I really like Dan Chaon's previous books, and the description made this novel sound fascinating. However, it got far too bogged down in drug culture--the long scenes about shooting up went on too long and did not feel fresh or interesting. The author's refusal to give the reader any real resolution to grab on to was also frustrating. Ultimately, the book just felt disjointed.

I also thought the side-by-side structure of large portions of the novel was too obviously designed to be clever, and sacrificed story to gimmick; also, reading those sections was impossible on Kindle and iPad, so readers who buy the ebook instead of the physical book will likely feel cheated.

Thirty years ago, Dustin’s aunt, uncle, mother, and father were brutally murdered. His testimony helped to put his adopted older brother, Rusty, in prison for the crime. Now, Rusty is being released from prison, his innocence proven by DNA evidence. But if Rusty didn’t commit the murders, then who did?

In the meantime, it appears that a serial killer might be operating in northern Ohio. Dustin, now a psychologist in Cleveland, becomes obsessed with a series of suspicious deaths after one of his patients brings up his own investigation. As Dustin and his family are pulled apart by both the events of thirty years ago and today, the nature of right and wrong, sanity and insanity becomes more and more muddled.

This was a fascinating book, though at times I found it difficult to read. The story, which weaves between past events and the present day, is mainly from the point of view of Dustin himself, and his adult son, Aaron. The story begins with Dustin learning of Rusty’s release from prison. This knowledge, and the anticipation of retribution from his adopted brother, start off a chain of events leading Dustin down a rabbit hole of obsession. Aaron, dealing with drug addiction, is nearly as unreliable a narrator as Dustin.

As the two men move through the story, the narrative literally fragments, some pages having several competing point-of-views for the same people of the same event. Thoughts and sentences are often left unfinished, as minds drift and alternative thoughts impose themselves upon the narrative. Ill Will explores the fragility of self and the unreliability of perception and memory.

I enjoyed this book. It is a uniquely written thriller, and the plot twists and turns and doubles back on itself often enough to confound the reader. In places, the formatting, especially with the competing narratives, can make the book hard to follow. To me, the book is reminiscent of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, a psychological thriller which also used atypical formatting to advance the plot. And, like House of Leaves, I strongly suspect that this is a book you will either love or hate.

I would recommend this book to someone who likes darker psychological thrillers, but not to anyone who requires concrete endings or neatly tied loose ends. In that regard, Ill Will is a lot like the recently published Universal Harvester by John Darnielle (my review can be read here) in that it is a creepy book which will mess with your head, and the ending will leave you with nearly as many questions as answers. In sum, I enjoyed this book quite a bit, but it is certainly not for everyone. If you enjoyed either of the two books previously mentioned, then I strongly recommend reading Ill Will.

An advance copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Ill Will will be available for purchase on March 7th, 2017.

This is one of those books that you have to set time for. But more than that you want to lock the doors, get comfortable and make sure anything that you are going to need from the minute you start until the minute you finish is close at hand because you aren't going to want to move from your safe spot until you have all of the answers! This story centers around Dustin Tillman, a 41-year-old psychologist who recently lost his wife to cancer. While you wonder the grief's affect on how his mental state is as he starts dealing with a series of chaotic events that while at once appear to be random also seem to be linked and you want nothing more than to find out how they are linked. This book is like waking up in a Hitchcock movie.

This is a bold, unique and thrilling story that gets to the heart of the human psyche. Chaon takes the readers on a ride that can only be described as a plunge into the depths of paranoia and mental disorder.
Ill Will is unlike anything I've ever read. The structure of the story is fresh and exciting, inviting you inside the minds of multiple characters. The idea of unreliable narrator is turned on its head again and again. This is simply a refreshing take on the mystery genre and one that proves literary fiction can be page-turning.

The good news is that if you’re looking for something dark, then Chaon is your author. I received a copy free and in advance in exchange for an honest review; thank you Net Galley and Random House Ballantine. This book was released today and is available to the public.

