For fans of the high-stakes tension of the New York Times bestsellers Luckiest Girl Alive and The Lying Game, comes “a brilliantly paced thriller that gets under your skin in the best possible way” (Megan Collins, author of The Winter Sister) about female ambition and what happens when fake violence draws real blood. After years of struggling in the Chicago theater scene, ambitious actress Kira … Chicago theater scene, ambitious actress Kira Rascher finally lands the role of a lifetime. The catch? The mercurial Malcolm Mercer is the director and he’s known for pushing his performers past their limits–on stage and off.
Kira’s convinced she can handle Malcolm, but the theater’s cofounder, Joanna Cuyler, is another story. Joanna sees Kira as a threat–to her own thwarted artistic ambitions, her twisted relationship with Malcolm, and the shocking secret she’s keeping about the upcoming production. But as opening night draws near, Kira and Joanna both come to the realization that Malcolm’s dangerous extremes are nothing compared to what they’re capable of themselves.
An edgy, addictive, and fiendishly clever tale of ambition, deceit, and power suited for fans of the film Black Swan, Temper “revels in its mind games, delivering twist after twist as it races toward a Shakespearian climax. The final page will leave you gasping” (Amy Gentry, author of Last Woman Standing).
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Temper is raw, ingenious and utterly fearless. I devoured every word as the story bent and twisted in ways I did not see coming. Layne Fargo delivers psychological suspense at its very best — without tricks or misdirections, just brilliant story telling and profoundly astute observations about human emotions and relationships. Temper is the real deal.
Let me start by saying I LOVE David Mamet. Not a non sequitur; this felt like an homage to the nth degree. And that’s what endeared me to it early on, despite the generally unlikeable characters and distasteful power struggles/personality clashes that felt like the opening skirmishes in what promised to be (and was) a full-on war… I saw the ending coming a mile away (again, Mamet fan), but still found myself rapidly turning pages because there was always that tiny seed of doubt about what was real and what was all in the alternating narrators’ minds (Mamet again). It was an interesting sojourn through the dark. Fargo writes a compelling story and I’ll be on the lookout for more…
Thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.
Slow
I- I have no words! The characters are amazing and well Mal is enough to scare me, all the characters have their own spine-chilling feature. I love this book I urge you, READ IT!
Coming off the “high” of They Never Learn, I had lofty expectations for this one (even though this book was published before the aforementioned one). I was left a little disappointed and unsatisfied at the end.
Dark, sexy, and utterly unputdownable!
I read it in 2 days! Layne Fargo puts tension on every page!
There comes a moment in the last quarter of Temper (or earlier if you’re better at this game than I am) when you realize how the story must end.
When I got there, I smiled, said “holy s__t” and made sure I had enough time to finish author Layne Fargo’s amazing, raw, borderline psychologically damaging debut thriller.
I love to read stories that take me into new subcultures, which really intrigued me. Fargo has a background in Chicago theater, and Temper brought me deep into that world without me knowing I was on the journey.
Then there are the characters.
Oh. My. God.
We’re first introduced to Kira Rascher, an actress who auditions for and lands a part in a two-actor Chicago play opposite the production company’s charismatic, overbearing actor/creative director, Malcolm Mercer.
The story’s POV alternates between Kira and Joanna Cuyler, Malcolm’s right-hand at their theater company who has a complicated history with her longtime nonsexual partner.
Another of my favorites is when authors use a story-within-a-story. In this case, it’s the play Kira and Malcolm are acting in, which is titled—you guessed it—Temper. I’ll stop short of giving away spoilers, but I will say these simultaneous stories are woven together beautifully and seamlessly.
But beyond all of that, my favorite part of the novel was getting into the minds of Kira and Joanna. It was so wonderfully unnerving. (As a side note, I also love Fargo’s choice NOT to use Malcolm’s point of view. You will, too, when you read it.)
I wish this were the first in a series so I could spend more time with those two characters. But the end of Temper is so satisfying that this piece of incredible psychological suspense easily stands on its own.
Like the play at the center of this dark, chilling, edgy novel, TEMPER is a masterpiece about haunting obsession and relentless ambition. Perfectly paced so the reader is taken on the same journey of dread and deceit the well-developed characters are, this book is an absolute must-read.
