Did her boyfriend kill the girls? How does the protagonist solve the mystery in this book of murder and horror?..the author has woven a story that reads like a true crime. Although the story moves slowly at times, it comes to a conclusion that one might never guess…or might…the book was sent to me by Netgalley for review…

This is a gritty tale that doesn’t hold back. The characters will say something then do the opposite. The story became frustrating quickly. Not my type of story.

Thank you NetGalley and Level 4 Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

What the hell did I just read!? This was so not what I was expecting. It’s like “You” season 2 on steroids. It was horrible and also remarkable. I have no words yet so much to say about it. I want to keep reading it but I’m also glad it’s over. I’m not sure where I’m going with this review… just read the book - (as long as you can stomach every trigger warning known to man.)

holy hell! what did I just read?
In true Lili Saint Germain style you don't know what to expect with one of her books and she didn't disappoint this time.

First off this is not a Romance or even a Dark Romance book thisis a Psychological Thriller that will keep you guessing right till the last page!

"It's not every morning you drink dead girl juice"

Cassie, Leo and Damon are amazing main characters with the secondary characters really having meaning and depth into this story.

"Going mad doesn't happen all at once, it's a process"

this is a must read Saint Germain book!

"This is not a fairytale and there is no happy ending, no prince charming to ride in on his horse and save me. It's just me and my monster, just us in our house built out of bones and lies"

Sometimes I go in rather blindly on a book and it works. And sometimes…not so much. This book leaves me so conflicted. It’s not one I feel comfortable recommending.

I’ll start with the good: The story had me intrigued. I wanted to see where this messed up, small town mystery was going. And it was a pretty solid mystery.

What I struggled with: This book contains every trigger warning. Should you choose to read this, just know it is incredibly disturbing in SO many ways. It is graphic and violent. And just when I thought it couldn’t get more disturbing…it did. I can typically handle dark and twisty. This one went too far for me.

At 20%, I considered marking this as a DNF. But for whatever reason (mostly that I struggle with not finishing a book), I continued. Honestly, I’m left feeling icky. Right now, there are some great reviews for this book. But ultimately it wasn’t for me.

Proceed with major caution on this one.

Thanks to @netgalley and Level4 Press for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

When the first line of the prologue begins with "it's not every morning you drink dead girl juice", you know you're in for a day of total isolation and uninterrupted reading!

Formerly known as Gun Shy this new and improved installment has a few additional perfectly executed nuggets to make it even more enticing that Gun Shy.

From the first page until the end, this gripping twisted story was totally engrossing, and unputdownable!!
This gritty, emotional, psychological thriller evolves slowly, but the suspense builds giving you a chance to contemplate who Leo and Cassie are.

These 2 star crossed lovers made an awful discovery when they were teens that changed the course of their lives. You wonder who's responsible and why everyone looks like a suspect. Haunting, suspenseful and brilliantly written, you feel the emotions they feel, smell the deaths they discover, and feel their fear.

What's the end result?
You’ll have to read and find out!!

The Field of Wrongdoing was a tough read for me. This mystery/thriller is gritty, violent, and shocking. It is definitely not for readers sensitive to sexual violence, murder, kidnapping, gore, child abuse, drug use, or language. I found the description of the book to be misleading as well.

I do think the premise of this book is a good one. The characters are generally well-written. The mystery is intriguing. I have no problems with the writing beyond the graphic content. This book follows Leo and his girlfriend Cassie, starting with a gruesome discovery outside Leo’s home (note: not in a field and not discovered by Cassie, as the book description indicates). This event changes their lives in awful ways and neither of them are ever the same afterward.

Later on, Leo is involved in a car accident, the circumstances of which send him to prison for 8 years. The story picks back up when he is released and returns home. Another teenage girl goes missing soon afterward, and the police try to pin her disappearance on Leo. Cassie eventually discovers the truth about these crimes.

