A review by tifftastic87
All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham

dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Isabel Drake is a mother slowly unraveling from the kidnapping of her son. We enter the story one year after his disappearance, the police have no leads and the only clue is an open window. Izzy is distraught, and suffering from severe insomnia, her husband has left her and she has no one to turn to for help. She's been throwing herself into researching all of her neighbors and telling her story at true crime conventions, where she meets Waylon. Waylon is a young podcaster invested in her story and his appearance changes Izzy's investigation and everything she knows. 

I wasn't sure about this one at first, but the way it stuck with me. The bits we know about Izzy's life come out in drips and drabs over the course of the book. We get tiny flashbacks to her childhood and her meeting her husband. All of these flashbacks and the little  morsels of information we get serve to paint her as an unreliable narrator, and then add to that her extreme lack of sleep and you have a portrait of a woman losing her mind and her grip on ... well everything. 

The twists were foreshadowed nicely in a way that really made you think Izzy was even more unhinged than she is. I didn't expect most of them and I really didn't expect the outcome at all. 
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