Tag Archives: psychological thriller

The List of Unspeakable Fears by J. Kasper Kramer

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After watching her father die during the typhoid epidemic, 10-year old Essie is plagued by fears.  There are so many, in fact, that she keeps a list — a list of unspeakable fears. Her mother is now remarried to a doctor she believes to be sinister and cold.  He has moved them to an island off New Year City where they live in a creepy, possibly haunted, house with the beacon from the lighthouse scanning her room in the middle of the night. Her step-father is the head of the quarantine hospital for the incurable sick, including the infamous Typhoid Mary. Essie bravely battles her fears while trying to figure out why her step-father walks the ocean’s shores at midnight. Are she and her mother safe?

Fans of “A Monster Calls” will enjoy this psychological thriller by the author of “The Story that Cannot Be Told.”

Mirage

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Mirage, a psychological thriller, is told in the first person narrative of Ryan Poitier Sharpe, a seventeen year old girl with an addiction to adrenalin. She spends her summer days parachuting from planes at her father’s skydiving center. Even though she has made over 250 jumps, she can’t seem to win the approval of her stoic Army veteran dad. She looks for greater thrills in the use of LSD and ends up in the hospital, suffering a near death experience.

After her brush with death, Ryan is not the same. She no longer craves the thrills. Her mental health deteriorates, her relationships falter, and her life is a mess.

This would be a better book if there wasn’t so many references to the term “crazy”, if there wasn’t so much culturally inappropriate stereotyping of her bi-racial background, and if her best friend’s sexual orientation wasn’t added into the plot in such an extraneous manner.  I don’t see this novel flying off the shelves. The plot and characters are just too overworked.