The Breakdown: A Novel

I got so excited after I opened the mailbox and see a package from St. Martins Press because I just KNOW something wonderful will be inside. Totally unexpected…and wonderful! An advance readers copy of The Breakdown by B. A. Paris! WhooHoo…my plans for the next few hours have changed! I gathered the green tea, fruit, chocolate, coffee, trail mix, comfy socks, favorite pillow and headed for my big leather chair. But now that I have smacked you with readers envy, let’s get to the book! The Breakdown does not disappoint the reader with the psychological thriller and suspense written into the story. I won’t post spoilers, but I knew before I opened the book to have myself prepared. The main character, Cass had been at a party with friends from work on a very rainy evening. It is the end of the school year and Cass has a few weeks of vacation to enjoy before the next teaching session resumes. As she is leaving her husband Matthew calls and tells her he has a migraine and is going to bed. He adamantly warns her not to take the shortcut through the woods home during the storm. He is worried for her safety and she promises to avoid the wooded secluded road. As the storm and traffic on the highway increases Cass impulsively take the shortcut home. It is getting dark, the rain is pounding and the rural road is deserted except for …up ahead she sees a car pulled over to the side. This begins a regrettable and emotionally tortuous event in her life. Psychological suspense, worry, and some bad choices plague Cass during her weeks when she should have been enjoying her life. She has a secret she has not shared with Matthew about herself before they were married. When she wakes up the day after her stormy drive through Blackwater Lane, she discovers a shocking horror and decides to keep another secret. As I read the story I personally felt so badly for Cass as she faces the possibility she may be losing her memory. As a reader I felt she made some poor decisions due to her secrets and fears. This is another ‘must read’ book by author B. A. Paris and once you start reading…you will not want to stop until the end!!

Firstly, let me just say that I cannot stand the current 'fad' of adding unnecessary drivel to the title of Kindle suspense/thrillers. In this case,"The Breakdown: The 2017 Gripping Thriller from the Bestselling Author of Behind Closed Doors". Seriously. Personally, I find this presumptuous and pompous: I, the reader, will decide if it's "gripping" or even a thriller. 2017 is a fact that is irrelevant to the title, as is the rest of the promo b.s. that follows. It seems you can't even buy a novel without having to get the trailer/tagline too. And everyone seems to be doing it. I wanted to deduct an entire star for that alone, so pay attention indie authors and publishing PR departments....you're on this ice with this nonsense. Now, to the book. Having started off badly with me (see the above paragraph), this book ad a lot to overcome. The first 20 pages or so...great. Riveting. Even "Gripping." And then we hit the downward spiral. MILD PLOT SPOILER: the majority of the book is really about a woman terrified that the phone might ring. This is punctuated with occasional daily events, but really, that's what it boils down to. There are the repercussions to her personal life from this fear, her ruminations on why she's afraid, on what this fear and her behaviour is doing to her marriage and her friends and her sanity, but I found that this part seemed to take f.o.r.e.v.e.r. There was enough periphery to keep me following along, but I was missing 'gripping' for the entire middle and then some. BUT. About 2 chapters from the end, suddenly it seemed that we had all suffered enough (the author, the character and the reader) and the story suddenly veered off in an interesting (but not "gripping") direction. I loved those last 2 chapters and I even forgave the author and the character the extensive wandering in the middle...because it was relevant to the plot, though less might have been more. All in all, I enjoyed this. It's no 'Girl on the Train' (THAT was gripping), because I think that the 'suspense' that was supposed to be created by the events just didn't suck me in. I didn't subscribe to the character's jeopardy - at least, not the jeopardy that she was trying to sell me. Maybe it worked for others, but I was left feeling like I was listening to someone with a bit of an overactive imagination who excelled at putting two and two together and routinely arriving at five. So, despite the fact that this was more of a domestic drama than a domestic noir, the last 2 chapters and the alignment of the plot pieces made it an interesting read. But 'gripping'? No. That's just the sales sheet.