I won’t give too much away, but all the crimes in the story are linked. There is also a subplot about Leo’s siblings and mother, which is also disturbing and violent. Pretty much all of the characters in this book are terrible people who make awful choices. A few side characters are okay, like Amanda and Chris, but they have very little to do with the story as a whole. There is not much redemption for anyone and there is a lot of sex, violence, and death. Yes, the ultimate “bad guys” get what’s coming to them, but other peripheral characters get no answers.

I decided ultimately to give this book three stars because I think it was well-written and well-plotted. I couldn’t give it more stars because I hated most of the characters and I don’t enjoy reading the sort of graphic content found in this book.

The Field of Wrongdoing by Lili Saint Germain tells the story of Cassie and Leo. Nine years ago they were teenagers in love. Leo finds a dead girl in a well on the property he lives on and becomes a suspect in the murder. Not long after that he gets in a very bad wreck while driving under the influence, seriously injuring someone close to Cassie, and gets sent to prison. Cassie is left to be raised by her stepfather, the sheriff in town. Cut to the present and Cassie is living a dead end life, waiting tables in a diner, and just barely living, doing drugs and alcohol. Leo gets released from prison, unbeknownst to Cassie, and soon another girl is missing. Leo becomes the main suspect again.
To me the story seemed disjointed. The story is mainly from Cassie and Leo's point of view but sometimes I had to go back and read the previous chapter because I was confused what happened in what time period. The character of Cassie is difficult to like but that does not deter me from liking a book. Overall, once I was finished I really enjoyed the story. I just had a hard time with the structure of it. Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to netgalley for the advanced review copy.

The Field Of Wrongdoing is fantastic! I went into this one completely blind and was blown away by this story!

If you like suspenseful dark reads this is one for you. It's one of those 'what did I just read' books, that the plot just keeps twisting and shocking you, and you don't want to stop reading! Be warned it is not a dark romance!

I really feel for Leo and Cassie and what life’s dealt them both. This story has so many twists and left me guessing the entire way through. You don’t know who is good or who is bad. You don’t know who on Earth you trust.

The author twisted a brilliant web of dark twists that made me not want to put the book down till I knew how it ended. Five stars.

I was really drawn the description of this book and really thought it was be more about the missing girls. Unfortunately, I had to DNF this book at about 20% after I realized that’s not really what I signed up for. I managed to get through the gore of the first chapter, but after that, I just wasn’t interested. The way the characters feeling changed so dramatically about her boyfriend in a snap just didn’t make sense. I was also turned off my the atmosphere and the characters. I’ve read other reviews from readers who really loved this book, sadly it just didn’t work for me.

This book is dark and whilst I am currently favouring darker reads, this story was a little too much for me at this moment in time. There are graphic descriptions that I had to bypass but I do appreciate that this would give greater impact to readers during those certain scenes. However, I would have preferred to have some left to my imagination.

The story is one with lots of twists and turns. The first two-thirds of the book felt it had been written as a build-up to the final chapters which were faster paced and with all the big reveals. There was always progression and I could never have anticipated how the story would unfold which I loved.

I enjoyed that the story is told using the POVs of multiple characters, which in my opinion were fitting for those particular scenes. The Field of Wrongdoing is ultimately Cassie and Leo’s story. This psychological suspense novel is one of those ‘what did I just read’ stories and it isn’t often that I am left feeling this way. It is gripping in parts. I only wish it had been enthralling throughout.

I award The Field of Wrongdoing 3 stars. I liked it and I do feel that the story flowed well from start to finish. It made me remember that life can change in the blink of an eye, and also that sometimes situations and people aren’t always as they seem!

Life can change in a blink of an eye. Cassie & Leo can't wait to leave Gun Creek they just need to get through the last year of school but someone wants to .take sure that they never get a chance to be happy together. Leo lands up in prison after he has an car accident and Cassie's Mom is in a coma with no chance of recovery. Cassie has lost all hope as the only person that she has is her stepfather Damon but they have a twisted relationship that will change everything. Leo can't believe that he has been released on parole only halfway through his sentence but he isn't too sure what going back home is going to be like. He is devastated when he finds out that his fourteen year old sister is pregnant and he knows that he needs to find out who did this to his sister and make them pay. Cassie doesn't know what do now that Leo has been released she has so many feelings for him but she knows that she needs to stay from him. Do they have second chance or is it too late for them? Another young girl disappears and Damon will make sure that Leo takes the blame but Cassie finds out the truth about the young girl and she realizes that she is stuck with Damon. Leo knows that she is hiding secrets but he accepts that they can move on from the past but what will he do when he finds out everything? A good solid read. I was lucky enough to receive a copy from Netgalley & the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

