Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books, and Stacy Willingham for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Who doesn't love a good thriller? I loved the two timelines.

The description of the locations and settings really helps you feel like you are watching this all play out right in front of you.

Stacy Willingham's ALL THE DANGEROUS THINGS is a stellar thriller, perfect for fans of psychological suspense. The story is filled with interesting, believable characters and A+ twists. I was especially moved by the author's care in showing different types of women and all of the valid, and not so valid, ways they handle relationships and motherhood. This novel cemented Willingham as an automatic read for me; I can't wait to see what she writes next!

To be honest, as much as I really loved Stacy Willingham's first book, I was was nervous to read this one because I was afraid I wouldn't be into it. The mysteries and thrillers I tend to love are more procedural or romantic, just very much NOT domestic. I don't care about cheating partners or taking care of your kids. But I luckily realized shortly into the story that this wouldn't be the case.

Stacy is so fantastic at creating a cast of characters and throwing suspicion on nearly every one of them. Also like her first book, there are multiple storylines running through multiple timelines, and it's so much fun to see if and how they're going to intersect and affect each other.

Two books and I'm already all in with this author!

Isabelle Drake has slept for a year, since her son, Mason, was taken from his crib, in the dead of the night while his parents slept. Her marriage in shambles, Isabelle has made it her mission to keep digging and turn over every stone to find her son. In addition to turning her home into a central station with photos, and articles on the wall, Isabelle travels to give speeches about her ordeal believing that keeping the story alive, it will keep Mason from being forgotten.

The story is told from present to past, and we get a glimpse into Isabelle's trauma from her past which also raises questions for the reader about Isabelle. As a young girl, she suffered from sleepwalking, often scaring her younger sister, Margaret, by standing over her bed. The two sisters were very close. Until waking one morning, Isabelle notes that her sister isn't next to her, and she's not wearing the same nightgown that she went to bed with. She is told her sister had an accident and her father coaches her on what to say to the police. She really doesn't remember so technically she's not lying. From that day forward, the family doesn't speak about what happened.

When Isabelle takes a job to write for The Grit, she is overjoyed and her first venture out to the new town she lives in, she meets Ben Drake, unknown at the time he is her boss. She feels there is a connection with him, and makes a pass that doesn't go over well. When their working relationship gets tight, Isabelle convinces herself that they aren't doing anything wrong besides the pass she made, nothing more has transpired.

When Ben's wife has died from an accidental overdose, it is Ben that seeks Isabelle out and they soon get married. When Mason arrives, their marriage shifts leaving both pulling away from one another. The night that Mason is taken marks the end of the marriage. Ben announces that he's met someone else.

Isabelle is living alone in the home with their dog, Roscoe, although the sleepwalking has disappeared, Isabelle now suffers from insomnia.

Returning home following one of her life event discussions, she finds herself sitting next to a man, Waylon Spencer, who gives her his card and invites her to be on his podcast claiming that he's helped solve a case. Much later, after giving him a brush-off, she finds his business card in her purse and decides to meet with him. Isabelle feels like she has someone on her side, until she discovers Waylon hasn't been as truthful as he's led her to believe.

This is my first book by this author and I was immediately hooked, but as a mother, there is nothing more terrifying than your child missing so I think I was pulled into the story from that point, but soon found myself wondering about the sister and what happened, the reader is left dangling that something bad happened but in what manner and does it relate to the present. I went back and forth from feeling bad for Isabelle, to being angry with her. She ignored and often justified the actions that at times made me want to yell at her. The ending was shocking and satisfying. I found this a riveting read!

I requested and received an ARC from NetGalley via St. Martin's Press and I voluntarily reviewed this book.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC of this book!

Please note: Trigger warnings for post partum depression, death of a family member, missing child

WOW, this is exactly what I needed to start out the year. This was a captivating and intriguing.

It's been one year since Isabelle Drake's son was taken from the house during the night. With no evidence or leads, the case came to a halt. When Isabelle is approached by a true crime podcaster, she agrees to share her story with him and let him help with the case. As Isabelle re-visits the events from a year ago, she also begins to revisit events from her past, and even questions some things she remembers. As the events unfold and Isabelle continues her search for her son, more is revealed and Isabelle doesn't know who to trust anymore.

I found this story took me a few chapters to get into, but once I did, I was hooked! I found the authors story-telling to be so good, and it didn't take much to feel like I was right there with Isabelle. I luckily got to read this one and listen on audio, and I will say that the audio copy was just as, if not more, captivating!

