Published by Ballantine Books on March 7, 2017

Two brothers are married to two sisters, which is weird for their children (the biological and an adopted son of one couple, twin daughters of the other), who are cousins and nieces/nephews at the same time. When the youngest child, Dustin Tillman, is still fairly young, both sets of parents are murdered. Dustin’s adopted brother Rusty is convicted of the murders and sent to prison.

The murders occur in the 1980s, when juries eagerly believed in nonsense about “Satanic ritual abuse” that (like many of the sensationalistic phenomena reported by Geraldo Rivera) turned out to be nonexistent. One of the key witnesses regarding Rusty’s satanic tendencies was Dustin. How that came to happen is revealed slowly as the story unfolds.

Now middle-aged, Dustin is a psychologist. Like many psychologists, he’s a mess. He once worked as a forensic expert, specializing in Satanic ritual abuse and recovered memories, two fields that were widely discredited in the years that followed. He reinvented himself as a conventional psychologist who hypnotizes patients to help them stop smoking and deal with chronic pain.

As the story begins, Rusty has been released from prison, having finally established his innocence. Some of Ill Will recaps Dustin’s childhood and his relationship with Rusty and his twin cousins, Kate and Waverly. Some of the novel follows Rusty’s telephonic relationship with Dustin’s son Aaron, a young junkie who can’t find any motivation to make a life for himself. It is a challenge to decide whether Dustin or Aaron is more damaged. A small part of the story focuses on Aaron’s brother, who sensibly wants nothing to do with his family.

And some of the story centers upon Dustin’s relationship with a patient, Aqil Ozorowski, a police officer on medical leave, who is preoccupied with the deaths by drowning of several intoxicated students in Ohio. Ozorowski believes they are part of a pattern. An urban legend has grown around that theory, giving birth to a hypothesized killer known as Jack Daniels. If Jack Daniels exists, is he responsible for the death of Aaron’s friend Rabbit?

The key theme of Ill Will is that events have the meaning we choose to give them. Truth is ambiguous. Truth is whatever we believe truth to be. If we choose to see a pattern, one exists. If we choose to give the relationship between events no meaning, the events are unrelated. Seeing patterns where none exist explains why conspiracy theorists are so troubled about unrelated facts, but not seeing patterns between connected events (perhaps for fear of being labeled a conspiracy theorist) can lead to false conclusions. Untrue things (like the spread of Satanic cults) become true when enough people believe them to be true — at least until most people finally realize that they never were true.

Other themes include the power of suggestion, the malleability of memory, the ease with which children can be manipulated (and their unreliability as witnesses for that reason), how abuse is like a virus that turns the abused into abusers, how “accidental and random” life can be, and how bullying can have unexpected consequences.

Dan Chaon’s prose style is often unconventional. Some sentences trail off or have extra spaces between words, reflecting the way people pause or stop talking when they don’t know what to say. Some of the story appears in text balloons. One section is written in three adjacent columns representing three different points of view. None of that put me off and some of it is clever, although the columns are hard to read in digital format. This is yet another reason to believe that print editions of a book make for better reading, even if they are less convenient.

The first half of Ill Will builds characters and background, while the second half builds tension. The plot is based on a series of misunderstandings and mistaken conclusions that prompt characters to take unsound actions ... or malicious actions that are true to their nature.

I didn’t care much for Ill Will’s unlikable characters and strange plot until it began to grow on me. By the time the story reached its conclusion, after I realized what Chaon intended and how effectively he accomplished that intent, I became a believer.

RECOMMENDED

In “Ill Will” we are presented with a very disturbing question: What if what you think is true actually isn’t?

The story revolves around Dustin as he learns that this adopted, Rusty, is being released from prison after serving thirty years for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle. But DNA analysis has overturned the conviction. While he is dealing with this he also becomes entangled with one of his patients as they hunt down a “serial killer”. As his family falls apart in front of his eyes, will Dustin finally understand one of his favorite quotes: “We are always telling a story to ourselves, about ourselves.”

