All-in-all it’s a fantastic second outing by Stacy Willingham and an excellent thriller to end my year! Can I also just say how unbelievable it is to me that in both the past and the present the detectives knowingly turn a blind eye to the truth with a "You've been through a lot so I don't want to make things worse" type of attitudes?

This is a gripping story of a mother looking for answers…answers to the mysteries surrounding her own troubled youth and answers to the mystery surrounding the unsettling disappearance of her son. Following up her instant New York Times bestseller, A Flicker in the Dark , Stacy Willingham delivers a totally gripping thriller about a desperate mother with a troubled past in All the Dangerous Things . My only quibble is that sometimes the emotion is Isabelle’s voice could’ve been reigned in just a teeny tiny bit, but that’s just personal preference. Isabella is spending all of her waking time making lists and charts of people who attend, known criminals in the area, trying to find a link somewhere to her missing son. I follow him through another door, the gentle roar of applause erupting as soon as it opens and we step inside.Isabelle's entire existence now revolves around finding him, but she knows she can’t go on this way forever. We are nothing but what we choose to believe, but it's all a mirage, bending and warping and shimmering in the distance, changing its form at any given second. It was interesting to be inside her head as she grappled with the loss of Mason and tried to make sense of it. When the microwave beeps, I pull the bowl out and bring it into my dining room, pushing aside the various papers and folders and sticky notes with midnight musings scratched across their surface with dried-out pens.

Unless you meant his lips felt grainy, which seems unpleasant, and doesn't fit the context of this ~~romantic~~ scene.With a sure hand, the author draws us inexorably into a harrowing blend of gothic storytelling and psychological suspense, dishing up new shocks every time another layer is peeled back. After one keynote speech she meets podcaster Waylon Spencer on the flight home and he offers his services. I lived for the smell of it wafting through my kitchen; the warmth of a mug pushed against my fingers, cold and stiff from standing on the back porch, watching the sun come up with morning dew beading on my skin.

Now Ben has moved on and Isabelle has not slept since she read her son a bedtime story and tucked him in for the night. Highly recommended for fans of Lisa Jewell’s THEN SHE WAS GONE and Jennifer Hillier’s LITTLE SECRETS, this is a 2023 mystery not to be missed. I read this coming off of a rewatch of Sharp Objects (based on the Flynn novel) and the southern, spooky small town vibe co-mingled perfectly with the scene set by Willingham in this book. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband, Britt, and Labradoodle, Mako, where she is always working on her next book. She gives speeches about her missing child, knowing that people are interested, hoping to find answers.Despite not being a big fan of the unreliable narrator trope, I enjoyed last year's debut "A Flicker in the Dark" and this one tops that! The novel contains a multitude of dangerous things including insomnia and the fear it induces but it also takes a deep dive into the past. I loved seeing how the pieces fit together--although everything wraps up a little too neatly, the ending was quite gratifying. Isabelle Drake's son, Mason, was taken from his crib while Isabelle and her husband Ben slept in the next room. Isabelle is determined for justice by enlisting True Crime hobbyists, podcasters, and anyone else willing to help find Mason so she can get some closure on these events full of dark secrets!

It will come as no surprise to the reader, then, that Isabelle is coming unglued when we enter her life.

The story leaves you shell shocked more than once and the intricate unfolding of events leaves you clamoring to follow the bread crumbs.