I also wanted to say that I loved the authors note at the end! Such a nice touch. Don't read it until you have finished the story though as it contains spoilers.

If you are looking for a captivating thriller to start off the year, look no further! I highly recommend checking this one out.

I really enjoyed A Flicker in the Dark but guessed the ending. This one, *chefs kiss*. Loved it. Not predictable, scary at times, so enjoyable. The aspect of a missing child REALLY makes the stakes higher in this one as you're rushing through the pages to find out what happened. I was having chills when our MC saw herself standing next to the crib on the nanny cam in the middle of the night. Truly terrifying. Such a satisfying ending as well. Stacy Willingham is really making a name for herself in the thriller space & I am grateful to have received an ARC!

Isabelle Drake’s son is missing and has been for a year. To keep people interested in her son’s missing persons case, Isabelle speaks at True Crime conventions, where she meets Waylon, a true crime podcaster. She agrees to be interviewed by Waylon to trigger new clues or witnesses. But in doing so, Isabelle questions her own history. If she can’t trust her memories, who can she trust?

I love domestic suspense books, which are often more character driven than plot driven. Willingham creates an engrossing character arc for Isabelle, an unreliable narrator due to insomnia (thank you for NOT including alcohol, I'm over that trope!). The story builds slowly with vivid imagery and descriptive prose. However, at times I wanted the story to move a bit quicker. But that’s a personal preference. The twisty ending blindsided me. If you love a big twist at the end, you’ll love this ending!! Overall, I really enjoyed this solid thriller.

Who should read this:
✨Enjoyed Willingham’s previous novel - A Flicker in the Dark
✨Unreliable narrator
✨Insomnia Trope
✨Slow-burn mystery
✨Twisty endings

5/5

If I had to define this book in three words: WHAT A RIDE!!!!

I went into this with high expectations because I enjoyed A Flicker In The Dark SO much…but I LOVED this one!!!!!

The storytelling in this one was captivating – and I was SO invested in this storyline from page one.

I had my detective hat on throughout this entire novel – I had SO many theories and suspects. I had a BLAST reading this one with my bestie @alialwaysreading – and that to me is a sign of a PHENOMENAL read. The twists and turns that All The Dangerous Things took us on was mind blowing! This was a book that I couldn’t WAIT to pick back up because I just had to know what was going to happen.

Our MC, Isabelle is going through the most unimaginable pain a mother could ever endure and you can FEEL her pain through the pages. What mother wouldn’t take matters in her own hands to find out what happened to her child? I found Isabelle to have so much character depth and I had a love/hate relationship with her as she was piecing together Mason’s disappearance.

I loved the past/present storyline – and learning about Isabelle’s childhood and how it connected to her adult life was fascinating,

Overall, I found this book to be painfully realistic and each plot twist had my jaw on the floor.

Also, please take the time to read the author’s note. Willingham talks about the inspiration behind this novel – and the background information that she drew in made me appreciate this novel THAT much more.

SIMONE SAYS READ THIS IF YOU LIKE

Unreliable characters
Past/present timelines
Plot twists galore
Short chapters

Thank you to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

Way to traumatize a kid for life by trying to "protect" them.... Good job mom and dad! You turned your daughter into an emotional wreck, and make her feel like she was the root cause of every problem in her life. Stop lying to your kids; they are able to understand more than you think!

Isabelle Drake had issues with sleeping all her life. Either she was sleeping too much or as it started after her son's kidnapping, she stopped sleeping. You know how moderation is important. Either end of the extreme was causing her doubt herself. She couldn't get over the fact that she might had something to do with her sister's accident, now she was losing her mind over possibility of her involvement in her son's disappearance.

It makes you back and forth so many times with new clues trickling in about Isabelle, her husband Ben, and podcast host Waylon. Connection between those 3 and actually what happened will blow your mind. Trust no one.... trust no freaking one....

Izzy hasn’t slept for a total of 364 days, ever since her little boy Mason went missing. Now she spends every waking moment trying to find him. Told between past and present, this story had so many twists and turns. Paired with some shady characters, I had a hard time putting this book down!

A huge Thank You to The author, The publisher and NetGalley for providing the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.
This whole book kept me on my toes. I love it for that. I absolutely do.

💤 I’ll start with the one negative I have about this book – I was bored to tears until about the halfway point in the story. I can’t tell you how many times I almost set this book aside to read something else. It was just slogging along and I wasn’t interested. But I’m glad I stuck with it because it ended up being a favorite read in 2022 for me!

💤 This is a past/present domestic suspense with complex characters. I didn’t realize how complex until I got much further into the book though. There is an unreliable narrator component, also. I love a good unreliable narrator!!!