I really wanted to love this book!! Based on its ratings, I am one of the few who did not. SYNOPSIS The plot is a bit complicated. Cass is happily married to Matthew, loves her job as a high school teacher and is still super close with her lifelong BFF, Rachel. Cass has just been through a very rough patch in her life; losing her father to a car accident, then spending 3 years taking care of her mother who was suffering from severe early onset dementia until her mother's death. Now that the worst is behind her, Cass is determined to appreciate her life, her husband and the rather large nest egg her mother has left her. Everything is going fine until one rainy night. Cass takes a heavily forested back road home from a party and comes across a car on the side of the road, it looks like the driver may be in distress. She makes a limited attempt to help but ends up getting spooked and leaves the scene. When she wakes up the next day to find the driver was murdered, she is overcome with guilt and regret. In the meantime, Cass keeps having episodes of forgetfulness. At first she thinks nothing of it, but it begins to escalate and considering what happened to her mother, she begins to worry that she is suffering from early onset dementia like her mother. When weird things begin to happen, she wonders if it was her imagination or if the killer noticed her at the scene and is coming for her. WHAT I LOVED Again with the British obsession! I love books with British settings. It's just so darn quaint. Love how everyone is always having tea. Love the variations of dialect; "car park" for "parking lot," "lorry" for "truck," "jumper" for "sweater." Yes, I'm a total nerd but I LOVE it all. Good concept for the plot but not great execution. It should have been a great book with that plot, too bad it wasn't. WHAT I DIDN'T LOVE By page 25 I had the whole thing figured out and I am not an overachiever when it comes to outsmarting authors of thrillers. Usually I have a few theories and one of them ends up being mostly right, but this was so darn obvious. I wish it hadn't been. Maybe I've read too many psychological thrillers lately and need to take a break. OVERALL I didn't love it but I am clearly in the minority. It has very solid ratings. I am also one of the few who didn't like B. A. Paris's other book, "Behind Closed Doors," so if you liked that one, you should probably ignore my review.

If you want a book you can't put down . . . This is the first time I've read anything by B.A. Paris and it was a delight. It's the story of a woman who's newly married to an impossibly-nice-handsome man who stands by her as she descends into madness, or so she believes . . . Cass is a teacher in a small town in England who leaves a 'hen-party' late at night and drives through a storm, taking the a short cut through the woods. Since this is a suspense novel, you know that kind of thing can't end well, and for Cass it doesn't. She sees a woman waiting by the side of the road, and believing the woman's car to have broken down, Cass pulls over in front of the car. When the woman makes no move to indicate she might need help, like flashing her lights or honking the horn, Cass continues her way home thinking she can call the police when she gets home. Cass decides to not call the police, believing the woman to be fine, and then wakes up to the news that a woman a woman on the side of the road was brutally murdered last night. Cass is filled with guilt and regret, compounded by the fact that she seems to be losing her memory. Having just buried her mother who died of early-onset dementia, Cass is sure she's going down the same road. I can't say more without giving away the plot, but this is a good one. Be prepared to be up all night if you start this novel.

