3.75 stars. This book was pretty good. The 'villain' was super creepy and disgusting -- which I guess is how we like them in our thrillers. Regarding the ending: I guessed that the certain someone had something to do with it.... Don't want to give away spoilers... but did not guess the details.

Thanks to Net Galley for letting me read this early. This is a debut novel and was such a great read. The plot was really gripping and kept me turning the pages. There were a couple of plot twists that were really surprising and seemed a bit far-fetched but interesting. This is a great read for anyone that likes suspense and mystery.

Tell Me My Name
by Erin Ruddy
Pub Date 27 Oct 2020
Dundurn Press
Mystery & Thrillers


Ellie and Neil Patterson look forward to spending time at their new cottage. It's the first time in ten years they're alone ... or are they?


They wake up to a living nightmare after a friendly encounter turns violent. A stranger insists he's Ellie's soulmate and gives her three chances to call him. If she guesses wrong, Neil suffers. As a result, Ellie takes a desperate trip down memory lane to find the men of her past.



Ellie discovers the truth about her husband and their decade-long love story after sacrificing her own safety to save Neil.


I give Tell Me My Name three out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

DNF - I tried to get into this one, but just couldn't mesh with the writing style. I also wasn't in to the dark, gratuitous violence, which is saying something as someone who loves thrillers.

A good portion of the book takes place after Ellie and her husband—Neil—are violently kidnapped by someone from Ellie’s past. This person, posing as their neighbor Jake, explains that he is someone from her past, who she has a strong connection to and should remember. He gives her three chances. Wrong guesses will have grim consequences for her husband. And if her final attempt isn’t successful, Neil will die. And the twist at the end was one of the best I’ve read in some time.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this compelling thriller before its publication date. What happens when your past comes back to haunt you? Ellie and her husband, Neil, are spending some time reconnecting at their cabin, when a man from Ellie's past appears and turns their lives upside down. Suddenly, what started as a relaxing getaway turns into a life or death race against the clock. I love novels like this where ordinary people find themselves battling extraordinary circumstances. Erin Ruddy does an excellent job crafting a rollercoaster ride of a novel that I had a hard time putting down. (

⭐⭐⭐ + I'm not a fan of dark books and this one was so many shades of dark gray. But the plot was crazy, as was the MC villain, and I admit that I raced through to the end, while chewing my nails to the bit. This is another of those books that I read months ago, but am only able to review now. I will be brief ….

Husband and Wife buy a place out in the middle of nowhere and try to rekindle their relationship while the kids are shipped off to camp. But, as it turns out, Wife is being stalked and she is soon kidnapped to a neighbor's house. Never met neighbors and never will because Nefarious Stalker (NS) has done them in.

NS is a person of no interest from woman's past - she hasn't a clue who he is or his name. This infuriates NS and in a perverted guessing game, he is whacks off pieces of Hubby for each wrong name she guesses (she guesses wrong a few times). Next thing you know NS has kidnapped classy Wife and has taken her to his really creepy disgusting homestead (if you like creepy and disgusting this is for you). He makes her dye her hair and change into some not so classy clothes he has prepared for her. Turns out this NS has a real Oedipus complex. Okay, okay - let's not be nitpickers! If he had <i><b>known</b></i> his father he would have hated and resented him, but instead he fixed his hatred on a another of his mother's paramours.

What happens to Hubby? I hate it when a cuckolded <b><i>wife</i></b> takes back her weasel of a husband...(I'm not saying Wife <b><i>did,</i></b> mind you, but then I'm not say she <b>didn't</b>).

This is not an easy book to like, but clearly I did because the pages flipped by themselves so I guess I enjoyed.

Thank you NetGalley and Dundurn Press…sorry it took so long to review😳

WOW !.An emotional and twisty thriller that you won't soon forget ! I highly recommend ! Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for the opportunity to read and review this book! Opinions are solely my own ! #Netgalley # Bookouture # TellMeMyName

Nope, not a fan. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me this in exchange for an honest review. I won't be reading anymore from this author. I didn't like the writing style and to me the plot really dragged. The characters were boring to me and I couldn't find any way to relate to the characters. This made me sad because I had very high hopes and felt it was a major letdown.

This one took me a while to get into… there are many twists in it but man Did it take a while to for me to be invested. Interesting read once you get into it.

I really enjoyed the storyline here but it felt like too much was packed into one book. I think the thing that threw me the most was Clive’s story with his mother and how he responded to Ellie when she reprimanded him vs why he was protecting Ellie. those two story lines just felt forced together.