The Field of Wrongdoing by Lili St. Germain is a darkly graphic standalone crime thriller taking place over a period of years and is based in Gun Creek, a small town in northern Nevada. The novel is told by different alternating narrators and a handful of flashbacks.

Some readers may be dissuaded from reading the novel when learning of the graphic nature of the novel, in both violence and sexual depictions, however, the descriptions, while quite raw and explicit, are not grossly exploitive or purely done for juvenile titillation. Such depictions are clearly for the purpose of propelling this violent and destructive story forward and in a way to create emotive responses from the reader.

The story opens nine years in the past when Leo and Cassie are late teenagers in love, with the two of them spending time in Leo’s home, a refurbished Conex container. Leo’s drug-addicted mother lives in a nearby dilapidated trailer, with both of them being squatters on public land. After Leo discovers a corpse in a nearby well (which includes a dark Coen Brothers-esque opening), suspicion of murder falls upon Leo. The suspicion grows even after he is sent to prison for an unrelated crime and incident that causes Leo and Cassie to separate.

The novel then moves years forward and finds Leo released from prison and returning to his Conex container. Soon, a young teenage girl becomes missing and Leo, still a suspect of the corpse found in his well, again falls under suspicion.

For reasons other than just the search for the missing girl, Leo has also found himself under the close and vengeful watch of the sheriff, a man with secrets of his own, and who also happens to be the stepfather to Leo’s former girlfriend, Cassie.

Almost every character in The Field of Wrongdoing possesses secrets that keep the reader guessing how the story will end and who did what and why.

The writing in this novel is spare enough to still create descriptive mental imagery while not being overwhelmingly wordy, which is found too often in today’s current fiction. In the stark language used in the novel, just as with the graphic scenes, the writer is quite adept at when to intricately describe a scene in contrast to being very limited in the wording in others – in other words, she knows exactly when less is more and when more is needed.

Lili St. Germain also creates characters with depth and different layers, oftentimes being contradictory to the more discernable attributes of characters which allows the characters to be more three-dimensional rather than paper-thin.

The Field of Wrongdoing is highly recommended to those fond of dark thrillers and authors such as Mo Hayder, Jussi Adler Olsen, and the writing duo Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom.

The Field of Wrongdoing is set for release on October 12, 2021.

Netgalley provided an ARC of this novel for the promise of a fair review.

This review was originally published at MysteryandSuspense.com.

Not for the faint hearted! This book is so dark, for some it may too dark, and it definitely has some triggers. That is not to say it's a bad book, while it may not be everyone's cup of tea, I definitely devoured it in one sitting!

The book has many many secrets, everyone in the book has major major secrets and as you go along those Secrets will reveal themselves. The book was extremely well written and the characters while they all had faults were definitely believable. I would recommend this book for anyone that likes psychological thrillers and or mysteries, but keep in mind as I said before it is a very dark book with lots of violence and whatnot.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for a honest review.

4.3 Stars

One Liner: Twisted as hell. Not for the fainthearted.

