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Elle is thrilled to spend a month minding the beautiful Gillespie property—the aging mansion is ideal for someone seeking solitude. But as she explores her new home, Elle discovers there’s a graveyard nestled in the woods, containing a generation of the house’s residents…all who died the same year. Then things start to go very wrong, very quickly. There are strange noises…whispers in the night…and a locked room. As she investigates further, Elle unravels the property’s dark history. At its center is Jonathan Gillespie, a tyrannical cult leader and the house’s original owner. And as Elle soon learns…just because he’s dead, doesn’t mean he’s gone.
Welcome to Read This Book, a weekly newsletter where I recommend one book that I think you absolutely must read. The books will vary across genre and age category to include new releases, backlist titles, and classics. If you’re ready to explode your TBR, buckle up!
This week, I’ve got an AMAZING thriller that you absolutely, positively must read–Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Crosby.
This novel follows Beauregard, aka Bug, a family man and business owner doing his best to provide for his wife, two young sons, and teenage daughter that he had when he was a teenager himself. But now his garage is struggling, he’s short on rent, and his elderly mother is about to be evicted from her nursing home. He needs cash, and fast. So he decides to return to a job that he left long ago–driving getaway cars. He’s the best driver on the East coast, and he decides one job should bail him out. But when that job goes sideways and the consequences invade his personal life, it’ll take everything Bug has to jut survive.
First off, I love this book because it portrays rural America in such a way that you know it’s written from the inside. Yes, rural tropes and stereotypes do exist in this novel, but they’re interwoven with so many rich details about life, race, class, and family that you know the author is speaking from a place of authority.
Bug is a fantastic character. He is a loving and supportive father who wants to keep his kids away from his troubles, and he’s struggling to deal with the emotional fallout of his own father leaving him at a young age. Everything he does is for his family, and the reader is rooting for him, even if Bug’s actions aren’t exactly legal–you understand where he’s coming from and you want him to succeed. He’s smart and savvy, and the heists, car chase sequences, and action scenes are flawlessly written–perfect if you like Jason Bourne-level action and twists. At the same time, Cosby never neglects to take into account the emotional toll that this life has on Bug and his family, and how a childhood marred by violence has consequences even decades later. That emotional exploration of how struggling to get by affects your quality of life and affects your outlook on life is what makes this book so good, and so memorable. Cosby just leapt on my auto-buy author list!
Bonus: I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Adam Lazarre-White, which is most excellent! I highly recommend it if you like fast-paced audiobooks.
Happy reading!
Tirzah
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