Full review to come on Instagram closer to Pub Day. Thank you to the publisher Thomas & Mercer, author Daniel Judson, and NetGalley for a review copy.

I received an eARC from Net Galley. It was a decent thriller though I felt like I saw what was coming though maybe not the extent of how it was all intertwined which was a bit unreal.

Overall decent but not amazing. The writing style was not the best and I didn't always like how the author wrote the main female character.

And there are some typos:
P233 - sentence says "among which are the deed to the house; the twins' birth certificates, as well as her own; her and Derek's social security cards..." But - wrong name - her husband is Leif. Derek is the neighbour.

P381 - sentence reads "...Leif was like a brother to me and I'd rather not harm him children." Should be his. not him

Not one of my favorites. I couldn't tell what type of book it was going to be. Sure, there were break ins, her husband was murdered years ago but I never felt the suspense. Plus I figured it out early. Just OK.

i enjoyed the ending and the way it was all wrapped up but unfortunately the road to get there was not my favourite. at times the pacing felt too slow for my liking and other times (maybe this is me being used to more fast-paced thrillers but) the tension simply wasn't there. all in all i think it's a great book to first get into the genre or for those who enjoy a slower read.

The Cabin was a very slow read for me and I found myself taking my time to get through the book.

After the murder of her husband during an attempted home invasion Kate Burke turns into a timid introvert that has stayed static for the past two years.

After a series of property damage incidents - Kate realizes that the the vandalism is starting again just like before her husbands murder. The suspects were killed during the botched home invasion 2 years prior. So the question is who is behind this vandalism? High school kids looking for trouble or someone so close that they are entwined Kate’s family?

Thanks for the advanced copy of The Cottage from Netgalley and Thomas & Mercer, this one comes out 11/2!

This book had so much potential, however it just missed the mark for me. There were too many ultra detailed descriptions of chores being done, that I thought I might have been reading a chore monologue. Jokes aside, this one really has great bones, it just wasn’t for me!

Another good book from this author. I will definitely read anything he writes based on his previous work. His characters are one of his strongest writing abilities. They are realistic and believable. I definitely did not see the direction this story was taking. It caught me totally by surprise, and that's a good thing! Kept my interest all the way through.

I absolutely hate not knowing how long the book is and for some inexplicable reason the page count of The Cottage has been made a secret all over the www. So I braved going in, not knowing the length of the commitment, based purely on the fact that the only other boom I read by the author wasn’t terrible. To be fair, this wasn’t terrible either. Just bland. And yes, too long, albeit most of it (an overwhelming majority of it, in fact) is dialogue.
Judson has been at writing thrillers for a while, so he has the basics down, but that’s about it. The plot is pretty thin, when it isn’t far fetched that is. For most of the book is just a recent widow who’s been terrorized by small but escalating acts of aggression, against her and her property. The latter of which includes a small rental cottage ($1500 a month, Connecticut is expensive, people).
So who’s after Kate? Local kids? Or a hunky new tenant? Or her estranged sister that’s come to mend fences? Or her seriously in debt neighbor? Or one of her late man’s brothers in blue? Read and find out…or don’t.
Don’t, if you ask me. There are entirely too many thrillers out there to voluntarily select a mediocrity. It seems I’m not alone in this opinion, going by other reviews on here, reviews that, to be fair, weren’t around when I downloaded this from Netgalley.
Like I said, it isn’t terrible. It’s just terribly mediocre. The author opts for strictly skimming the surface, there’s no character development, no psychological onion levels to play with, it’s all tell, no show, so everyone just tells…hence the amount of dialogue. It’s almost as if the book was deliberately inflated to a certain (mysteriously unknown and unknowable) page count to hit some contact, since this is definitely a case of pay per page not per word.
Quick and mindless and soon to be forgotten. Pass. Thanks Netgalley.

The writing style was a bit straight forward for my tastes; other reviews described it as similar to a screenplay and I definitely agree. The ending was good and was definitely a page turner, however, the writing style made me struggle to finish this book.

Such an interesting premise but failed to deliver due to the author's writing style and a cast of characters that seemed to be added as an afterthought. I suppose it was away to add a red herring and keep the reader guessing? The protagonist was not sympathetic at all but I assume that wasn't the author's intent.

I'm shocked at the lower reviews on here - I thought this was a deliciously woven tale of deceit and suspense. Widowed Kate is experiencing the same vandalism that precipitated her husbands murder - then blamed on a robbery targeting a local cop gone wrong. Throw in an estranged sibling, a new tennant in the seasonal cottage on her property, and a changing relationship with her neighbor turned best friend? There were so many tendrils of intrigue in this one that I really truly struggled putting this down each night.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Oh boy, what an interesting premise but I could NOT make it through this one. The choppy writing and disjointed scenes made for such a confusing read and it got boring really quickly for me unfortunately.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview The Cottage by Daniel Judson.
Kate struggles with the death of her spouse from a terrible event - home invasion. She can't sleep and is starting to become paranoid that she will be victimized again. She starts to think her home is being vandalized and things keep getting worse. Kate is scared - someone is stalking her and she believes that maybe her husband's death was not at all random killing - maybe it was pesonal.