💤 This book hits on a ton of topics – grief, motherhood, postpartum depression, sleep deprivation/insomnia, adultery, jealousy, murder, kidnapping, and more. I was impressed by how emotionally complex the story was – I didn’t expect that and I was impressed by the emotions it brought out in me personally.

💤 I did not anticipate the twist at the end at all (which is very rare for me). Every time I was sure I knew what was going on... I was wrong. While conceivable, the ending may have been a bit convenient, but it was still quite satisfying.

💤 I’m glad I stuck with this one because I ended up loving it. I have not read the author’s previous book (A Flicker in the Dark), but I will definitely be reading it now.

Thank you @NetGalley and @StMartinsPress for an eARC of this book, which I have read and reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

This mystery follows Isabelle 1 year after her son was abducted from his crib in the middle of the night. His case quickly went cold, but Isabelle has been spending her time investigating on her own. Time that she has in abundance due to her insomnia ever since that night. After yet another appearance at a true-crime convention, she agrees to be interviewed on a true-crime podcast. Isabelle has been sharing her story for a year, but as these interview questions start to expand from her son's case to her personal life, she gets nervous. As more details come to light, Isabelle starts to doubt her own recollection of that night as well as some uncomfortable memories from her own childhood. As much as the truth may hurt, she's determined to follow the trail to solve her son's case.

I absolutely love the characters in this book - from Isabelle to all of the secondary characters. Willingham does such a great job of describing these characters in such a way that I immediately got a good sense of them and was able to keep everyone straight. Since the reader is coming into this story a year after the main event (the abduction), we're sort of playing catch up for the first bit of the book. For example, we're being introduced to the detective on the case, but he is someone Isabelle has had a lot of contact with over the past year so she and him have an established relationship. Being able to be plopped into the middle of those types of dynamics without needing a whole ton of backstory info-dumped onto the reader is fantastic. I love the way Willingham writes these characters that we get an immediate sense of who they are while still moving the plot forward. There isn't any clunky slow down of pacing for us to get a paragraph of description or backstory.  

I adore unreliable narrators in my mystery/thriller books but often that is a spoiler to mention because we don't find out their unreliable until the midpoint or end reveal. In this case, we're told right in the description that Isabelle's insomnia is making her doubt her own recollection of the night her son was taken. I think the insomnia is a really great way to handle this type of unreliable narrator trope without it veering into potentially harmful stereotypes that we see somewhat often. For example - a character has DID (Dissociative identity disorder) but doesn't know it and one of their personalities is violent. I think Willingham set this part of Isabelle's personality and past history up really well and I found myself questioning Isabelle before she starts questioning herself. 

The dual timeline aspect of this read was also really well done. We're mainly following current-day Isabelle but we are also following the timeline of her and her sister when they are children. At first, it isn't clear why we're being shown these past scenes since they seem pretty mundane. However, they payoff really well at the end. In this case, the dual timeline acts more as a way to show Isabelle's character growth throughout the story and is less directly related to the core mystery of her son's disappearance. It felt like the book was a 70/30 split between current day and the past, which I think is a good ratio to be at. These past scenes were little moments of reprieve from the more emotionally heavy current timeline of the abduction.

My one complaint from this story was that there were too many moments where tense moments were killed before they had a chance to really make an impact. The specifics of these would be spoilers, but the general trend happened a few times in the story. It felt like Willingham spent so long and such care building up these situations and characters in a certain way that when the reveal came that all might not be as it seems, I was immediately intrigued. I could envision how these reveals would have ripple effects throughout the entire plot. However, it then seemed like only pages later these reveals would be sort of neutralized by a second reveal that while it didn't completely undo the information we learned, it certainly lessened the impact. This could come down to a personal preference, but having this quick negating of tension really made the second half of the read feel a bit deflated. I love mystery/thrillers that have really high tension and the initial reveals were spectacular. I think if we got to sit in those high tension implications for longer before getting the resolution, it would have made for a more impactful read. 

In line with my previous point, the ending felt a little rushed. We get a reveal of the solution to the mystery, then on-page conflict, then on-page resolution all within a handful of pages. The reveal, itself, was fantastic - I loved the solution to this mystery and how it tied in a lot of ongoing threads in the story. We do still get a satisfying ending and answers to all the questions, but I wanted to sit in that reveal and resolution for a little longer than we did. It felt like as soon as we got the big reveal, I had just enough time to go "oh, shit, that means...." and then we had a flash forward and some pretty quick wrap up explanation of the closing events of the book.

