Rearview Mirror was an exceptional suspense novel by Stephanie Black. Fiona Claridge lost control of her car on a rainy night injuring herself and killing her roommate. After eight years the accident was resurfacing with malicious packages left as anonymous gifts. Whoever was leaving the packages wanted Fiona to suffer emotionally for her past mistakes.
Suspense novels typically involve a lot of mind games and emotional stress among the characters. This story was intense with the psychological warfare aimed at Fiona.
There were a lot of key characters which was confusing to me at first. And every character had their own rationalizations for “questionable” behavior. Stephanie did a great job of creating sympathy from the reader. She showed exactly how people fell from grace without realizing until it was too late.
One thing I love about Stephanie’s writing style is her realistic characterization. If her characters use profanity she shows that without the reader having to read any of it. That impresses me so much. In real life there are people who use choice words. Those characters are important in many stories but I don’t want to read what they say verbatim. Stephanie manages to get through this aspect of a character without making a big thing of it. The reader doesn’t feel the scene fell flat for them. Issues with infidelity and adultery are also handled tactfully. She is a really great writer.
She’s an LDS author so the Mormon culture is obviously in her books. Mormonism was prevalent in this story but in a subtle way. Readers don’t need to be well versed in Mormonism to understand. It’s simply a story that happens to Mormon characters. Not that she is trying for a wider audience, but that could be a point in her favor.
I loved all the intrigue, danger, and romance. Oh sorry. I’ve had The Pitch (Spectacular Spectacular) from Moulin Rouge stuck in my head all day. The twists and turns in this story kept it even more exciting. By the end of the book I had figured out how all the characters fit together in a web of lies. The last twist surprised me but in a should-have-known sort of way. It was cool. I really had deep sympathy for all the characters and their conflicts.
As the center of my own universe, I am now even more paranoid than ever before and suspicious of other’s intentions! Especially things that go bump in the night. That’s the joy of this genre. I know I had some other point I wanted to make but my kids keep interrupting me and my train of thought is lost down some black hole. I would highly recommend this book. It is really well written. I thoroughly enjoyed hating every second of it.
Thanks for the fantastic review, Tristan! I’m so glad you enjoyed hating it!
No, thank you for the book! I remember the other point I meant to make. I like the way you set up your chapters. You don’t do cliffhangers in the same way other authors do. Other authors will make a chapter all about one character and then have a cliffhanger ending. The problem with this is that if the story isn’t compelling enough or if a reader gets too impatient they can skip chapters to find out what happened to the one character. I like the way you have your row of asterisks to show time has passed or that you are moving on to other characters. The cliffhangers within the chapters and at the end of the chapters made for a fast paced compelling story.
I also liked how you changed point of view in Cold As Ice. It was very intriguing to read from so many character’s perspectives. In Rearview Mirror you kept a third person perspective throughout the book. I liked how you would reveal things to the reader that other characters hadn’t figured out yet. Even then I was still along for the ride. I knew things as a reader but couldn’t quite piece it all together until I got more information. Both books were page turners for me. Here’s the link to the my review of Cold As Ice. http://blog.felcore.com/2011/06/02/cold-as-ice/ Keep up the great work!
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