I received a copy of this book through Net Galley and have given my honest review.

This book starts off very interestingly; a psychologist learns that his adopted brother is being released from jail after serving 30 years for the murders of his parents, aunt and uncle. The book delves into that murder from 1983 and also a series of murders occurring in the "present day" (2012-2014). The psychologist is wrapped into investigating the current day murders because of the theories of one of his clients. At first, he thought the client very odd, but the more he listens to him, the more sense he thinks the client makes. So you've got two very interesting story lines and a promising beginning. I'm all set for a delicious dark read!

But I couldn't get past the author's writing style. He probably considers himself clever, but it was annoying, confusing, frustrating, insert other synonyms here. He rambles, he writes sentences that stop in the middle, he places two or three columnar entries on a page, each dealing with totally different content and/or time frames, running for several pages which forces the reader to try to keep the different subjects straight from page to page, or to read one column all the way through, then go back to read the second, and back again to read the third. Unique? Yes. Enjoyable? No!

The entire book was a mind game for both the characters and the reader. I will not read another book by this author.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House - Ballantine for giving me the opportunity to read this book!

ILL WILL by Dan Chaon was a very unusual read. The plot was suspenseful enough, and the characters with their strong expression and communication took off, otherwise, getting past the foul language was a bit sticky. Looking at the cover page and title, didn't give the reader an in-depth idea that the story was going to show some sad points, devastation, and heartaches that some of the characters had to go through. Through the author's skill, and once the story is read, then the reader will get more of the purpose or intent behind the title. Great concept for a story, though.

I can see this turned into a screenplay for Special Victims Unit, one of my favourite TV shows. However, I doubt they would be able to conjure the depth of character contrived by this skilled author. Well done, Mr Choan.

Ballantine Books and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Ill Will. This is my honest opinion of the book.

Dustin Tillman has risen above the tragedy of his youth to help others, in his capacity as a psychologist. His adoptive brother had been arrested and convicted of killing their parents, as well as their aunt and uncle, when he was just a teenager. Years later, with the help of the Innocence Project, Rusty was released from prison. With almost no one in the family willing to talk with him, Rusty weasels his way into Dustin's son's life. Is Aaron, a teenager drifting through life due to his own tragic circumstances, the perfect target or is Rusty genuine in wanting to get to know his family? When college students start going missing on a regular basis and turn up dead, one of Dustin's patients convinces him to help investigate. Will the tangled web of the past catch Dustin, his cousins, and Rusty in the lies?

I was really excited to read Ill Will because of all of the hype, but I should have realized that I was setting myself up for a disappointment. The author attempted to use a modified writing format to convey Dustin's fragmented thought patterns but, in the end, it just seemed like the editing was lacking. The story really never has that "aha" moment or a clear ending, for that matter. There was not a sympathetic character among the group and the book, at just over 450 pages, took too long to get anywhere. Ill Will was a miss for me, so I would not recommend it to other readers.

Creepy novel that lived in the haze created by time and drug use. I enjoyed the uncertainty if not the resolution.

I gave up on this book for the twists were too obvious.

It was entirely too long for my taste, and I couldn't connect with the many different characters, ultimately. Sorry.

I have like other Dan Chaon books and I was really enjoying this book. However, about halfway through it started to get tiresome and was a chore to continue to read. I should say that I was given an ARC of this book and I'm not sure if the sentences that just ended or some of the formatting was intentional or was just errors in my copy. It made trying to follow the plot hard. I never like giving up on a book, but I wish I did on this one because the ending was blah and you could have seen it coming a mile away. Not a bad book, but not a good one either.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an impartial review.

While reading Ill Will, I mostly felt icky - there was no joy here but just a mountain of horror and loss. Psychologist Dustin has an incredibly horrific past that justifiably colors every aspect of his life with his wife and children as well as impacts his practice as a psychologist. While still a young boy, Dustin's parents, aunt and uncle were savagely murdered. His adoptive brother, Rusty, is convicted of the crimes. Rusty had been abusive to Dustin so readers have little sympathy for him. Rusty's eventual vindication after decades in prison only adds to Dustin's stress level.

