Closer Than You Think
Crime, Mystery, Psychological Thriller
Lee Maguire
Broken Minds Thriller, Book # 1
TCK Publishing
October 22nd 2018
eBook
314
English
March 6, 2021 March 9, 2021
Beat the Backlist, Cloak and Dagger
Meet Bryce Davison, a gifted psychologist who can heal any troubled mind—except his own.
You see, Bryce’s life is falling apart. His marriage is crumbling. His insomnia brings only half-sleep and troubled dreams—visions of dark and buried memories he’d rather forget or ignore completely. And the new female patient in his psych ward just might be more trouble than he’s able to cope with.
…and now he has a stalker.
Somebody’s been watching Bryce for a long time. Somebody who knows his life inside and out—his fears, his regrets, his greatest longings and deepest despairs. Somebody with access to his most private places—his workplace, his home, his family…anywhere Bryce might have felt safe.
They do their dirty work in the shadows… and they want Bryce Davison dead.
So Bryce has got to get his life together. To save his patients. To save his family. To save his marriage…and his life.
Because no matter how close Bryce gets to the deadly truth, the enigmatic stalker is always closer than he thinks.
Fans of psychological thrillers like I Am Watching You by Teresa Driscoll, Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine, and No Exit by Taylor Adams will love this book.
About the book
First book in the series starring Bryce Davison, a rather good psychologist who, however, has a problem. A stalker. And this person endangers not only him but also his colleagues and his family.
I must say that with the passage of time, the plot did not remain impressed on me too much, perhaps because I did not read this book because I wanted to read it, but because it is the first of a series and to read the second I had to read this too (I don’t likes to read only one book in a series).
What I think
I read this book because The Fussy Librarian recommended Rumspringa (which is the second one) and since there was the first one on kindle unlimited, I decided to read it. Otherwise I would not have read it. The book is slow at first. The protagonist is boring, the wife is classical person who gives you the feeling of “I want to slap you as soon as I meet you” and who was the culprit was obvious. I only liked Megan’s story (one of Bryce’s patient). I don’t like stalker stories especially if the protagonists are being stalked and at one point I thought Bryce was being blamed because of the stalker (because that’s what apparently all stalkers do) and for that I skimmed a bit. I hope next book is better which is, indeed, what drew me to this series.
Style
The book needs editing. You can’t call a person Johnson on one page and Jones on the next, which is the name of Bryce’s boss who isn’t Johnson (confusion much?). Plus the chapters are short, which I usually like, but they’re tiny here. You can’t do a half-page chapter. Yes it is smoother (except at the beginning which is boring) but it made me lose my temper as well, me who likes short chapters. You don’t create suspense by making a mini chapter and creating cliff hangers between chapters, it doesn’t make sense.
Characters
The characters are flat, the beginning is just a monologue of the protagonist with very few dialogues and unnecessary descriptions. What do I care which movie Bryce rents and who are the protagonists (of that movie)? The other characters are irrelevant.
Conclusion
I will definitely read the second book because that was what interested me, but if this is the level of the next one, I certainly will not continue with the third.