Cass is leaving her end-of-term faculty party during a huge storm and decides to take the Blackwater Lane shortcut that she promised her husband she would not take as it is a lonely and dangerous road, much more so in a storm at night. When she sees a woman stopped on the side of the road, she pulls over, but she is terrified because of the storm raging on and the isolation of the road. When the other woman doesn’t signal to her for help, Cass leaves after a few minutes. The next morning she is horrified to learn the news of the woman’s brutal murder. She feels so much guilt over not stopping, but she cannot tell her husband Matthew because she promised not to go that way. When she realizes that she knew the murdered woman, she is racked with guilt that is accompanied by tremendous anxiety. When her best friend Rachel calls she decides she will tell her over lunch. However, she is so overwrought because she forgot that she was supposed to be buying a group gift for another friend and has no idea what the gift was supposed to be, that she decides not to tell Rachel after all. As she begins to forget more and more things she becomes fearful that she is experiencing Early Onset Dementia like her mother, who was diagnosed at age 44. As her anxiety grows, so does her fear and then she starts receiving phone calls with no one speaking on the other end. Terror floods her mind as she believes that the killer must have seen her that night in the woods and is now out to get her. The fear, anxiety, and forgetfulness begins to worry Matthew and he insists she go to a doctor. The doctor gives her medicine for anxiety, and, although the pills help, they keep her knocked out most of the time and she can barely function. However, not taking them leads to a breakdown. Will she ever find out who is calling her? And is she really going crazy? Or is someone out to harm her or make her harm herself? Having read and loved B.A. Paris‘ Behind Closed Doors (click the link for that review) I was very excited when this book came out. When it finally made it to the top of my TBR pile, I was eager to get into it. My excitement abated a bit when I did not immediately click with Cass. I liked her, but she just wasn’t a friendly person to me. I listened on, believing that I would come to like her more, and I did a little and I felt somewhat sorry for her. The story is really good, even though I didn’t love Cass and didn’t really like her husband Matthew, either. I did like her friend Rachel, however. I wanted Cass to own up to someone about why she felt so guilty about the murdered woman, just wanted her to tell someone what she saw on the road and why she was afraid the murderer would target her. The story was really good and the twist at the end did shock me a little because I thought I had it figured out, but I had somewhat missed the mark. I really like how it ended and I came to really like Cass when she finally took control of her own destiny and stopped wallowing in self-doubt and self-pity. B.A. Paris has another book, Bring Me Back, coming in June of 2018 and it is one that I will look forward to reading as I truly enjoy her writing style and her twists that keep you a little off-balance. I also hope that Georgia Maguire is the narrator for the next one as she beautifully narrated both Behind Closed Doors and The Breakdown. Her voice is very appealing and she gives the characters an air of dignity that I really like. As recommendations go, if you haven’t read anything by B.A. Paris, I suggest you start with Behind Closed Doors and then read The Breakdown. I liked this one, but I loved the first one and I am looking forward to the next one. Note: These are all stand-alone books, they are not a series.

I think the overall plot was interesting to read. Throughout the whole book. I thought from the beginning that Rachel was actually her real sister. But towards the end I found out that she was like a sister which made more sense. I also thought that Matthew was so genuine and kind as her husband that I could not believe the ending. Plot twist! I also found it kind of funny with the way the writer described the issues she had with remembering things and the interactions with the people she came across. (Cass) It just goes to show what greed/money will do to people.

The Breakdown is the second book I've read by B.A. Paris. I love the cover of this book and since it had an intriguing blurb, I couldn't click fast enough to request it. The main character is Cass. She's a teacher and a recently married woman who after meeting some of her friends for a night out decides to take a shorter but darker pathway to get to her home. She's traveling at night and during a heavy storm. The storm is scaring her and it doesn't help that her husband told her not to take the shortcut because it could be dangerous at night. Soon after, she almost loses control of her car to avoid crashing into a parked car on the road. A woman is in the car. Cass is afraid it might be a way to entice her to get out of her car and then get attacked. After a few minutes of waiting to see if the woman comes asking for help, Cass drives away. The next morning she learns a woman has been found dead just a few miles away from her home. She, later on, learns the woman was murdered and it's the same woman she encountered on that dark and stormy night. What makes it even more disturbing is that she had met the victim, Jane, a couple of weeks back and they had clicked as friends. Cass is overwhelmed with guilt because she forgot to call someone to tell them a woman was stranded on the road and later, she decides not to contact the police about what she knows because she feels ashamed. Cass can't stop playing scenarios in her head. She could have helped Jane or maybe the murderer could have killed them both. Her guilt festers and becomes unbearable. It also coincides with Cass having short term memory issues. At first is just something inconsequential like forgetting her purse but soon she's forgetting she has invited friends over or she's buying things she can't remember purchasing. She's terrified she has developed early onset dementia, just like her mother did. The Breakdown is entertaining and suspenseful. Cass is engulfed with guilt and shame over not helping Jane on that frightful night. She's the perfect candidate to be manipulated. It was easy to guess who was manipulating her and the why but I still found myself absorbed by the plot. The last third of the book was the best and I was happy with the course of events. So what part didn't I like? It involves a new pet peeve of mine. I've seen this in multiple thrillers I read recently. It involves the lack of common sense against calling the police early on. Why wait so long? Want to get murdered before the bad guys are discovered? No, then call the cops!!! Anyway, I'm happy to report that The Breakdown is going in my yes thriller column. Cliffhanger: No 4/5 Fangs

An addictive psychological thriller that kept me second-guessing everything. The tension builds perfectly, and the twists had me completely hooked. Couldn’t put it down