Rabbit Hole was a dark and depressing look at grief. It never seemed to get anywhere. It just wallowed in itself. You are subjected to very bad people who do not take much outside of their own experience and feelings into anything that they do. This is lead by the main character-understandably scarred and lost after the loss of her sister with no closure-who is quite possibly the worst teacher and pet owner you will read about this year. Her slef destruction knows no limit and every just watches her do it. When being drunk and high while making out when you are teacher chaperoning a high school dance isn’t the low point of your career, maybe you just aren’t meant to be a teacher.

The author just drags you down into the depths with her. I imagine that she was outside herself telling herself to stop it, just like the reader was doing. Just like I was doing. In the end, I felt the loss and being lost. In that way it was extremely effective.

Rabbit Hole was an incredibly dark look into what grief can do to people and the ways in which we let each other down. Ten years after the disappearance of her sister Angie, Teddy's father drives off of a bridge and kills himself. This novel explores the aftermath of all of that. Teddy begins cleaning up the messes her father left behind and stumbles across the reddit community that was fascinated by the disappearance of her sister. Along the way she reconnects with people from her and her sister's past, and also meets the mysterious Mickey, who reminds her of Angie. This is a slow burn that explores Teddy's self-destructive tendencies as she tries to grapple with what has happened to her family and whether or not she can move on from it.

DNF @ 25% - after this being the second book of kate brody’s to DNF, I’m thinking that she may not be the author for me. the story was captivating but I wasn’t a fan of the writing style. plus, reddit threads scare me LOL! I would definitely recommend to others who like her previous work!

My initial thoughts when starting this were "woah this book is grim." The overall tone is depressing. Parental death, spousal death, sister death, family who wants you to go away...the author even threw in a poor old dog with painful cancerous tumors as if the other stuff just wasn't sad enough. And all of this is presented in the first few chapters.

The mystery element kept me reading though and I liked the writing style despite the sad tone. The author writes well. However, the story was just too slow and sad for me. There wasn't much excitement and the characters were unlikable so the story itself flopped for me.

At first I felt invested in Teddy researching her sister's mysterious disappearance and father's unexpected death. She uncovers info as the story unfolds and I was hooked, and needed the answers almost as badly as she did. But it just didn't feel like it went anywhere.

Fans of true crime who are looking for fiction to read can give it a try if you're interested in a slow burn that explores grief.

I see why this is compared to Gillian Flynn as the main character reminds me of the destructive main character in Sharp Objects. But this is more a study on grief similar to Notes on your sudden disappearance. We follow a woman who lost her sister as a teen and now her father has committed suicide. I found the initial 1/2 very compelling but it slows down a bit toward the back half. Still an enjoyable somewhat dark read with some sub plots that are sure to be a bit controversial.

There may be a little mis-marketing for this title. It's billed as a thriller, and while the story and b-plots are compelling, it's definitely not a thrill. It's more of a journey into the void of grief and the mystery of our main character's losses. I enjoyed it, but had to readjust my expectations after nearly a quarter into the book. I think fans of Ottessa Moshfegh would enjoy this book, but Gillian Flynn fans may be a little disappointed. All in all, it's well written and its insufferable main character takes us on a journey into the depths of her own despair--a Rabbit Hole indeed.

Big thanks to the publisher and NetGalled for this ARC!

I'm not sure I'm okay after finishing this. What a ride!

Some other reviewers have suggested there's a marketing issue with this book--and there absolutely is. This is really not a mystery/thriller, it's like a microscopic look at the human condition in the face of immense grief and unresolved trauma. What genre is that? So I think there's some negative reviews coming in from people that were expecting an actual thriller, but got this slow burn that feels like looking at the worst parts of the world and sitting with those emotions about it.

That being said: it's beautifully written and Brody paints an incredibly uncomfortable picture of a family in a time (a lifetime perhaps?) of grief and conflict, and a spiral into questioning ones own reality. This doesn't end with a completely tied up storyline, and I think it's that feeling of being uncomfortable that Brody was going for with this.

First, I think it’s important to let future readers know that this is not the kind of thriller that comes to mind when you hear the genre mentioned — the thrill is not necessarily driven by the plot, but rather by the character study unnervingly present in every page. A psychological thriller, maybe? I’d call it a dark, fictional tale about the unexpected journey grief can take us on.