Dustin's loss is shared with his two slightly older cousins, Kate and Wave. The murders of their parents twists their lives in such a way that Dustin is the only one who, superficially at least, has a normal adult life.

As an adult, Dustin is a psychologist with a dying wife and two sons who view him as odd. Older son, Dennis, escapes to college soon after the death of his mother. Younger son, Aaron, drug-addled and lonely, is seemingly unnoticed as he descends into addiction. Ironically, Dustin's practice revolves around recovered memories and hypnosis. Among his patients is Aqil, a former cop, who has a wild theory about drunken, drowned young men. Dustin and Aqil join forces to discover the truth about how these young suddenly disappear. This investigation provides a focus for grieving Dustin but it also encourages the separation of Aaron.

Chaon's use of multiple narrators is not seamless especially with the use of flashbacks. Aaron's narration is the most awkward since he has none of the backstory and his grief is so raw that he is never impartial. Most challenging was when multiple narrators were presenting their views with the type set in columns. I never knew if I should read the entire column over several pages or read the column to the bottom of the page and then go to the second column even though the first one was not ended. Perhaps this setup was more a function of the ARC then a chosen effect by the author. On a Kindle, the column text was incredibly small and I could not enlarge it.

This novel made me uncomfortable like watching an episode of Criminal Minds. Despite this, the author leaves readers guessing right to the end.

Ill Will by Dan Chaon is a chimera. It shimmers just out of reach like a highway heat mirage, hypnotic, addictive, seductive. Ironically, the same can be said for human memory. How much of what we remember is actually true?

The tale is decidedly post-modern. It is intertextual and follows no rules and respects no boundaries dictated by genre. It is mystery, horror, psychology and more.

Mr Chaon’s literary skills are phenomenal. The prose reads like poetry. He wastes no words. Every pause is filled with action. There is not one single info dump. All the information comes naturally as it would in real life. Even though various characters take turns telling the tale, they are all totally believable and somehow engaging even as they fall prey to obsession and begin to lose touch with reality.

Readers experience this dark tale of obsession through the memories of highly flawed characters. Each has a unique, believable voice, and each struggles to understand the present by unraveling wavering memories of the past. These house-of-mirrors discrepancies pull readers into the text and keep them guessing. Even at the end, many readers will continue to stare at that last page, waiting for more mirages to appear.

The protagonist is Dustin Tillman, a psychologist haunted by garbled memories of abuse and a mass murder that involved his parents. Perhaps in an attempt to come to terms with these childhood memories, he becomes involved in investigating a series of current murders. Tillman appears to have a tenuous hold on reality that makes him vulnerable to manipulation and allows one of his patients to slip into his personal life. This mistake creates an avalanche of disaster that threatens to bury all those he cares for.

Ill Will is very highly recommended and will leave readers questioning the veracity of their own memories. After all, obsession is indeed contagious.

If we are defined by our traitorous memories, then who are we, really?

rougeskireads

Ill Will by Dan Chaon- At first I had difficulty getting into this book with it's short, choppy chapters and jumps back to a past with the immediate returns to the present. I found it a bit jarring to change gears back and forth. After a while the story begins to grab you and I mean in a good way. Dustin is a psychologist, whose adopted brother, he has just learned, is about to be released from prison for the crime of killing their parents, on Dustin and his sister's testimony. It's been thirty years and Dustin doesn't know what to expect but he's sure it will be bad. In the meantime, one of his patients has sucked him into an amateur investigation of recent college drowning victims, with the dubious theory that a serial killer is at work. This sets the stage for a lot of chaos and mayhem, and a meaningful look at memory and how distorted it can become. Not a slasher tome.

This book had me guessing the whole way through. At times I didn't know what was real and what was not. I loved this book, will recommend to all

Sorry - I could not finish this book. The writing was fine, but the plot line was not for me. I can handle 'ugly characters and story lines, but I do need a little hope/lightness somewhere. This was just too ugly, with unlikable characters and little hope for redemption. My apologies but it was just too depressing.

