at first, this book was really hard to get into, and I found myself being off-put by the slowness of the first couple of chapters. However, I guarantee you it's worth it because once you reach the middle, you'll be hooked. the middle-end sections of the book were well-paced, and I couldn't put the book down after! the plot is really well developed, and the characters are convincing and just so well thought out.

A great fats paced thriller that kept me up at night, eager to find out how it would end. The characters are relatable and the mystery keeps you on your toes. I highly recommend this book.

This one is a must read! It most certainly exceeded my expectations! I need to read everything by this author!

I am finally getting around to reviewing this book after many months of finishing so my review will reflect.

A decade old disappearance of a small town beauty queen has the town on edge and the rumors abound of what happened to her. The center of it all is her brother Wyatt. A suspect of his sister's disappearance. When he finds a young girl that only says a few words surrounded by dandelions and is one-eye to boot, it brings back that terrible day. Odette Tucker comes from a line of cops of the small town and remembers the day Trumanell disappeared. What she thought she saw and what she did. Tucker takes to the mysterious one eye girl and the connection she represents to the case that was never solved. Tucker also questions who the girl is and what happened to her as she seems not to trust anyone.

The relationship between the 3 was the catalyst for me. Several things that are going on. You want to know how these three are really connected. Who they really are. And nothing is what it seems.

The connection for me on these three was the guilt each faced and the redemption that they found.

A special thank you to Random House Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review.

I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Great plot!!! I love the cover and the characters.

Thank you kindly to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for this review copy.

This book was a slow burn for me. I wanted to love it so bad but I felt like certain parts of the story tended to drag on which made me lose interest. The synopsis sounded so good and I wanted to love this book but it just fell a little flat.

We Are All the Same in the Dark is a bit of a slow start, but I would recommend pushing through because it does pick up. Once I got to that point, this story and its characters took hold and didn't let go. This one is told from three points of view, and I'll just tell you, the blurb didn't exaggerate. This is one twisty psychological thriller. It's dark, it's sinister, it's intense, it's impossible to put down once it has you in its grip. It's a rare find when a psychological thriller is this chilling, and Julia Heaberlin certainly kept me on my toes - another rare find for me because I can usually see the twists coming. So, what started out a little bit slow picked up and took even this jaded reader by surprise. Dark and twisted? Yes. Well written? Definitely. A recommended read? Without a doubt. If you like psychological thrillers that make the hairs on your arm stand up and keep you awake until the wee hours of the night, then you don't want to miss this one.

A well written story with well developed characters. A 5 star book that is a must read! This is my first read by this author.

Title: After All Ive Done
Author: Mina Hardy
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Thank you @netgalley and Mina Hardy for giving me the chance to review After All Ive Done. I really enjoyed this read, it had a great story line. Its not as dark as I normally like but it was a shocker. It kept me wanting more, to find out what had happened with the accident and what Dianne couldnt remember.

#netgalley #review #mystery #suspense #afterallivedone #mindahardy #keepreading #bookblogger #booksofinstagram #bookreview

We Are All the Same in the Dark is a great title for this book. Because it's about a gutsy young woman with a missing leg and a another gutsy young girl with a missing eye. I love that title. But this is a complex mixture of criminal operation and police work in trying to solve it. Odette is the police officer who tries to figure out who killed her best friend and Odette boyfriend's, at the time, sister. And there are some she is confused about. She doesn't know who to trust among these people. One being her ex boyfriend and her partner at the police department. The other gutsy girl is a girl Odette tries to help because that's what Odette does. She tries to help. Those in death and those alive. This is a great criminal fiction drama. You will not know who did the deed until the very end and I mean the very end. I didn't figure it out anyway and I always love to try to see if I can figure it out. Nope, not this one.... I want to thank #NetGalley and the publishers of #WeAreAllTheSameInTheDark for the opportunity to read and review with my honest opinion.

This book was very hard to get into. There were multiple perspectives that in my opinion weren’t handled very well, so it was hard to remember what was happening and who was speaking. However, I did like the mystery and thought it was interesting and unique. 1/5 stars

Perfectly suspenseful, wonderfully creepy, and beautifully written. I loved this literary thriller and wish I could find more books like this one. It's rare to find a thriller/mystery that keeps you on the edge of your seat AND has an engaging and compelling story to go along with it. This is one I'll be recommending many times in the future.

This is my first time reading something written by Heaberlin and I'm hooked, which means I happily have a backlist of books to read!

I went into this totally blind and it's what I recommend. It's a slower paced mystery that had me flipping those pages quickly. It's part mystery/thriller/suspense and crime/police procedural fiction and reads like a fascinating true crime story. With 3 POVs, I was worried I'd get confused, but was relieved to find it much easier than expected. it was nice and twisty, but no twists were over the top. I loved all the wonderfully flawed characters and, as someone who is disabled, I truly appreciated the multiple disabilities in this story. Heaberlin clearly did a lot of research in the fields of the disabilities she wrote about, and did a phenomenal job of highlighting the strengths in these characters. I'm sure that the multiple disabilities will be off-putting to some, and it could've been for me as well if she hadn't written so beautifully about those characters.

I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys a more lyrical, atmospheric slow burn mystery/crime fiction. Don't go into this one with expectations and I think you'll enjoy it even more.

Thank you NetGalley and Ballantine books for my e-galley in exchange for my honest thoughts.

