Book Smart Kate

Book: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟Audiobook: Book: 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫

by Riley Sager

This book, my first by Riley Sager, is an absolute thrill ride with more twists and turns than I ever could have anticipated.

In 1929, the entire Hope family, except for daughter Lenora, is murdered in their cliffside mansion, Hope’s End. Although there was never enough evidence, the whole town believes Lenora did it. Flash forward to 1983, and Kit McDeere is hired as the home health aid for the reclusive and ailing Lenora. After a debilitating stroke, Lenora cannot speak or move except for her left arm. With Kit’s help, Lenora begins to peck out the story of the murders on a typewriter. But, the more Lenora shares, the more Kit believes there is danger at Hope’s End – both because of Lenora’s truth and the fact that the old house is quite literally fracturing around them.

The story is told through Kit’s eyes and the pages Lenora types. With the backdrop of Hope’s End and the dual timeline, the house, once glorious but now crumbling, is so much a part of the story. It isn’t a scary or bloody book, but it is a thriller. It starts a little slow, but the last 150 pages fly by. I had a dozen different theories about what was going on and was wrong about all of them.

The audiobook is well done, but I think the print version is slightly better as you really get the difference between the two timelines more strongly in the print format.