{"id":4198,"date":"2018-10-29T07:50:43","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T11:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=4198"},"modified":"2018-11-03T23:08:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-04T03:08:10","slug":"rachel-caines-stillhouse-lake-is-a-perfect-thriller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/rachel-caines-stillhouse-lake-is-a-perfect-thriller\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Caine&#8217;s &#8220;Stillhouse Lake&#8221; is a Perfect Thriller!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been reviewing mysteries and thrillers since the 90s and it&#8217;s been a very long time since I got goosebumps reading a crime novel.\u00a0 And even longer since I felt torn between rushing ahead to find out what was going to happen next and slowing down to savor and marvel at what an amazing book I was reading.<\/p>\n<p>Rachel Caine&#8217;s <em>Stillhouse Lake<\/em> is that book.\u00a0 It&#8217;s beautifully crafted, scary and terrific in every single way: plot, characterization, style, and pacing. Hell, even the cover is creepily perfect.<\/p>\n<p>Caine&#8217;s hypnotic narrator is Gwen Proctor, a woman on the run ever since her husband&#8217;s horrific secret life was exposed and led him to prison. She&#8217;s trying to protect herself and her kids from the sociopaths on the Internet who blame her for her husband&#8217;s crimes and make obscene, horrific threats. As happens way too often now, hatred&#8217;s gone viral and she&#8217;s the target of a vicious, disgusting cyber mob.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the despair she sometimes feels, she&#8217;s strong, resourceful, and a very good shot. She&#8217;s turned herself into a fierce and indefatigable woman who might remind you of Sarah Connor in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0851851\/\">Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/kaine.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-4203\" src=\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/kaine-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/kaine-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/kaine.jpg 333w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Gwen needs to be quick-thinking and strong because she&#8217;s pursued by psycho cyber terrorists. She and her kids keep having to abandon one town after another, one identity after another, until perhaps, just perhaps they&#8217;ve found a new home with people they can trust and maybe even admire.<\/p>\n<p>Well, you know how long that&#8217;s going to last&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Caine avoids a trap many thriller writers fall into: her action scenes are as clear as possible without an excess word, and you always know exactly what&#8217;s happening.\u00a0 Equally important, she&#8217;s also a deft psychologist, capturing every single nuance of Gwen&#8217;s struggle in lean, evocative prose. Gwen&#8217;s love for her children is so intense the book practically blazes with that love.\u00a0 Her torment is just as intense.\u00a0 How could she have been so naive as to marry a man who was a heinous criminal&#8211;and not figured him out?\u00a0 The shame, the guilt, it&#8217;s all there, dramatized and heightened as one great plot twist follows another.<\/p>\n<p>I actually read the prologue and first chapter twice because I was so blown away by the power and intensity of what Kaine was doing, and by the plight of a deeply sympathetic narrator whose life may never be restored to any semblance of normality.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll say it again: this is a perfect thriller.\u00a0 So prepare for plenty of OMG moments, and for losing lots of sleep.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Lev Raphael is the author of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Assault-Deadly-Lie-Suspense-Mysteries-ebook\/dp\/B00NQTVR68\/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1540752479&amp;sr=8-1\">Assault With a Deadly Lie<\/a> and 24 other books in many genres.\u00a0 He teaches creative writing workshops online at <a href=\"http:\/\/writewithoutborders.com\/\">writewithoutborders.com<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been reviewing mysteries and thrillers since the 90s and it&#8217;s been a very long time since I got goosebumps reading a crime novel.\u00a0 And even longer since I felt torn between rushing ahead to find out what was going to happen next and slowing down to savor and marvel at what an amazing book &#8230; <a title=\"Rachel Caine&#8217;s &#8220;Stillhouse Lake&#8221; is a Perfect Thriller!\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/rachel-caines-stillhouse-lake-is-a-perfect-thriller\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Rachel Caine&#8217;s &#8220;Stillhouse Lake&#8221; is a Perfect Thriller!\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[877],"tags":[369,1600,219,1599,1603,1536,1602,1605,1606,169,1604,506,1598,1597,122,976,1601,1219],"class_list":["post-4198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-assault-with-a-deadly-lie","tag-crime","tag-crime-fiction","tag-guilt","tag-murderers","tag-novels-of-suspense","tag-rachel-kaine","tag-sarah-connor","tag-sarah-connor-chronicles","tag-shame","tag-small-towns","tag-social-media","tag-sociopaths","tag-stillhouse-lake","tag-suspense","tag-thriller","tag-women-on-the-run","tag-writewithoutborders-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4198"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4218,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4198\/revisions\/4218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}