For some reason I’m having a hard time gathering my thoughts on this one. It was completely different than anything I’ve read i think. It was dark and mysterious. There was so many elements to it. I think it was well written and well researched.

The first part of the book i was guessing at many things and then part 2 came and i was like omg. What just happened? But i felt part 2 slowed down a ton. It took awhile before it picked back up. I thought it was a tad strange Finn wasn’t as put off by Angel being there. But it finally gathered up speed and i suspected the killer. But i didn’t know. So it was still a good reveal. A crazy one. I can’t put my finger on but there’s just something that i didn’t completely love. I think it was going into part two and what lead to that.

I did really enjoy the bloody Betty book. I think that was pretty interesting! I did want more from Wyatt tho.

Odette Tucker has returned to her hometown in order to follow in her father's law enforcement footsteps. But Odette is on a mission. Ten years ago her boyfriend's sister and father went missing. A bloody handprint was the only thing left behind. While Trumanell and Frank Branson were disappearing, Odette was in a car accident where she lost her leg. Wyatt was everybody's primary suspect, but Odette knew that he couldn't have done it. And she is still trying to prove his innocence. And then Wyatt turns up with a traumatized teenage girl. Odette knows that people will immediately think the worst of her friend. Now Odette has two mysteries to solve, what happened to Trumanell and Frank Branson. And who is this young Angel and what horrors brought her to Odette?



We Are All the Same in the Dark was a dark and twisty novel, so full of surprises that my jaw literally dropped. I really liked the complexity of Odette Tucker. She had known some hardship in her life with the accident that took her leg. And she was a deeply flawed woman, but she had a deep-seated quest for truth and justice. I loved the way that she took Angel under her wing and got her the care she needed. The author really threw me for a loop about halfway into the book when she switched from Odette's narration to Angel's. But it was just so good! CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS



Bottom Line - If I have said it once, I have said it twenty times. I love it when an author can shock me. Julia Heaberlin did just that with We Are All the Same in the Dark.



Details:

We Are All the Same in the Dark by Julia Heaberlin
On Instagram
Pages:352
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: 8/11/2020
Buy it Here!
Thank you to NetGalley for the book in exchange for a review.

A little slow but was creepy at some parts. Slow burn for sure but still good. Thanks to Netgalley and to the publisher for the copy.

I think I need to take a break from mystery/thriller novels for a while. I don't think I'm in the right mood for them at the moment, and therefore I'm not enjoying quite as much as I hope every time I pick one up. I thought this one was alright, but it wasn't anything I was rushing to finish or pick back up every time I put it down. But, again, that could just be me. I definitely think this is the sort of slow burn thriller that a lot of people will enjoy, especially in regards to the main character, and I'd definitely read another book by Julia Heaberlin as I did like her writing style even if I couldn't be drawn too deeply into the story.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to give this an early read.

5 star WOW and a big OMG at the end. In WE ARE ALL THE SAME IN THE DARK, Julia Heaberlin builds a very suspenseful psycho thriller in layers. Each layer adds to the story, and takes it in a different direction.
A young woman and her abusive father disappear one night. The investigation finds several clues but not a trace of the missing persons. But in small town Texas, when a crime is committed, someone has to pay. The authorities are looking for her brother. The brother is found away from the home, so traumatized that he will not say what happened to him. He is judged in the court of public opinion and found guilty even tho he is never convicted of a crime. So he keeps his story to himself and lives in self imposed isolation on the ranch where his family has always lived.
His life is traumatized again when he finds a young woman, beaten and bloody, missing an eye in a field close to the ranch. She is unable to speak so how she arrived and who she might be remain a secret.....adding a huge layer to the story.
Enter the police in the form of a young woman who was close to both the missing sister and her brother. Her life has been forever changed by the events of that night. She will stop at nothing to figure out exactly what did happen and now she is also working on the mystery of the young girl found at the side of the road. This adds a HUGE layer.

What happens, how it happens and to whom will keep you turning pages quickly. You will not be able to set this book down until you find out where Ms Heaberlin is taking us. It's truly amazing how this ending could have shown up and I had no clue!

Julia Heaberlin is becoming a must read for me whenever she has something new out.

Her books do require a fair amount of emotional bandwidth so I’m a bit choosy about when I read them, but the fact that they invoke so much feeling and empathy in the reader is largely a good thing.

This one takes a little while to get going (stick with it and when the narrator switches things get REALLY riveting). Both protagonists (Odette and Angel) are likable and compelling, though it’s Angel who truly enthralls.

The book did have one fairly surprising moment that I didn’t see coming before the halfway point, but shock value and twists aren’t really what this story is about. It’s much more mystery/suspense (and perhaps character study) than thriller, and that seems to suit the material perfectly.

All the local yokel stuff is a bit off-putting, but you do get used to it after a while and it does provide some atmospheric elements to the story that feel important.

You won’t be terribly surprised by the solve, but you’ll be satisfied by it and, if you’re like me, relieved. To avoid spoilers I won’t say whom I’m referring to, but my favorite character in the book was most definitely a serious murder suspect, so I was quite relieved when I found out they didn’t do it.

This book is dark and atmospherically oppressive at times, but those are mostly positive contributions to the narrative, and the ending is the one you want.

I was hooked right away, but then it went into a dragging scene of a half dead girl found in the highway... The story got confused afterwards. Too much past blah blah blah for little present action.

And she is now going to solve a murder that couldn’t be solved before because...? Typical.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this title.