Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - All the Dangerous Things

I definitely thought it was her ex-husband, not his girlfriend! As a mother, I felt her anguish as she realized this stranger had been around her son and had a perfect opportunity to take him. It felt like justice to see the ex-husband behind bars for facilitating the kidnapping of the son he never wanted. Watching his "upgrade" to a new version of his wife every few years is sickening.

I rarely give 5 stars, and it is well deserved here!

Content Warnings

kimberlina82's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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jamiee_f's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

This book was a solid read! It took me a little while to get into it, a slow start to actually jump us into the premise of our main character investigating her child's disappearance.

Isabelle's son was taken from their home a year ago, while she and her husband were asleep in the next room. She literally has not slept a night since, and a year later, she is a regular on the true crime con circuit, in an effort to keep people looking for her son. Her husband and her have separated. Life is bleak. Then, after she happens to run into a podcaster willing to cover her story, new life is breathed into the case.

This book has flashbacks to Isabelle's childhood--she had a sister that was haunted by Isabelle's sleepwalking habits who tragically died. Her family never talked about it, and Isabelle to this day thinks she killed her sister. The book also has flashbacks to Isabelle meeting her husband and their life together; he was both married and her boss when they first got together. His first wife looked remarkably like Isabelle, and she died suspiciously of an overdose. Less than a year later they were married. However, he slowly pushed her into making her life small. He worked at a reputable paper where he was her boss, so she had to quit to keep it from being awkward. She had to work alone from home. Eventually, to fill her time, she got pregnant. However, when her son didn't fulfill her, she started working again, much to her husband's displeasure. This is all revealed via flashback over the course of the book.

In current day, Isabelle's husband is dating again. And, it turns out, he's dating the grief counselor from the support group he always tried to get Isabelle to go to, who also looks like Isabelle/the first wife. This further triggers Isabelle, who starts investigating her son's disappearance with the true crime podcaster. he interviews her, and they watch baby monitor footage of the day Mason (Isabelle's son) disappeared. There is not much new, but Isabelle does decide to watch other baby monitor footage, and sees clips of herself sleep walking into Mason's room, much to her horror.

The podcaster claims to be meeting with police, but Isabelle catches him in a lie, and then goes through his stuff. He already has the case files, and he has a case file on HER and her sister's mysterious death. She is freaked out by this and starts to wonder if she could have kidnapped her own son. She confronts the podcaster and drives off to her parents' house to confront them about her sister.

At her parents', they have an awkward small talk session, before Isabelle goes up to look at paintings her mother has done. Looking over them, she is shocked to see a certain one, and then her mother enters the room. Isabelle asks what this means, and tells her mother she has always believed that she lured her sister into the marsh while sleepwalking, and that's why her sister died. Her mother reveals that no that isn't the truth--the mom had horrible PPD and PP Psychosis after a traumatic stillbirth, and murdered the sister and tried to murder Isabelle. Isabelle's dad was a senator/congressman and was basically ignoring his wife who was literally begging him for help, begging to not be left alone with the children. She had tried to kill them all via gas stove but caused a fire earlier that summer, and then managed to drown one of the girls in the marsh. Isabelle is shocked and angry and confused but is now heartened that she doesn't actually have it in her to kill a child.

Now knowing the truth, isabelle calls her podcaster up and says "i know i didn't kill my son, let's uncover the truth" and the podcaster is like "omg I never suspected you, I think your husband did it" to which Isabelle is like......what. It turns out that podcaster is the brother of Isabelle's husband's first wife, the one who died of a suspicious overdose!! He has been trying to pin the murder on the husband this whole time, for years and years, and when he heard that same guy's son was missing, he was like....this can't be a coincidence. So now Isabelle and podcaster are on the same team, they both acknowledge that it had to be someone who was in the house that took Mason.

Isabelle decides to go talk to the husband's new girlfriend to like, warn her he might be dangerous or something. But while she's there, she sees pictures of her husband with the new gf from far before Mason disappeared. these two have been boinking for at least two years!! While at the woman's house, Isabelle puts it all together--New GF has been seeing her husband for a while, and knew that he would never abandon a son since that would be a bad look. So, she took matters into her own hands, and kidnapped Mason, giving him to a grief counseling client who couldn't have her own kids. It all clicks--that's why Isabelle's dog didn't freak out since he knew the gf, that's why a neighbor thought he saw Isabelle leaving with her son that night, and it's why the kidnapper knew the baby monitor was dead. the two women have a physical altercation, and Isabelle shoves new GF, who falls into a glass table and I guess dies instantly?

Cut to a few days later: the cop investigating her son's disappearance shows up and is like, we might have a lead, GF lady died and it turns out she was boinking your husband for a long time and maybe gave your kid away. Isabelle is like "omg that's crazy. the big cut on my hand is from a wine glass, not a glass table officer!" The police then end up arresting the husband because Isabelle planted the ring of his that she has secretly been wearing under the sofa, indicating that the husband and the new gf had a struggle and died!

Flash forward again, Isabelle and podcaster publish their show that ties up all the loose ends and pins the blame on husband, husband is in prison, and Isabelle has her son back, with confirmation she's not a sleep walking murderer. Oh and the woman who had Mason was a regular attendee of Isabelle's true crime con talks, so her detective work obsession would have maybe paid off eventually.

Overall,

I didn't see this one coming until our protagonist did.

The flash backs to her childhood were confusing until they got into the meaty stuff, but the flash backs to her meeting her husband were very good and has a steady build,

revealing the husband's true nature. The podcaster reveal was also pretty well done, it was interesting to see how their lives intertwined.

A solid read, but would not read again.

Content Warnings

cyndi1966's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

clarklyn's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I LOVED this book! Loved the unreliable narrator that you still wanted to defend and root for. I was shocked several times throughout the book. I thought I had it figured out several different times but never had it truly solved.

My ONLY complaints are that the voices the narrator used (in the audiobook) for the men was cringey and the potential animal cruelty that was just glossed over? The MC went an ENTIRE DAY without letting her dog outside? Whaa?

Amazing book otherwise and it made me want to read all of her stuff.

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snoopyfanclub's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

amanda_reads13's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Isabelle's son goes missing and she will stop at nothing until she finds him.

This one pulled me right. We follow Isabelle, an mother whose son is missing, she is grieving, suffering from PTSD, and barely sleeping. She is the definition of an unreliable narrator, yet you want to believe her. We are steeped in her grief and paranoia. You are right with her the entire time picking apart the pieces and trying to make sense of it all.

There are definitely a few red herrings along the way. Did she do something to him while sleep walking? Was it her narcissistic husband? Is Whalen the guilty one? Was it the creepy man down the street? What are the cops hiding?

We find out that when she was younger, Isabelle had a history of sleep walking. One night her sister died in the marshes behind the house.

We are lead to think that Isabelle lead her to her death and that she killed her son while sleep walking. Then we find out that it was actually her mother, suffering from severe PPD who was guilty. She has planned to kill herself and her 2 daughters, but only the one daughter died.

The whole time I thought it was the husband.

He is obviously a narcissist, possibly sociopath who is manipulative, controlling, and gaslights everyone. He is always on the hunt for a younger version of his wife. His first wife died of suicide while pregnant and then his son with his second wife goes missing while he is in the throws of an affair with a younger model. Convenient or guilty? Well he is certainly guilty of something, but not of killing his son.

I was shocked when

it was revealed that it was the girlfriend who kidnapped her son! I was not expecting that at all. She was jealous and wanted Isabelle out of the picture, so she took the child and gave him to a woman to raise.

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