Small towns may look perfect from the outside but are full of secrets no one wants to reveal. Nine years ago, a dead body was found in the well on Leo’s property. The killer is never caught. Soon, Leo and Cassie, two teenagers in love, get separated when Leo ends up in an accident. The event puts him in prison and away from the only girl he has ever loved.
Cassie has lost everything that night but continues to exist with neither hope nor any desire to make her life better. Leo comes back to the town and is on parole when another girl goes missing.
Cassie's stepdad is the town’s sheriff and is determined to keep Leo away from Cassie in one way or another. After what seems like an eternity, Cassie realizes that she needs to take control of her life. That means she has to find the missing girl and solve the past case.
But what does it do to her? Where will her quest for truth lead her?
The book is 360 pages long and goes by super quick. I finished it two days (appx. 3+ hours). The chapters are short and rush by. The narration slows down around 20-40% and picks up pace again.
The POV shifts between Cassie and Leo most of the time, with another third POV towards the end. The storyline goes back and forth a little, but it’s all neatly planned. There’s no confusion anywhere.
Events are revealed one after another, and we realize things aren’t what they are. The characters get darker and more twisted, except for (not saying). Most of them are bad. That’s it. No redeeming arc or even a single likable attribute.
The dark mood sustains throughout. There is no respite or a breather at any point. The story keeps pushing worse stuff as we turn the pages.
Cassie has a great arc and is the major narrator of the book. She starts as a hopeless alcoholic. Her actual personality comes out only towards the end, and we see what Cassie is capable of.
Coming to the rest of the story, there were a few things left loose. That dimmed the story’s appeal a wee bit. That shouldn’t stop you from picking this one, though.
To sum up, The Field of Wrongdoing is twisted, messed up, dark, and even suffocating at times. This one is no causal read.
Thank you, NetGalley and Level 4 Press, for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

TW: Rape, Attempted suicide, animal death, incest.

This book was absolutely terrifying and I loved every minute of it! Lili Saint Germain, where have you been hiding my whole life?

The writing style was fluid and hooks you right in early on. I was completely fascinated and consumed by every little detail of this book.

Small towns can hold some BIG secrets. How well do you really know the people you surround yourself with? Cassie's friend, Jennifer, has disappeared. Cassie assumes the worst given the experience she had had with the first murder. Let me go back and explain. Nine years ago Cassie found a murdered girl on her boyfriend, Leo's property. Leo ended up in prison but not for the murder. Now Leo is out free. What happened to Jennifer? Can Cassie stop this from happening again? Is Leo really capable of murder? How far will Cassie go to uncover the truth?

Stay tuned October 12, 2021 to find out!

This book is a bit dark but that is what made it so spooky ! I highly recommend The Field of Wrongdoing!

DNF at 28%.

I'm sorry to say this was not the thriller I was expecting. This falls more along the lines of YA thriller/romance and is ridden with angst from page 1, While I'm okay with dark themes, I felt like this book was using these tropes for the sake of darkness. But as I said, I didn't finish it so please forgive me if I'm wrong.

If you enjoy angsty YA thrillers, I would recommend this for you.

Thanks to Netgalley and Level 4 Press for the e-ARC.

**previously titled Gun Shy
Cassie and her boyfriend Leo both can’t wait for the day they can leave Gun Creek. That was the plan at least until one horrific discovery changes their lives forever. One dead body, one small town and one mystery that still needs solving. After eight years what will happen to the people of Gun Creek and the secrets that lie beneath? This is a very dark psychological thriller/mystery that I recommend going in blind. I was intrigued by this story and couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to find out the full story however, the pace is on the slower side as you get all the characters stories until you hit 50% then it picks up. These are two very damaged individuals trying to learn to live with what has happened. Possible triggers for some as this has some very tough topics and is definitely intended for Adults to read as it is graphic. If you enjoy a small town dark psychological thriller that keeps you guessing you will want to pick this up. A cleverly crafted mind twisting thriller! **This is not a romance. Told in dual POV

WoW! WoW! WoW!

I read this book in two days. Its that good!
Definitely not what I thought this was going to be!
But in such a good way!
Yes this story it dark, twisted with some major trigger warnings...
But damn if this didn't suck me right in and had me up all night reading!
Lili has a way that had me totally hooked to these pages.
And honestly I don't know how to best describe this book. Just read it!
If you don't mind strong language, sex and some darkness!
It's a wild ride, gripping, messed up, controlling and it's sad as hell... But this was one I couldn't put down!

I can't Thank Level 4 Press enough for this advanced ebook!
NetGalley thank you
And Lili Saint Germain you're writing was great!

Just a few pages in and the blood and gore was already too much for me. Way too dark for me, and rough language on almost every page.

Not the type of book I can enjoy.