Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for a review.

This book felt very repetitive and like it dragged sometimes. It was tough to get through sometimes. But I know lots of people did like this book. It was just an okay mystery for me.

Whewww I am finally done with this book! I pushed myself to get through it.

You know the books you spend time reading and all you can think about is the waste of time you are putting into said book? The ones where you think life is too short I should be spending my quality time with a book I lose track of time with instead of counting the minutes and hours I can't get back from reading this? That was this book for me. Kudos to the people that enjoyed it but I need more to keep my attention I guess. This book likely will be classified as a slow burn thriller, but it was too slow for my taste and too long at almost 500 pages! I'm all for some layers and build up. Makes the characters come to life for me and gives them substance.

But the flashbacks of Ariel's life prior to this trip was at times disorienting and boring. There's flashbacks upon flashbacks upon flashbacks making up long chapters. Often times back to back from one another with just a break in the paragraphs and they'll be from different time periods of Ariel's life. The transitions and flow were brutal and disjointed. Also, her husband is missing in a foreign country. Why are we talking about her goat on her farm and how she obtained it? Is this relevant? I don't think so.

I enjoy the purpose of flashbacks to help build our understanding of the character's past and their personality and life prior to the situation they are currently in, but alot of these flashbacks seem unnecessary, confusing, and distracting. This book also felt like two books in one to me.

This book does have some twists and I could see where they would be enjoyable to some but like I stated previously the transitions from different characters and different time periods made it hard for me to enjoy them at their full potential. I feel they should have been broken up into chapters to help the reader distinguish the transition.

But even during the present time in Lisbon, where the mystery of her husband's dispearance takes place wasn't enough to keep my interest. There's a slow burn and there's dead in the water and this book is definitely the latter. Although it picked up the journey to get there was not enjoyable and I cannot recommend this book.

TW: sexual assault and rape. It's all in this book so want to make that known as well!


**Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an advanced copy of this book and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion. I am posting this review to my Goodreads account immediately and will post it to my Amazon & Instagram accounts upon publication.

WOW! Two Nights In Lisbon by Chris Pavone was a very pleasant surprise. I can’t say exactly why I grabbed the book. The cover is nothing special, though as I look closer there is more to see the more I look.

Ariel had remade herself after the end of her marriage. Now, she has found the last piece of the puzzle for her happy ever after…until…He’s gone.

She’s alone in Lisbon, Portugal with nothing but questions. Where is he? Apparently she doesn’t know him as well a she thought. Could something from his past come back to haunt him? Is he in trouble?

Ariel loves mystery novels, and it’s a good thing. She will need the knowledge she gained from reading them to plan her own investigation. She had been an actress and trained herself to be observant, aware of her surroundings.

Near the end, a flash, and my questions are answered about him….But, not really.

Two Nights In Lisbon by Chris Pavone may seem a bit slow, methodical, but it could also be a blueprint on how to take revenge and get justice.

So many twists and turns, and, best of all, book surprises. I love book surprises that keep me flipping pages and an author’s ability to shock and awe me, again and again.

The pacing was spot on, making me want to peek ahead, but I resisted the urge. Can you? The more I think about the book, the better it gets. Excellent job, Chris.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Two Nights In Lisbon by Chris Pavone.

See more at http://www.fundinmental.com

Two Nights in Lisbon is a fast-paced espionagesque captivating story about a couple who are in Lisbon and the husband is mysteriously kidnapped for reasons no one can understand.

Ariel Pryce and her husband John are in Lisbon for his business. Newly married, they had not known each other very long before they decided to wed, with John being considerably younger than Ariel. One morning Ariel wakes to find him gone. She tries his cell phone and looks around the hotel in which they are staying. She knows something is not right.

She decides to go to the police who inform her until he is missing for a period of time there is nothing they can do. Frustrated she begins the search for him alone. Suddenly in the middle of a busy street someone on a motorcycle throws her a cell phone. The phone rings and she gets a call from someone who tells her that her husband has been kidnapped and is being held for a ransom. The money request is the equivalent to 3 Million dollars in US currency.