3 stars

So I finished it at one go. I couldn’t wait to see the mystery of whodunit revealed!!
The plot is tense and intriguing but the writing is very long-winded and the descriptions of small things are regularly spread in the prose.Initially these descriptions of ‘feelings’ or ‘perceived feelings’ from narrator’s point of view had built up an expectation in me, only to get deflated when I saw no intriguing outcome.

If the editing is done well, this will prove to be a page-turner.
Thankyou Net Galley and the author for letting me read ‘the cottage’

"A widowed mother is terrorized by a stalker with unfathomable intent in a novel of cold-blooded suspense by the Shamus Award–winning author of The Temporary Agent." -- GoodReads

I was sooo excited to get my hands on The Cottage by Daniel Judson.

Hands down, this was a great novel. The writing style is completely unique and not like anything I have read before. I was truly fascinated with how the story unfolded.

I do believe most of you will be able to figure out what is going on before the story concludes, however, that is ok!!! The story was still well developed and thoroughly enjoyable!

This is a psychological thriller with a stalker edge. If you like a good suspense novel, this is for you!

A good little thriller...story of a widowed mother being terrorized by someone. Rocks thrown through windows, vandalism, creepy phone calls. These are all things that Kate is dealing with. Is it related to her husband's murder or is something new harassing her and her family? A little drawn out at parts but still engaging enough to keep my attention with a few twists thrown in.

Oh my. There were just too many people piled into the story. It made me start to fade trying to keep up . I did finish the Cottage, but it was sadly a book I did not connect with.

Something about the writing style of this novel was off-putting and it didn't feel very readable. Our main character, Kate, doesn't come off as very likable - in fact, she seemed like a bit of a pill. Also, was anyone else annoyed with her calling her father-in-law "Dad", or was that just me? For some reason, I cringed every time.

Kindly received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book sucked me in and I found myself thinking about it and looking forward to climbing into bed at night to read it. Great characters who were both real and likable, combined with an original plot that captured interest.

This is a great read. I honestly couldn't put it down until my eyes were blurry and I needed to rest a few hours. This was surprising to me considering an hour into my reading I was 100% sure who was doing the terrorizing.

Poor Kate has lost her husband just two years prior to the start of a new terror attacking her house and her family. She feels the sensation of being watched as her home is attacked with malicious vandalism. She experiences a sensation of being watched. Why is someone terrorizing the widow of a police officer? Why is someone waging a vendetta against her? Estranged from her sister since childhood, a stranger living in her cottage, a preteen daughter with attitude, Kate has enough going on already.

Want the answers? Read the book.

Now that we've covered those bits let's talk about the pros and cons of actually reading the book. I did enjoy the author's use of seldom used words such as "antithetical". I enjoyed the grammar lesson on nauseous opposed to nauseated since people are seldom aware of the difference. Some people truly are nauseous but most are just nauseated. However, as this was an uncorrected proof, I was left wondering how the author manages to get a book finished and whether or not his computer had grammar/spellcheck. My heart goes out to the person who must proofread and edit this book. Aside from typos, which are expected when one is typing quickly and for long stretches of time, there were glaring errors that made me cringe. In some cases, the wrong name was given to another character, a couple of times location was incorrect, many times the word most needed to make a sentence make sense was missing, and often extra words were just there and had no relevance to the sentence at all. There was also a sentence ender that was repeated far too much in my opinion. Again, I do not envy the person correcting all of this.

I wasn't thrilled to know the who through the entire book. Every time a new clue came up it was glaringly obvious what was going on or at least by whom. There was no chance I was going to get to the end and find I was wrong, and I wasn't. There were some detailed conversations with this character that went far beyond what anyone would consider "normal" conversation. There was one interaction with this character that went into so much detail that it also revealed much of the why, also the details were long and boring. I scanned through most of it as I realized that while it gave much away it also wasn't the true root of why. Sadly, I figured out the true why by the middle of the book.

None of these cons made the book any less fun to read as it is written quite well. As I stated in the beginning, I didn't want to put it down until I was forced to by exhaustion. The pros are worth the read. The characters are rich with personality and connecting to them was effortless. I felt for Kate at every turn, enough so that I wanted to catch the scumbag and take them down myself. I was disappointed at the dissolving of a friendship at the end. Apparently, the author isn't up on "girl code". No woman who truly cares for her best friend is going to drop a bombshell like that when her friend has suffered a tragic loss. As for the few days before, Kate was a little wrapped up in someone trying to kill her to worry about something so insignificant in contrast considering she had no reason to think it was connected in any way.

Overall, this is a book I would recommend. I will likely try another title by the author to see if it compares to this experience. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the chance to read this advance copy.