Month: September 2022

The Lucky One by Jessica Payne is a psych thriller that the reader has to pretty much suspend disbelief in order to truly enjoy.

That’s not to say that there aren’t good parts of it, because there are several.

For one, I liked the uniqueness of Norah’s profession. A female who coaches MMA fighters is pretty badass. It also gives the reader insight into Norah’s toughness. That’s something she has had to develop over the years due to the tragedy in her past.

When she has to return home due to her father’s death, that tragedy rears its ugly head pretty quickly. She is thrust back into a cat-and-mouse game with a killer she once escaped (which is why she is “the lucky one.”)

There are moments of both elements of a psych thriller. The psych comes from the game she plays (mostly via text message) with Hansel (the killer). The thriller part comes from the moments where those around Norah are drawn into their twisted play.

Most of this is believable in the psych thriller realm of “reality.”

However, there are a few moments that almost derail the story. One, there are times that Norah is too trusting. For someone who has a chip on her shoulder and is paranoid, she seems to give a lot of information away very easily.

Secondly, and more unfortunately, there are so many clues as to who Hansel is that it truly seems unbelievable that Norah doesn’t figure it out.

I figure the author means to highlight that there is nothing that makes a person so blind as something that they absolutely do not want to see.

That makes sense in the context of the book, I promise.

At any rate, in spite of those moments, The Lucky One is still a decent psych thriller. I’ll continue to look forward to the next one by Jessica Payne.

Here is another example of a psych thriller that leaves me a little bit confused. The Niece by Georgina Cross has a lot of good going throughout. But then…well, let me try to explain without giving anything away.

As with many psych thrillers, the action starts with a prologue. This one certainly grabs the reader’s attention, as it is intriguing and makes the reader want more. It also sets the tone for the main character, Tara. More on her in a second.

The entire first half of the book (literally until about 45%) recounts the events after the prologue. As Tara and her daughter, Cassie, welcome Hannah into their home, the reader gets a good idea of the challenges facing all of them.

Tara is on edge for several reasons. There is obviously something haunting her, and there are several allusions and passive hints dropped along the way. The reader doesn’t find out why until about halfway through the book. That’s when the author moves to a flashback 13 years prior.

The events of that time are then covered for a few chapters before moving back into the present time. It is an interesting change from the common back and forth, then and now, structure that appears in many a psych thriller.

There are a few red herrings dropped as well. But once the flashback is recounted, the action really takes off, leading to the requisite “oh, that did not just happen” twists.

All that I have mentioned make The Niece a good psych thriller. However, let me address the parts that left me confused.

Tara. I get that the trauma from the past colors her present, especially in light of the events of the prologue. However, there are aspects of the past that do not make the twists (and clues dropped earlier in the book) the true shock that they could have been.

I also felt like Tara was a little bit too uneven. She knows what she needs to do for Hannah, and does it, but then falls apart, but then second guesses some things, but then feels left out…she was a little too unstable for me to feel sorry for her.

The flashback. While it all makes sense in the larger picture, it didn’t do enough to lay the groundwork for the craziness that came next in the present. There could have been more done here.

The twist. This was just bizarre. It literally came out of left field, almost to the point where I wondered if I had missed something along the way. There just weren’t enough hints or clues to make it entirely plausible.

I think it also relied on the reader being able to think deeper about a character’s motivations to connect the dots. Again, a few more hints would have helped this, because most readers don’t pick up a psych thriller to have to think that hard.

The resolution. I didn’t like it. After everything else that occurred, it seemed abrupt and didn’t give certain characters the right attention that they deserved.

All in all, Georgina Cross has written an okay psych thriller in The Niece. It wasn’t my favorite from her, but it did enough to keep me coming back to her books.  

Author Bio:

Georgina Cross is the author of works of domestic suspense, psychological suspense, and thriller.

Georgina has been writing since she was a child. Notebooks & printed pages filled with stories: adventures growing up in New Orleans and tales from Malaysia & England where her family lives. After graduating from Louisiana State University, she enjoyed a career in marketing & communications and founded Susie’s Wish non-profit which sends patients with life threatening illnesses to the beach. She spends time with her husband and their combined family of four sons watching scary movies and basketball tournaments and is thrilled to be a full-time author.