Ariel is a divorced single parent who owns a bookstore cafe in a rural area back in the United States. There is no way she can come up with this kind of money. She goes back to the police who are a bit confused as to why her husband who is just a simple businessman would be kidnapped and the price be so extraordinary. They begin to look at the couple’s past lives with a bit more interest.

Ariel feels if they don’t act fast enough her husband will die. She decides she must somehow come up with the ransom on her own. With nowhere else to turn she decides she needs to ask someone from her past. Someone who she finds repulsive but knows is so powerful will be able to come up with the money. When he at first refuses to assist her, she reminds him that it would be in his best interest not to make her bring up the past.

As time begins to run out Ariel races through the city with the money hoping to save her husband’s life. She too does not understand why he would be kidnapped, but she will do all she can to make sure he is safe. Will he survive? What will the police find out?

Two Nights in Lisbon has an astonishing plot with shocking twists with the reader discovering hidden secrets up to and including the very last page!

Thank you #NetGalley #MCD #ChrisPavone #TwoNightsinLisbon for the advanced copy.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the early listen. Love January LaVoy as narrator. She does an amazing job narrating and giving each person their own voice. Really enjoyed reading/listening to this book. Held my attention until the end and I was somewhat surprised by the end. I did not guess the ending did guess the whodunnit.
Will recommend

I always find it difficult to review mysteries, because I honestly do not want to reveal anything. Half the fun is watching a good mystery come together. Because of this I will keep this review short. This is my first book by Chris Pavone, but it came highly recommended by several trusted sources, so I thought I would give this a try. So glad I did, because this was a quite a page turner through the epilogue.

Ariel and John have been married just three months, when the go to Lisbon for a business trip. Early on John leaves to grab breakfast and never returns, only for Ariel to be contacted to provide a ransom for her husband.

Quickly this turns into an international political thriller that takes on some of today’s biggest threats. You have police, politicians, reporters all trying to figure out why this man was even targeted.

This was such a fun ride, that had such a satisfying ending for me. I went into this blindly and I think it was all the better for that. This is so fast paced, you will not want to put this one down….trust me.

Thank you NetGalley, Farrar Straus and Giroux and Macmillan Audio for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was approved for both the audio and electronic copy of Two Nights in Lisbon. I obtained the audio version first and that was the version completed.

Years ago I read The Travelers by Chris Pavone. Someone recommended another book with the same name and I obtained it via the library; listened to The Travelers (published in 2016) and thought it was pretty good (evidently before I kept track via Goodreads).

So when Two Nights in Lisbon was available as an advance read via NetGalley, I recognized the author and requested this book in exchange for an honest review.

Lots of twists and turns. Very enjoyable.

A recently married couple goes to Lisbon for a business meeting and the husband disappears.

Thank you to NetGalley, Chris Pavone (author) and Macmillan Audio (publisher) for the opportunity to listen to the advance read/listen copy.

Oh, so tiring! This book was a mess right from the start. The prose is tedious, repetitive and way too detailed - detailed to the point of frustrating. Ariel Pryce, a victim of sexual assault, is a resentful woman, of course, owing to her circumstances, but despite her unhappy history, it is difficult to sympathise with her. Why? Because the book is so full of Ariel Pryce - she is this, she’s that, and there’s absolutely no breathing space for anything or anyone else in this book. The internal monologues are exhausting and breaks the flow of an otherwise intriguing mystery. There’s so much emphasis on even the most insignificant of things, I mean if detailing could kill, I’d be dead by now.

Okay, enough of bad things, let’s talk about what’s good in this book. THE TWIST! Even though I had my finger on it from nearly the beginning of things, I was still able to enjoy the twist. It was satisfying to be precise. If only Pavone could cut to the chase, just a little bit, and reduce this book by at least a hundred pages, this could be a passable time killer.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Publication Date: May 24th, 2022.

2.5/5🌟.

TW: RAPE. Also, graphic details of the rape scene.

