Tear Me Apart by J.T. Ellison, 4 Stars

I’ve only really read J.T. Ellison’s standalone titles–No One Knows, Lie to Me and now Tear Me Apart. But they are so good, I really should check out her series work one of these days. I get a little bogged down with series books because they can get so formulaic and you really have to read them in order. And sometimes just figuring out what title is next is so much work.

Don’t you feel so sorry for me? Lol. But I have been known to enjoy Karen Slaughter and Patricia Cornwell series titles. And even some Tana French. Sometimes it’s a comfort to get to know some characters and stick with them for a while. And you know what to expect when you pick up a book. There’s a very small chance that if you liked the last one that you might hate the next one. It just doesn’t work that way.

And really, who am I to call series books formulaic? It’s such a generalization. You can’t judge a book by its cover, right?

What do you guys think? Series…yay or nay? What series do you love?

From the Publisher:

The follow-up to her critically acclaimed Lie to Me, J.T. Ellison’s Tear Me Apart is the powerful story of a mother willing to do anything to protect her daughter even as their carefully constructed world unravels around them.

One moment will change their lives forever…

Competitive skier Mindy Wright is a superstar in the making until a spectacular downhill crash threatens not just her racing career but her life. During surgery, doctors discover she’s suffering from a severe form of leukemia, and a stem cell transplant is her only hope. But when her parents are tested, a frightening truth emerges. Mindy is not their daughter.

Who knows the answers?

The race to save Mindy’s life means unraveling years of lies. Was she accidentally switched at birth or is there something more sinister at play? The search for the truth will tear a family apart…and someone is going to deadly extremes to protect the family’s deepest secrets.

With vivid movement through time, Tear Me Apart examines the impact layer after layer of lies and betrayal has on two families, the secrets they guard, and the desperate fight to hide the darkness within.

My Review:

Tear Me Apart, like many psychological suspense novels, switches back and forth through time and different narrators. I like that narrative style. Because I find it’s interesting to form a relationship with a narrator and start to understand their motivations and story, without knowing their identity. Then working back and forth through time to figure out who that narrator is before its revealed. It’s that big aha moment, it can be so satisfying!

There is a lot going on in this book. We meet two deeply troubled girls in a psychiatric hospital, then we shift to present day and meet a teenage ski champion–two very different teenage experiences. And we wonder how they are connected.

Then as we get deeper into the story, we also meet a sister who appears to be a loving aunt and sister, but is kept at arm’s length by her sister and we don’t know why. Then, about halfway through the book, we meet Zach, a handsome single guy who, after suffering a devastating loss years before has never recovered.

And they are all connected. At times it seems like the book was going off on a tangent, but Ellison does bring it all back together. And it’s a long book, but I read it mostly in an afternoon because I was invested in the characters and the pages kept turning themselves.

This one was a psychological thriller, but one with a little bit more meat than others. And one that tells a bigger and more involved story than a lot of others. This is not woman meets man, man is abusive, women kills man, we figure it all out at the end–and that’s not even the plot, just an example. The thriller part of the book, for me, didn’t even start playing into my interest in the book until the second half.

Tear Me Apart is a story that spans two generations and the reader can see firsthand how a single act can set off a chain reaction that has long lingering effects. It’s Megan Abbott meets B.A. Paris. It’s a good one! It even got a Publisher’s Weekly starred review.

Don’t want to take my word for it? Check out this excerpt on the author’s website.

Special thanks to Netgalley and Mira for providing a free e-galley in exchange for my honest review.

This one is out today, y’all! Get your copy!

Indiebound