To say Teddy’s family life is complicated is an understatement. Ten years ago, Theodora Angstrom’s older sister, Angie, went missing. The case remains cold, and unsolved. Now Teddy’s father, Mark, has driven his car off a bridge, leaving his daughter and wife to pick up the pieces of their family once again. On a whim, entering the home office Mark holed himself up in for hours upon hours, Teddy discovers the endless work of a man scouring the highs and lows of the internet looking for any trace of his missing step-daughter. Unable to resist the urge of diving in herself, the rabbit hole of the internet calls to Teddy, and down, down she falls looking to find her sister.

Rabbit hole, a perfect title for this novel, doesn’t just refer to the internet searches that have our MC constantly refreshing pages, but also as a reference to her self-destructive spiral; to her grief, obsession, and desperation for any kind of human connection or emotional attachment. The tension in this book is palpable, the emotions are raw, the secondhand embarrassment is real.

There’s a very specific part of this novel involving the family dog that tore every heartstring suspending my heart in my chest. Some might call it unnecessary, but I found it a wrenching depiction of pain avoidance by people steeped in trauma. The conclusion had me in tears.

My meter isn’t ringing in like or dislike for this book, rather just thoughtful contemplations. I couldn’t put my copy down until I reached the end of the story. Similar to how my own familiar rabbit hole searches on reddit and the internet go, I find myself still thinking of the novel days, weeks later.

I thought Rabbit Hole would be a mystery, but it was really not that at all.

More a character's first person POV exploration into her very dysfunctional family, her sister's disappearance, and her father's suicide. It's a dark, strange book with no real resolution at all.

Trigger warnings for all kinds of dark stuff plus animal death/abuse.

In a book like this, you need to be sure that you like or at least can relate to the main character, because they manage to make everything all about them. And understand that you are not getting a traditional mystery or psychological thriller, more just dark fiction.

More of a mystery than a thriller Rabbit Hole is dark trip into grief, memory, and family love.

Teddy is an unreliable narrator searching for meaning in her life after her father's suicide...on the 10 year anniversary of her sister mysteriously disappearing. She gets deep into the reddit true crime groups and conspiracy theories and starts thinking she might find her sister. Along with the help of an odd college student who is clearly hiding something Teddy manages to bite off more than she can chew and we the reader get to see her fully unravel.

It's a slow burn and it unspools bit-by-bit, but it's definitely like diving into an internet rabbit hole where nothing is as interesting as it appears and every ends badly..

TW for animal death.

Similar vibes to My Dark Vanessa.

I tried… I really tried my best to get through this but I just couldn’t. Teddy is an absolute disaster of a human and her POV was so hard to follow because of how unlikeable she is. I can see why when she comes from such a toxic family situation, but there has to be some kind of redeeming quality for me to go on. Teddy has none. I really wanted to find out what happened to Angie but after strung-out Teddy basically pulled a gun on her students, I had to give up. Between that and the fact that there was really noteworthy going on regarding her investigation into her sister’s odd disappearance and father’s suicide, this was too hard to get through. I DNF’d at the 65% mark. I just didn’t find the book engaging and I felt like I was getting too bogged down emotionally whenever Teddy had a meltdown (which was basically every other chapter). I just don’t think this was for me or to my taste at all.

After reading the description for Rabbit Hole, I was very excited to jump right into a thriller. I’ve been in a romance era for the last year, and I miss my mystery/thriller roots. Before I started reading, I popped over to Goodreads to just get a more in depth look at the book. I’m glad I did! Having read the book, I will say that I don’t think the marketing does the book justice. Had I come in approaching a similar tale to “Gone Girl” I think I would’ve been disappointed. Instead, I was able to enjoy Rabbit Hole as it unfolded, without any preconceived notions or biases as to how things should progress.

The writing was strong and immersive, it was easy to empathize with the struggle Teddy was experiencing. There were several times my heart ached for the pain and grief she was feeling. The story was engaging from start to finish. I’ll be following Kate Brody and look forward to seeing her future work!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

“There is no accounting for the gulf between who we were and how we ended up.”

Teddy’s life hasn’t been easy. Ten years ago her sister, Angie, disappeared and now her dad has committed suicide. Angie’s case has never been solved. While cleaning out her dad’s things, Teddy discovers he was fixated on a Reddit community dedicated to finding Angie. She falls down the rabbit hole soon after.