Overall, this was a really great, tense read. I loved the characters and the character choices that Willingham made. I had some issues with the pacing for the more tense moments and would have liked them to be more drawn out, but the actual substance of those moments and reveals were fantastic.

TW/CW: death of a child, child abduction, post-partum psychosis, pregnancy, motherhood, infidelity, suicide, drug abuse, overdose

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the ARC

Expected publication date is January 10, 2023

Sleep deprivation is a b!tch! Add to that a history of sleep walking, the guilt over a sibling's death, and a missing child, and you have a dangerous cocktail. Isabella is trying to deal with it all while speaking at true crime conventions in an attempt to keep her son's case on the front burner. Oh and investigate the crime herself! When a true crime podcast host shows up and convinces her to appear on his podcast, the story moves in to high gear. I loved the writing and how the story developed. I loved how easily it was to feel Isabella's plight, wondering if her narration could be trusted or not. I loved how Ms. Willingham keeps the reader on their toes and kept the story both deep and detailed without slowing down the pace.

I knew going into this that it was going to be good because I enjoyed the authors debut but honestly, this one blew that one out of the water. Totally engrossing from page one, the storyline was incredible. The idea of a seemingly unreliable narrator still being reliable and having the pieces of the puzzle she was facing slowly fall into place for her was fantastic. I was shocked by the twists and was so excited that I didn’t see it coming; as a thriller lover, it can sometimes be rare.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this one!

Isabelle Drake’s life changed a year ago when her young son was taken from his room one night. She hasn’t slept since the incident. There are times when she can’t tell if she is hallucinating or sleepwalking. You learn about her past along the way where you find out she has a history of sleepwalking.
Her husband leaves her. She spends most of her time looking into everyone and everything in hopes of figuring out what happened to her son. She lost everything including her identity.
I will say the first half was a bit slow and I thought I had it all figured out. The second half will blow you away. You will be second guessing everyone she encounters but you won’t believe the ending.
This is a great psychological thriller.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press and Minotaur Books for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

First read of 2023 is ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️!

So thankful for my kindle during this newborn (one-handed) stage 👶🏼 I loved Flicker in the Dark but I loved All the Dangerous Things even more!

So many twists - even when I thought I had it figured out! All the things I live in a thriller including unreliable characters, multiple timeline, and dark pasts. All of these were expertly woven together in a way to keep you guessing. It was a wild ride but still made sense along the way. Add to your TBR!!! I can’t wait to see what else Stacy Willingham will write!
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#bookstagram #booklover #arcreview #netgalley #allthedangerousthings #stacywillingham

I am a big fan of this book. It was a mystery, it was scary, it was emotional... all the things. I found myself staying up past bedtime to find out what happened next. Isabelle Drake can't sleep. In fact, she hasn't slept in a year other than short, fitful naps. A year ago, her son Mason was taken from his crib in the middle of the night. Isabelle won't rest until she finds out who took him. I began to suspect several of the characters in the book, Oh, wait! Who is this guy who seems to know so much about the situation? Who is that neighbor who sits on his front porch in the middle of the night? You know, I just never trust the ex husband... buy this book

All The Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Stacy Willingham is truly a genius.
I absolutely adored A Flicker in the Dark and was so excited to dive into her next book and let me tell you, it absolutely delivered!

Isabelle’s story had me hooked from page one, it was filled with twists and turns that I never saw coming! The characters all gave me the heebie jeebies, the now and then timelines were equally puzzling and entertaining and I absolutely could not wait to see how everything pieced together!

Willingham has secured her spot as a must read author in my books and she is sure to become a favourite among many others with All the Dangerous Things!

If you loved A Flicker in the Dark, are a fan of well-written twisty thrillers, or are in need of a read to get you out of a reading slump this book is absolutely for you!

I know you have seen this book all over bookstagram and are tired of seeing it, but hear me out: this book was THAT good that it deserves all the hype.

I read A Flicker in the Dark last year and absolutely loved it, so I had high hopes for this sophomore novel. Thankfully it didn’t disappoint! I was a little scared to read it at first due to the subject matter, but I dove in anyways. I immediately fell back in love with her writing and the nostalgic feel her stories take on. I could almost hear all the noises from the marsh as I read!

This book was every mother’s worst nightmare come true. I felt so connected to Izzy because of that and wanted answers as bad as she did. She was the epitome of an unreliable narrator, but that just added another level to the story. The twists were great in this one and I loved seeing it all come together!

I give this an easy 5 ⭐️s! Definitely grab a copy when it hits shelves this week on January 10th!