The Breakdown

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Her decision that night has impacted badly on her health and she becomes really forgetful, forgetting even the simplest of things. This causes her extreme anxiety as she believes she's suffering from early onset dementia, just as her mother had. Then she starts receiving silent phone calls and believes whoever murdered the woman must have seen her that night, and is now watching her! I was really excited to read this one. I had loved Paris’s first book, Behind Closed Doors. How does it work that I loved one of her books but basically hated the other? I hear of reviewers loving both or hating both, but I don’t seem to have many others in my one-love, one-hate club. Oh, so many things. I didn’t buy that Cass could “feel” there was someone in her house. Nor could I buy that she remembered leaving a cup on a counter. Who remembers where exactly they put their cup? It sounds interesting, but the story puts all its weight on the reveal... and it is too easy to guess. And I don't mean just guess who is responsible, but also guess the entire reasoning behind it. The pool of suspects is too small; there are so few characters in the book, and many readers will be immediately suspicious of the culprit (honestly, they seem shady as hell).

The story begins with Cass taking a shortcut home down a dark, rural road, against her husband's advice. She sees a car by the side of the road and sees a woman sat in it. After briefly considering asking if the woman needs any help, Cass drives on and goes home. Then the woman turns up dead. THE BREAKDOWN by B.A. PARIS is an interesting, thrilling, suspenseful, and cleverly written psychological thriller that takes you on a very emotional and apprehensive tale here questioning the psyche of our main protagonist, Cass. Is she really having a breakdown, early onset dementia, or is there something more sinister at work here? Starred Review. In the same vein as the author's acclaimed debut, Behind Closed Doors, this riveting psychological thriller pulls readers into an engrossing narrative in which every character is suspect. With its well-formed protagonists, snappy, authentic dialog, and clever and twisty plot, this is one not to miss." - Library Journal I felt like some of the things in this novel were just NOT believable (like Behind Closed Doors). I feel like the author could have done some AMAZING things with this storyline but it just fell flat for me. I was expecting more and it wasn't there unfortunately. It didn't have the ever dropping mouth twist that it could of had nor the WOW factor in a psychological thriller. I do feel I liked it a little better then Behind Closed Doors but again just kinda meh.The Breakdown took a while to build up speed and tension. Obviously you know something will happen, but you don't know what or when. For a while, Cass' character really started grating on my nerves because she was just a sniveling mess, falling to pieces at the slightest thing, yet taking all sorts of risks. And then...BOOM. B.A. Paris throws in a twist which, while not utterly surprising, really turns the plot on its ear and sends the book careening to its conclusion.

Cass is stressed, she is worried she is losing her memory, and when she takes a shortcut one night during an awful storm her life changes forever. She passes another woman who appears to have broken down in her car, rather than stop to help Cass drives on. The next day it is discovered that the woman was murdered. Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and B.A. Paris for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Cass is forgetting quite a lot of things these days. Riddled with guilt, self-doubt, and untold truths, her mind begins to slip. Then the telephone calls begin, with no one speaking but with an air of menace about them. Has someone been in the house? Why can't she remember anything? The paranoia begins to eat her alive, and she fears she is going mad. Her wild ravings and accusations have eroded her credibility with her husband, her friends, and the police. Cass is convinced the killer of the woman in the car is after her now. The Breakdown is the second book from B.A. Paris. It starts out with a woman named Cass Anderson who is trying to come to terms with something she saw in a rural road in the middle of a storm. That’s when she first saw the woman sitting in a car in the woods– the same woman who was killed. She can’t tell her husband Matthew about it, because he would be mad that she took the shortcut home even though she promised not to. She might even have been hurt if she had stopped.

On the positive side, I liked that Paris told the story from Cass’s perspective, which did help keep the tension going. As the title implies, there are multiple definitions of a breakdown. Not just the car, but Cass’s mental state. THE BREAKDOWN brings readers along for the ride as one woman begins to lose her memory—and her mind. To cap it all off, people are having a hard time taking Cass seriously after a series of baffling occurrences have her family and friends convinced she has early onset dementia. This has to be the thriller of the year! There were times when I was holding my breath, gripping the book so intensely I thought I would break my e-reader. It was that crazy. B.A. Paris’ “The Breakdown” is an emotional psychological thriller. It grips you from the first sentence and keeps hold till the last. B.A. Paris’ debut psychological thriller, BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, was one of my most-recommended crime books last summer, and I was beyond excited to get my hands on a copy of her next thriller, THE BREAKDOWN. While THE BREAKDOWN doesn’t deliver the same addictive, spine-tingling suspense of BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, I still found myself hooked on this wholly entertaining story. This book is the epitome of a “beach read” if ever there was one. If you’re looking for a crime novel that’s pure entertainment—think fast-paced, not too violent or too dark but still suspenseful—THE BREAKDOWN belongs on your summer reading list.

To sum it all up it was an entertaining, gripping, fast-paced, and an easy read with an unexpected and exciting ending. Highly recommend!!

I tend to be really hard on thrillers, so I can totally see why others fell so hard for this one. I still have Behind Closed Doors on my to-read list, and I have little doubt that The Breakdown will be seen on beaches, airplanes, and e-readers once it is released this summer, and deservedly so. Where’s my car? There’s a ridiculous scene in a parking garage, ridiculous because it is a logistical mess. I had to reread the scene many times and in the end it still didn’t make sense. Where oh where did the editor go? The next morning Cass finds out that a woman had been murdered on that same road the night before. The marbles begin to collide from intense guilt and fear. Could she have prevented what happened on that dark, lonely road? Would going to the police now make any difference? And would the murderer recognize her car and pay her a little visit?