I loved loved LOVED the Expats so when I saw Chris had another book coming, it shot to the top of my most anticipated list. Two Nights in Lisbon did not disappoint! It was one of my Top 5 new releases for the month of May - a monthly segment I publish to Instagram and Facebook's Readers Coffeehouse. A fast-paced, read in one sitting stunner.

Chris Pavone always writes a great thriller, but Two Nights in Lisbon was so much more. Along with the constantly escalating tension as a newly married couple tries to deal with the husband’s kidnapping on a business trip to Lisbon, there is a steady stream of sharp commentary on the entitlement of the rich, the imprisonment of women by cultural stereotypes, and the lies we all tell ourselves and each other. These cynical and spot-on observations were worth the price of the book alone.
But you get so much more than social commentary. You know you are in the hands of an expert when the conflict and resolution take the entire book to be revealed, and when you finish and think back you see how all the pieces fit together. I read one Amazon review that said he hadn’t finished it. The reviewer did the book and himself a disservice. The twists and surprises lasted to the Epilogue and left me with a great feeling of satisfaction. What more could you ask of a book?

If you enjoy thrillers, then Two Nights in Lisbon needs to be on your shortlist for this summer's reading. The twists and turns kept coming in this cinematic novel - I'm sure we'll see it on the big (or little) screen someday. The lead character took a while to grow on me. She is full of Gen-X snark and sarcasm, and, at first, I found this off-putting, but by the last half, I was cheering her on and enjoying her unique humor.

I had a Kindle version of the book (thank you NetGalley) and am glad I had search capabilities as there are many bit players in this book I needed a nudge to remember (but I'm not great at remembering names). Sexual assault is an underlying theme, so reader beware.

Ariel Pryce wakes up alone in her hotel room in Lisbon. She accompanied her husband John on a business trip, and when he is not in bed, she is not alarmed. Not until she heads downstairs for breakfast, and he is not there. Not until he does not answer his phone or respond to her texts. Not until she realizes that she is in a country where she barely speaks the language, and she has no idea where to look for John.
She questions the hotel employees and contacts the police, but he has not been gone long enough for them to be alarmed. Ariel however has every reason to panic after she receives a ransom demand. Three million Euros in exchange for her husband. Neither of them has that kind of money, so she reaches out to someone she never wanted to speak to again, knowing that he is her only chance to save John.
As Ariel tries to gather the funds and meet the kidnapper's demands, she also goes back in time to incidents from her past that have shaped her life. Has she made yet another unwise decision by marrying John? She fears every word she says might lead her to a place that she has avoided for many years.
This started extraordinarily strong for me, but I have to say the middle just seemed too long and took away from my frantic page flipping. I am no editor, but the book was 448 pages and I think quite a bit could have been cut out, increasing the tension back to how the book began.
I thought I had this one figured out, so imagine my surprise when the ending proved me wrong! There are many layers to this story and the beginning and ending made up for my so-so feelings about the middle.

Two Nights in Lisbon tells the tale of Ariel who, while on a working vacation to Lisbon, wakes up to find her new younger husband missing. I was expecting this one to be like Pavone’s other novels – slick, suspenseful, compelling. Unfortunately this one missed the mark with me. It was very disjointed due to the flashbacks (many that seemed unnecessary) and really seemed to drag on without end. And I could not decide if I liked the main character – so many things bugged me about her. This might be for some, just not for me. Thank you NetGalley for the chance to review this book.

Newlywed Ariel wakes up in her Lisbon hotel room to find that her husband John is not there. There is no note or warning. Knowing something is wrong, she seeks assistance from hotel security, the police, and the American embassy to no avail. What happened to John?

Two Nights in Lisbon has everything I look for in a thriller: a strong female lead, secrets, and creative twists. Also, it weaves in politics, the CIA, and commentary on timely issues. Unfortunately, Ariel's backstory fills up most of the first half of the book, which at times detracts from the fast moving present day timeline story. While important, it is sometimes overly detailed. Therefore, Two Nights in Lisbon isn't the fast-paced, action-packed thriller it should be. This would have been a 5-star read for me if the entire book had the pace of the 20% of the book.

