed. There are touches here and there that could have been the seed to a masterpiece, but it would probably require so much tinkering, it's not worth the time it would waste with the potential of all that effort going wrong. So I understand why choose it to be not so unique. There's always the next book, anyway. But wow, this one is probably my favorite by this author since The Neighbors, but it's hard to choose. 

Recommended to any reader of thriller, you've got action, you've got mysteries to unravel, you've twists, and well-dosed family drama (I almost cried with this one).


Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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