While executing her investigation she meets Mickey, a 19-year-old college student who was helping her dad with his investigation into Angie’s disappearance. They become fast friends. They do everything together. Mickey even starts staying at Teddy’s apartment. Everyone in her life is suspicious of Mickey, but she can’t seem to figure out why.

Teddy’s moral compass starts to waiver as she spends more time with Mickey. She starts stalking her half-brother, skipping work, and getting into unnecessary fights with her boyfriend. She’s having a hard time dealing with the hurt of the past and the potential of the future where she has no dad or sister and must take care of her mother.

Teddy isn’t going to quit until she finds Angie, even if she has to destroy her own life to do it.

This was such an interesting book. It’s a thriller that shows how grief (and the internet) can tear someone apart. It’s character-driven, fast-paced, and heart-wrenching. You watch Teddy go from a normal, level-headed teacher to a woman consumed by grief and what-if. There were times while reading this that I wanted to reach out and give Teddy the biggest hug (and I’m not a hugger, friends).

I would suggest this to anyone looking for a thriller that will pull at your heart strings.

Really solid, in my opinion. For some reason, I think that if you liked Penance by Eliza Clark, you'll probably like this one, too. Probably the true crime internet culture angle. I found the main characters to be quite well developed here, and it actually managed to make me tear up a bit towards the end. Overall, would recommend.

Rabbit Hole encapsulates the slow, overwhelming descension into grief, depression and desperation for answers as Teddy Angstrom tries to make sense of what happened to her sister ten years ago, and her father who just committed suicide. In the wake of her father's death, she goes to clean out his office and discovers notes about a sub-reddit rabbit hole he had been pulled into about her missing sister Angie before his death. As she gets pulled into the Internet theories, she finds herself in darker and darker places.

This book is a potent exploration of grief and death, so much so that I felt the heavy sadness on every page. I wouldn't call it a thriller per se, as it's more of a character study about what happens to the family members who remain after a tragedy. If you're in the mood for a dark, seedy look at the suffering of survivors, and the sometimes devastating consequences of searching for answers, add this to your list!

An extreme study in grief. Teddy's father Mark commits suicide on the 10-year anniversary of the disappearance of her sister, Angie. Teddy, lacking any kind of answers, quickly spirals into online voyeurism. Her radical behavioral changes quickly get her into trouble with her new boyfriend, her estranged half-brother, and her work colleagues. But Teddy can't, and won't, stop until she knows what happened to Angie. Complicating matters is Mickey, an "expert" on her sister's case, who was "helping" Mark figure out what happened to Angie all those years ago.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Soho Crime for this e-arc.*

I struggled with this book for so many reasons. The first of which is that this was less a thriller/mystery than a deep look at a woman with some serious mental health issues within a family of people with mental health issues either resulting from or exacerbated by the loss of a sister/daughter. But, unlike many books like this, I didn't feel like the characters grew during the course of the book. Teddy is a continual dumpster fire of bad decisions and the ending didn't give any resolution. It needed more! That is harsh criticism from someone who is equally opposed to pretty little endings with everything all tied up. My final big issue with the book was the mistreatment of Wolfie, the family dog. I get what the author was trying to symbolize with him, but I didn't like it. I will never be a fan of letting animals suffer. All that being said, if you know you aren't reading a page turner thriller and are instead being immersed in a well of grief, and can accept how the dog is treated, this is a good story.

I went into this book thinking it was a thriller. So when I was 80% through and realized there was no “thrill,” I was let down. However, after I looked at the story from a different angle, I could appreciate it for what it indeed was. This novel is a story of heartache and heartbreak, grief, and what-ifs. And all that is raw when it comes to healing.

DNF @47%

I really wanted to like this book. It had such a promising concept. Sadly, I didn’t vibe with the execution.

This is more of its “me not you”. This book isn't bad. It’s sold as a thriller but has more of a literary overtone. It’s also sold as fast paced but I found what I read to be more of a slow to medium pace. This book is also dark and very bleak.

Again, this isn’t a bad book. I’m sure there are going to be tons of people out there who love it. But I’m just not one of them.

This book is dark and weird and full of rage and grief, and I don't know whether I was entertained by it or enthralled by it. But either way, Brody's writing is vivid and impeccable, with no easy answers for anyone (about anything).