Describing one of the characters as a somewhat hesitant or bumbling speaker created a story with incomplete or broken sentences, at times confusing the flow of the story. The story overall was just okay but a smoother flow of the story would have made for better reading, although it may have detracted from the character of the father. It portrays a very dysfunctional family with a tragic past now living a mysterious present, still dysfunctional and drug induced disillusionment of at least one of the main characters. An interesting read but lack of continuity just too much of a distraction. Note also it is a difficult read on an e-reader as some pages had some very small print.

When I read the blurbs about this book, I thought it sounded fascinating - a promising thriller. And maybe there IS a fascinating thriller hidden somewhere in the confusing narrative that makes up this book but I couldn't find it. The timeline goes back and forth constantly, the narrators change without warning so it's sometimes a page or two before one realizes exactly who is talking and when. The two stories - murders in different times - that sounded so interesting, are muddled and confusing.

The book started out fairly interesting but the middle section was so, so, slow and bogged down. It seemed to take me forever to get through that middle and to the last portion of the story which - though still not making much sense - was at least somewhat intriguing.

I didn't really like any of the characters and didn't particularly care what happened to them (which in this case, turned out to be a good thing)

No book is for everyone. Some people will undoubtedly love this one. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people.

How reliable is memory? Can it be influenced, even controlled by others? Can you ever be sure that what you think happened, really did happen, given our tendency to sugarcoat painful memories to protect ourselves or others? This complex yet thoroughly satisfying novel explores how the line between reality and fantasy can become very blurred as memories interact with experiences over time.
A man is sent to prison for thirty years for a horrific crime he did not commit. His conviction was based on a number of witnesses whose memories proved to be unreliable. Adding to the mystery is the fact that many of the characters are either high, drunk, or emotionally unstable when they witness events leading up to the tragedy. Due to these altered states, their grasp on reality is loose at best, and they continually struggle to separate reality from delusions.
Looking at the reviews, it seems people either love this or hate it. I think it may have to do with expectations.
If you are looking for an simple thriller with an ending where everything is tied up in a neat little bundle, you will be disappointed. However, if you like a complex puzzle that makes you think and keeps you guessing, as I do, you'll love it.
This is so much more than the usual thriller. Chaon's writing skills are extraordinary. I was riveted from start to finish. Even though the plot is complex, I never felt lost or confused. I enjoyed guessing all the way to the end. I can't wait to read more from this author.
Note: I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The summary of Ill Will sounded incredibly interesting when I was browsing on NetGalley. Two unsolved crimes across a span of many years connected by one man. It sounds intriguing, right? Well, the first part of the story did hold my attention, but as I read on, the novel became more and more drawn out. The narrators changed many times and went back and forth from past to present so often that my head was spinning, but I trudged on hoping for an exciting ending.

As I continued reading, I found the characters to be completely self centered and totally incapable of seeing anything but what is right in front of them. I think Chaon purposefully wrote the characters to be this way, and I'm not sure I was really supposed to connect with them or like them very much. I hope not, because they were all extremely strange. There were many things I didn't enjoy about the book, but I still found myself unable to put it down. It definitely had a dark feel to it and I think that is why I felt so strangely about it. I liked it and at the same time I didn't. I wanted to put it down, but at the same time I really needed to know what happened at the end. I didn't like the characters, but I didn't want bad things to happen to them. See why I'm confused?

All in all, Ill Will is a chilling thriller that truly makes you question your own perception of past events. It caught my attention from the first page, and even though it was dark and twisted, I found myself enjoying it. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy suspense and crime novels.

Two murders, past and present, that could be related to Satanic Rituals - what's not to love! Sadly the book fell a bit short of my expectations. Though the blurb sounds interesting, I found it to be a slow read that was difficult to follow (this could be from the eBook formatting). The story switches perspectives and at time it's hard to decipher who the reader is supposed to be following. I wasn't expecting the ending though - so kudos!