You don’t have to have spent time as a struggling actor to enjoy Temper, Layne Fargo’s twisted debut psychological thriller. Nor do you have to have suffered through an unhealthy relationship at the whims of a brilliant narcissist, or know anything about the city of Chicago. All it takes to rip through the pages of this masterfully told moral tale is to know what it is to dream big. Kira Rascher, an actor who has struggled to make her mark on the competitive Chicago theater scene, auditions for the role of a lifetime opposite Malcolm Mercer, a leading man known as much for his convention-breaking performances as the mistreatment of his co-stars. While everyone warns Kira not to get in over her head, Malcolm’s unorthodox techniques, and her own refusal to be controlled, unleash new depths in her performances. Is Malcolm torturing her, or driving her toward greatness? No pampered ingenue, Kira fearlessly matches Malcolm blow for blow, driving the tension toward opening night, even if it means losing friends along the way. Staged evocatively with the intrigue of Gaslight and the artistic drive of Whiplash, Fargo’s characters battle toward greatness, all with a simmering sexuality dangerously close to boiling over, leading to a curtain call worthy of a standing ovation.
An edgy, sexy story set in the Chicago theater world–I could not put it down! The characters are fascinatingly flawed and unpredictable and distinctive, and the suspense builds cleverly and intensely….right to the very end.
I loved this unusual thriller by Layne Fargo, in which two twisted actors warp the boundary between fiction and reality, stagecraft and violence. At times it felt a little too real. Lovers of domestic thrillers and the theater will enjoy Temper!
Temper is a brilliantly paced thriller that gets under your skin in the best possible way. Zooming back and forth between two fierce and unforgettable narrators, this story digs its nails into you from the very first sentence and continues to leave its mark long after the final, jaw-dropping scene. With her exploration of ambition and obsession, pain and desire, Layne Fargo’s debut proves that she is a blistering and crucial new voice in psychological suspense.
Twisty, sexy, and so believable it’s scary, the pages of Temper bleed an irresistible blend of voice, subculture, and character. Compulsive reading for fans of Black Swan, Mozart in the Jungle, or (dare I say it?) real-life backstage theatrics.
Dark, intense, taut, riveting, scary, sexy, a train-wreck you can’t turn away from – all are accurate but insufficient descriptions of Layne Fargo’s Temper. This is a read that you don’t want to miss and won’t soon forget!
While a review is supposed to include the reviewer’s synopsis of the story to add to the publisher’s description, for this book, I’m not going to do that. Honestly, it’s much better for you to go into this one cold. The fewer clues you have as to what will happen, the more you will enjoy this book.
For those who are fans of psychological suspense or who like to glimpse the dark side, put this on your TBR list NOW!!! This should be one of the best books of the year.
My thanks to NetGalley and Gallery/Scout Press for allowing me to read a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
This book shows how manipulative a person can be and how our imagination in general is a lot worse then the truth of what is actual happening. It takes a bit getting used to the jumping from character to character but once you get into it you really are going to keep reading wanting to know what each person is thinking. It also gives a bit of insight on what is needed to put a play into production. We al have gone to a play and marveled how everything just was perfect not even having a clue about all the work went into it to get it to this point.
This isn’t the kind of book where you love the characters. Most of them are manipulating somebody else in one way or other. This book is fairly open about free sexual relationships and same sex relationship so if that bothers you skip this book.
Maybe it’s me, but the number of books calling themselves psychological thrillers is much higher than the number that actually are. That’s where I am with Temper. It is a drama, but I didn’t find anything even remotely thriller-like. As far as the story, it’s quite possible that this one went over my head, but I really didn’t get it. We have a bunch of characters, none of which are particularly likable, having sex and hating on each other. Okay, I did get that part, I didn’t really like it, but I got it. The story is also completely predictable, from the twists to the ending, which is one more reason I don’t consider this one a thriller. All of that aside, I think I may have been able to get some reading enjoyment out of this one if someone had told me not to think for myself or ask why during the process. However, I did ask why, particularly where Malcolm was concerned. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why these women wanted him so badly, and why they tolerated his treatment of them. Whatever this mystery allure was, it didn’t come through very well, at least not for me. In the end, I was left with a well-written story of unlikable characters that I couldn’t find much interest in.
In her dark, sultry debut, Layne Fargo delves deep into the psychological war zone of the theater, perfectly capturing its hothouse world of rivalries, dalliances, and duels — both onstage and off. Toying with the line between victim and villain, real life and fantasy, Temper revels in its mind games, delivering twist after twist as it races toward a Shakespearean climax. The final page will leave you gasping.
Temper is a completely compelling read in which anger and passion fizzes off the page. It is a strong and timely story, with two unflinching heroines whom I was totally rooting for, especially as they revealed their most unabridged selves.
Layne Fargo’s theatre noir debut Temper is a suspense novel paced to make readers twitch in their seats waiting for the final curtain. Sexy and sinister.