Overall, the dense writing style didn't keep me from enjoying the wild ride of a story in Two Nights in Lisbon. I just wish it could have been streamlined a bit.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for a digital copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions in this voluntary review are my own.

Unreliable narrator tells unbelievable story with murky stakes attached to its outcome. And here I am giving it four stars.

Doesn't make sense, does it. Or does it....

What Author Pavone does is set the reader up for something from the get-go. Unlike many thriller writers, that "something" isn't glaringly obvious. What sets this thriller in motion is an older woman married to a handsome younger man. Who ups and disappears from their hotel room on an international trip.

Prepare the violins, right? Welllll...yes but not for her, as you'll see. Her fear at this catastrophe seems...performative...to the authorities who look at her late-middle-aged self, see the muffin she's so recently married, and all but say out loud, "well, little lady, what exactly can you expect? Men do stray...and he's been gone less than a day. Give him time to sober up and pay the, um, lady. He'll be back." But she's not having it.

Why is she not having it? It does, after all, make a grim kind of sense. Before their short marriage, she didn't know her husband well...he's a relative stranger, so why is it she's carrying on so?

Wheels within wheels, and here we are rollin' along beside Ariel...has that name, one the lady chose for herself, made its real force felt in you yet?...as the story's necessary force carries us along, stopping for some info-dumpy conversations/monologues/set pieces. It's not like there's any point where Author Pavone sticks it to us, the sad little readers wondering what the living hell possessed this hard-edged survivor to do something so stupid as this mishegas results from. And both parties are hard-edged survivors. So what's the situation underlying the story? It's a thriller! You *know* there is one.

The phrase "ripped-from-the-headlines" is a cliche to my generation of Movie of the Week veterans. It got a bad name for shoddy, indifferent storytelling. But it never needed to be that way, did it. What happens that makes the newspapers is a joyous rioting street party of story plots. Read this one and find out what the right dance partner can give.

I can't give the book all five stars because, despite the clarity of storytelling purpose that snaps into focus as the ending twists us up, there is a prolixity of speechifyin' that really grated on me. (I'm lookin' at you, Griffiths.) And the Epilogue is just a shade over the top I most wanted not to go over. But the story is a deeply, involvingly, satisfyingly real one, and I encourage y'all to read it.

I love a book with a twist and love Lisboa (and the rest of Portugal for that matter). So I was looking forward to reading Two Nights in Lisbon. What started as a great read, became tedious about midway through. My mind kept wandering and looking on my Kindle to see how much longer did I have. I believe this could be a much better read if the editor did his/her job and tighten up the storyline. 400+ pages is not a long book but seems that way when the story drags. There are some good twists and I liked the flash backs that added to the point of reference. The plot within the plot was novel. However, the ending is easy to figure out about half way. I am rounding up my 2.5 as I believe that this book has the basics to be much more.

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy.

Chris Pavone is a new to me author and I thank NetGalley for the ARC of this book. I enjoy books with lots of intrigue and that keep me guessing and this book had both. I did find some of the chapter s bit long for my preference and felt some part could have been shorted. All in all I found this book to be well written and it kept my attention throughout

This was fun, engaging, and didn't jump the shark like so many thrillers I have been reading lately. I highly recommend this for your summer reading list!

This isn’t a high octane, action packed thriller. Rather it’s a slow burning escalation of tension and suspense leading to its satisfying conclusion. The story may begin with a kidnapping but then becomes so much more as we learn more about Ariel’s history and how that revelation has far reaching repercussions. This was a well written, intricately crafted story. I think it’s important to note that it does contain sexual assault content that can be a trigger for some readers.

I love it when a seemingly innocuous story spirals out of control, with twists left and right. Two nights in Lisbon started out like a gender-switched Gone Girl; husband disappears, the past comes and bites the proverbial arse, and multiple stakeholders involved.

And woo, what a ride it is!

But under all that is also a serious message about silence, especially of women against powerful men; the former's word against the latter, and how so many cretins get away with bullshit due to their position of power.

Many thanks to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the ARC. I really enjoyed reading it!