The In-Laws by Laura Wolfe is a psych thriller that feels like two stories mashed into one at times.
I think part of the reason for that is the title. There are also some plot points that feel inconsistent. But more on those later.
The initial premise is good. Two people getting married, their parents didn’t get along at an initial meeting, so they’re trying a team-building trip to break the ice.
Camping would not be my first choice for this, but it turns out that Abigail has reasons for pushing the method.
I liked most of the camping/wilderness survival plot points in the book. I thought the author did a good job with them and created enough distrust among the characters that the reader felt naturally suspicious as well.
Some of the interactions, however, did not seem realistic. It was like the author was trying too hard to make a character unlikeable. At one point, I even thought, “Really? Who actually talks that way?”
I suppose it was a way to build the “psych” part of the psych thriller (like, could someone really be that awful?), and I suppose in the bigger picture, it serves as background for later events.
Because it turns out that everyone on this trip has secrets. Some are worse than others, but nobody is unscathed. The way that the secrets are revealed mostly works. I definitely did not guess all of the twists and secrets that were hidden throughout.
However, there are also points that felt less like red herrings and more like forgotten moments. For example, the author has the in-laws, Darla and Kenny, exchanging looks quite often. Unless I missed it entirely, it was never clear what those glances meant.
I mean, there were hints, and I think I figured it out, but it wasn’t as clear as it could have been.
The pacing was also a bit lopsided. Nearly three-quarters of the book leads up to a certain event, and then the last 25% is reveal after reveal. Some of it has been hinted at, and some of it feels like it is on fast-forward.
Also: the title. That first 75% allows for the title to make sense. But that last quarter pretty much has nothing to do with the title. They are still characters, but not the focus that the title would suggest.
At any rate, Laura Wolfe has definitely written a page-turning psych thriller in The In-Laws. I’ll certainly be looking for her next one.
