A sensitive woman fears insanity. An intuitive Homicide Detective tries to unravel the truth of what really haunts her… Liddy Barron, an artist, was injured in a hit-and-run accident that left her with recurring nightmares, partial amnesia, and an increasing obsession in the disappearance of a coed named Sasha Perry. Was Sasha murdered? Insecure and nervous, Liddy’s turmoil grows as she begins … she begins seeing ghostly images. Her husband Paul tries to help but suspects it’s just her imagination…while Detective Kerri Blasco, also obsessed with young Sasha’s disappearance, senses that Liddy may have a key to solving the case.
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I had trouble putting it down…don’t think you’ll know the ending!
I just finished this book two days ago and the whole time I’m reading this I am thinking that this story seems familiar. Then it hit me…this book is just like the movie “What Lies Beneath” that came out in 2000 with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfiffer (sp). Watch the movie then read this book. The similarities are beyond numerous. Here are just a few: moving into a new place to live, wife in an accident, husband that is a scientist that works with mice in a lab at a university (very specific, if you ask me), wife who keeps seeing a ghost in the bathroom, wife who feels as if she is going crazy, husband who had an affair with thher dead college student, husband who has the student over to their own house & the wife suddenly remembers, the wife confronts the husband & asks if he had anything to do with the student’s disappearance (that scene is almost word-for-word from the movie), the husband claiming he tried to “end it” with the student (again, almost word-for-word from the movie), when the wife stays the night at her friend’s house to take a break from the husband and he calls the wife while she is there, when the husband realizes that the wife will not let go of the fact that thshe husband has killed the student he attacks her with a cloth with the medicine/chemical he has been working in in the lab on the mice and temporarily paralyzes the wife, the phone flying across the room during that struggle, the ghost then killing he husband, and then when the wife is at the cemetery at the end of the movie and she is at the college student’s grave & not th husband’s. There are so many more similarities. I feel this book is a complete rip-off of th movie. Don’t believe me; just watch the movie.
Sometimes there are things in a book that connect to the reader on a personal level that actually have nothing to do with the story. Nevertheless, it creates this unintended intimacy between author and reader. This happened to me while reading FEAR DREAMS. When my daughter was an infant, I had a downstairs neighbor named Liz who also had a daughter a couple of months younger than mine. The girls grew up together, started walking and talking together. My daughter called my friend Lidz. One of the main characters in FEAR DREAMS is Liddy; her husband calls her Lids. It’s a small world thing that really has nothing to do with anything, except it reminded me of a really happy time in my life.
J. A. Schneider has a knack for drawing her readers in and keeping them wanting more. I have read five of the six Embryo series books and found that each one of just a bit better than the one that came before. FEAR DREAMS is less nail biter and more mystery.
FEAR DREAMS examines ways in which the mind copes, or fails to cope. Sanity feels like a fleeting thing when memory isn’t there. Try to imagine that all you think you know about a person you trust is wrong. Then imagine that same person professing to want to help while doing everything possible not to help. It might just make you imagine that you had truly lost your mind.
FEAR DREAMS is a murder mystery, and if you have read any of the Embryo books you will recognize Kerri Blasco and Alex Brand as a pair of NYPD detectives. Throughout the book, Kerri is bent on solving the case of Sasha Perry… missing coed? murder victim?
I mentioned that this book is less an adrenalin rush, and this is true, until you get to the nitty gritty ending. That’s when the pages start to turn themselves. Don’t be surprised if your eyes start to well up with tears like mine did.
You will meet some well-developed characters here whose realism continues to build with every page. You will feel sympathy and outrage before you reach the last page. As with any good mystery there are twists and turns along with a red herring or two just to keep it all interesting.
I am hoping that this means a new series from J. A. Schneider. I will certainly read it.
I received an ARC from the author for the purpose of review.
OMG, what a tremendous thriller. Can’t say enough about this author. Got this today, read it today -it’s that good. The characters are real and very interesting. You feel all the emotions that Liddy feels. You just want to jump in and warn her. The ending was a total surprise, but perfect.