Tag: Books On Tour

I am a fan of Nicola Marsh, as she can write a good psych thriller. While The Ex Between Us has good bones, however, there are a few things that keep it from being one of her better books.

First the good.

The story unfolds from both Jo and Abi’s points of view, so we get two different perspectives of the action. It also unfolds in the present and in the past, as some chapters reflect the characters’ actions when they were still in school together.

I like the setup. The friendship between Abi and Jo is long-lasting even through all of their ups and downs. There is a testament to girl power in here somewhere – even as the reader learns that not everything is as it appears.

Abi’s profession is unique, although I wish there had been more of it. It was interesting and unique and would have been fun to explore it.

Mostly, I like that I was off-balance throughout the entire book. I was never quite sure where the author was going with anything and had several theories that changed each time new information was revealed. I never got it quite right.

That being said, the book does suffer in a few places.

Abi and Jo both consistently refer to the drama that they see other people bringing to them. They even laugh at old schoolmates as being stuck in high school “mean girl” mode. Yet the two of them often engage in the same behaviors.

There is a lot of repetition, especially from Jo. I thought that her memories of being younger would have a bigger impact on the current time. As it turns out, they end up being largely filler. There are opportunities in Jo’s unhappy past that could have made great psych thriller material. But they do not end up being relevant.

There is a strange, uneven tone to some parts of the story. Abi knows what is going on, but she doesn’t, but she has suspicions, so she takes steps to prove things, but she still doesn’t know…her actions are inconsistent.

I can’t say much about Jo without giving away major plot points. But she is unreliable as a narrator. Come to think of it, so is Abi for that matter. There are characters that appear briefly but never do much.

I guessed a couple of the plot twists early on, so I wasn’t surprised by some of the “big reveals.” However, the depths of the relationship that come to light, in the end, are interesting.

On a side note, I believe the author is Australian? There are several references using Australian terms (singlet for tank top, crisps for potato chips, turf you out instead of toss you out, etc). I question why the author chose to set the story in America.

There is nothing that particularly screams California in the setting, so it might have been easier to just set the action in Australia. Then these things wouldn’t jump out. However, the wording is distracting which does tend to take me out of the action of a book.

As I mentioned at the outset, I did not guess all of the twists. The author did have a few surprises that I did not expect. But the Australian terms used by characters from California and the uneven, even childish, behaviors of the main characters keep it from being truly amazing – which it had the potential to be.

The Ex Between Us was still interesting enough that I will eagerly await the next psych thriller from Nicola Marsh.

Author Bio

USA TODAY bestselling & multi-award winning author Nicola Marsh writes page-turning fiction to keep you up all night.

She has published 80 books, sold over 8 million copies worldwide and been translated into 25 languages.

She currently writes contemporary romance and domestic suspense. You can find some of her series romance under the pseudonym Nikki North.

A physiotherapist for 13 years, she now adores writing full time, raising her two dashing young heroes, sharing fine food with family and friends, barracking loudly for her beloved North Melbourne Kangaroos footy team, and her favourite, curling up with a good book!

Unforgivable by Natalie Barelli is one gonzo of a psych thriller. It starts out as one thing and morphs into another before ending with a touch of “what the heck did I just read.”

It’s all mostly good.

If you’ve read a psych thriller, you know that a common writing technique is to start with a prologue containing an event either A) in the past or B) during the action of the book.

Then it is up to the reader to find out either A) how the event shapes the current situation or B) where exactly the event takes place and why.

In the case of Unforgiveable, the author does something a bit unique. There is no prologue. The book starts with Chapter One, where the narrator talks about something and then says, “but we’re not there yet.”

It’s a clever way to do a non-prologue while allowing the narrator to control the story from the beginning. This is important because later in the book (no spoiler) the reliability of both the victim at the beginning and the narrator are called into question.

But we’re not there yet 😉

The book can be seen as a three-act story: the first lays the groundwork of a soon-to-be-family who has to deal with an obnoxious ex-wife. This actually takes up more than half of the book.

Again, it’s clever, because by the time the author starts throwing some twists around, the reader is invested in the crazy ex-wife thread.

I don’t want to give anything away. So, just quickly, the second act is where the main character (Laura) starts to question everything she thought to be true and the third is…well, where everything else happens.

The author did a great job of making the villain especially toxic. There were times that I wanted to punch her. I thought the male in the middle was a wimp. He didn’t do anything for me. And the narrator was a bit weak as well.

In the “second act,” the author draws out a history between two characters that seemed to essentially come out of nowhere. It could have used a bit more backstory.

And that’s even before the reveals and twists start to appear – THAT is when it really goes gonzo. Additionally, once we get to the event mentioned in the first chapter, the book is essentially over, and it becomes a non-event.

Oh, and just an aside. I noticed this in the author’s previous book Unfaithful. The story takes place in Seattle. But there’s very little that actually identifies the city as such. Additionally, there are too many wrong words.

Americans don’t “ring” people, they “call” them. It’s not “potato mash” it’s mashed potatoes. One doesn’t eat “crisps” at a bar – they eat “chips.” It’s not that hard to do some searches to find the right word for something set in America.

But that’s a personal pet peeve.

The last chapter serves as a prologue, which also only quickly skims over the climax. I wanted that ALL to be much bigger – only because I really hated the villain that much. The character deserved much more to happen, and the reader needed that catharsis.

Unforgivable is still a good psych thriller. You’ll be questioning the reliability of Laura and the other characters. Natalie Barelli has done it again.

Author Bio

Natalie lives with her family in Australia, where she is forever thinking about new ways of killing people and getting away with it. Before writing full time, Natalie was an IT consultant. Favorite past time? Reading fabulous thrillers, otherwise known as research. And when she’s not absorbed in the latest gripping page-turner, Natalie loves to cook, knits very badly and spends far too much time at her computer.