Tell Me My Name follows the story of a. Couple put through a crazy "game" at the hands of their assailant. Will they make it out? Will questions from the past be answered?

This book held my interest the whole time. I was fascinated by the game that this kid appear came up with and his mental state through his whole life. This can be described as a good episode of criminal minds meets a lifetime movie ending. It has me so interested and then that ending came out of nowhere that was so unrealistic I didn't buy it at all. Overall, this was a solid three star.

This is a new author to me and this is a must read book for everyone. It is a total page turner with some twisted and demented characters! Just my kind of reading! Thank you Erin for writing such a great book!

I was unable to completely read this book. I read till the point that the name was revealed but the narrative style was not for me.
The explicit commentary on even the mother of the villain (by the villain) put me off. Since I did not complete the book, I would not be able to review this on other social media sites

Tell Me MY NAME
Author : Erin Ruddy
332 pages
4 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Description
A roller-coaster domestic thriller for fans of Ruth Ware and Shari Lapena featuring a rustic cottage retreat, a suspicious new neighbour, a violent kidnapping, and a wife who learns her husband isn't telling her the whole truth.

Ellie and Neil Patterson are eager to enjoy some quality time at their new cottage. It’s the first time in ten years they’ve been alone … or are they?

When a friendly encounter leads to their violent kidnapping, they awaken to a living nightmare. Insisting he is Ellie’s soulmate, the kidnapper gives her three chances to say his name. If she guesses wrong, it’s Neil who will suffer the consequences. This propels Ellie into a desperate trip down memory lane to dredge up the dubious men of her past.

Only after discovering the man's true identity and sacrificing her own safety to save Neil does Ellie finally learn the truth ― that everything she thinks she knows about her husband and their decade-long love story is a lie.

🎯MY Review🎯
I loved parts of this book others not so much. The back stories of the characters slows down the pace a lot and would make me lose interest so i would switch to another book. Then i would go back because i just had to know if both Ellie and Neil come out of this alive . I also felt there was way too much back and forth between characters and between past and present. Since i got covid books that are wrote like this are very hard for me to focus on. The actual story of what was happening in the present was
a very intense psychological thriller which i LOVED and it had many twists and turns. The further you get into the book the better it gets. It actually has two great endings which i found unusual and very good. I think this author will do great things as she writes more and more. This is my first by this author. Would i read another book by her ? Yes !!

As always please take the time to leave a review for the author in places like goodreads & Amazon. It does not have to be long. Just a few sentences saying you liked the book will do. Authors really appreciate every review they get !

I really enjoyed this book; I couldn’t put it down, from every first page, I was hooked. The plot was different from any thriller book I’ve read, the plot was suspenseful and the multiple POV was written and woven well. The characters were dynamic and unpredictable until roughly halfway through. The fact that someone else was able to investigate better than the cop, frustrated me to no end, it might have been because I wasn’t her biggest fan. I did not see the final twist coming, it seemed too far fetched for me. Overall, the book was perfectly paced, the thriller aspects were spot on, and it was a quick read.

Nailed it! Great debut!
Erin nailed the thriller aspect in this book.
I couldn’t put it down. This is a must read for those thriller lovers out there.

This was an intense, nail biting ride right from the start ! The kind of ride where you don’t know who you should hate ! A couple hoping to reconnect , drop their kids off to camp and escape to their newly purchased cottage ! The goal - rekindle their marriage! Little do they know that their neighbour is up to no good !
You’ll see - once the neighbor puts his plan into action you won’t know what to think !!!
Even though the ending was predictable I could totally envision this as a movie !!! What a crazy ride and one filled with moments where you needed to just take a deep breath ! Highly recommend this one !!!

Where to begin? Tell Me My Name had tons of promise, but nothing about the story worked for me.

Explanations are difficult without lots of details and spoilers. I’ll stick with spoiler-free basics.

Ellie’s character is fine. Neil is a jerk or a superhero, depending on the moment. The detective is inept and unprofessional.

Clive, the bad guy here, is a caricature of every bad buy with mommy issues. He’s an obsessive man-child with an uncontrollable, vicious temper who manages to do things regarding his appearance and detective skills that feel way over-the-top. The man he is through most of the book doesn’t at all mesh with the man he is at the end, regarding motives and behavior.

While I struggled with this story all the way through, the final twist and ensuing madness totally lost me. It was too much coincidence, too many reasons, too many directions. Just too much everything. While I respect the author’s goal here, I think the plot, particularly regarding Clive’s driving force, needed a narrower focus.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2021 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2021/02/2021-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">