The plot centers around a psychologist, recently widowed, who’s coming unstuck. One of his sons has developed an ugly drug habit right under his distracted father’s nose, but his dad just keeps giving him money and doesn’t ask questions. At the same time, the psychologist’s brother, who was sentenced to two life terms for the murders of their parents, aunt, and uncle, is exonerated when DNA analysis is done. Simultaneously a patient of Dan’s comes to him with questions about a series of drowning of drunken college boys that he says he believes are linked. At first, Dan assumes these are paranoid ramblings, but over the course of time, the patient begins to assume greater and still greater importance in Dan’s life, until the reader begins to wonder which of the characters is the psychologist and which is the patient.

The quality of the prose is surreal and at times, dreamlike.

Every reader has a threshold for the level of violence he or she can sustain before a book ceases to be deliciously creepy and instead becomes a thing we wish we never read. I knew when I hit the term “snuff film” before the twenty percent mark that I might be in trouble, but it was a passing reference and since I had an obligation to the author and publisher, I brushed it off and kept reading. I read multiple books at a time, usually half a dozen or so, and I found that this book was the one that I just didn’t want to read. With the publication date upon me, I forced myself through to the end, and have been slightly queasy ever since.

I didn’t have any fun here; it was just too disturbing.

I want to be fair, and so I read carefully in order to see whether there are any clever literary nuances that might improve my rating, and the second star is included here because of some interesting and innovative stylistic tools that are employed. I liked the triple narrative that appears to be taking place simultaneously, and am interested in the business employed with sentence endings that begins with the father and ends with someone else.

The story’s ending is both unpleasant and disappointing, in that it doesn’t present any sort of epiphany or surprise. My reaction to the end of this whole unfortunate thing is, “Oh.”

None of this means that you won’t like this story. There’s a lot of buzz right now about the now discredited belief in Satanic rituals that were in the news during the 1980s, and if this is in your wheelhouse, maybe you’ll like the book. If your tastes run way out on the edge of horror, you might find it more appealing than I do. On the other hand, it won’t make the ending any less anticlimactic.

Recommended to those interested in extreme horror stories and with a bottomless wallet, or that can read it free or cheaply.

Dustin Tillman has a fairly normal life. On the surface. He's a psychologist who specialized in hypnotism, to help his clients quit smoking or deal with chronic pain or anxiety. He enjoys his work. He has a lawyer wife and two sons. Their lives in Cleveland go on as most families do. 

Except Dustin has a secret. He has a past, one where his parents and aunt and uncle were brutally murdered when he was a child. His older brother Rusty, adopted after his foster family died in a fire, is charged with the killings. He was convicted after Dustin and one of his cousins testified to witnessing Satanic rituals, and teenaged Rusty had no real defense against the rising panic.

So when one of Dustin's patients, a cop on disability, comes to him with a theory about murdered college students, Dustin is interested. And as he gets pulled deeper into the story, there are questions about whether the killer in question (if, in fact, it is a killer--the victims are drunk college guys who are found drowned in nearby rivers or lakes) is more than one individual, or even a group . . . or a cult. 

And then Dustin gets word that Rusty is getting released from prison. The Innocence Project had taken on his case, and they found DNA evidence that exonerated him. So now Dustin has more questions. Will Rusty try to contact him? What should he say if he does? And who was behind the murder of his parents, if not Rusty? 

Dan Chaon's Ill Will unwinds in layers. You think you know what it's about, and then it all changes. It shifts, the way a memory can shift, the way time plays with our heads, the way other people add meaning or secrets or depth to a story in ways we don't always understand at the time. The pieces of the puzzle fall into place slowly, with painstaking precision and breath-taking detail. 

I will be honest. I'm still waiting for my head to stop spinning on this one. It's complex. There is a part of me that wants to say that I highly recommend this book, and I do. It's masterful in ways I can't even talk about yet. So it will take me some time to know for sure how and when to recommend this book. But once I figure that part out, I will be recommending it for a very, very, very long time. 



Galleys for Ill Will provided by the publisher through NetGalley.com.

This story is dark, intense and fascinating. It starts out with the murder of 2 couples, who have 4 children all together. One, Rusty, was convicted of the murders and has spent some 30 years in prison. However, a group that works for innocent inmates gets his conviction overturned. This starts a a chain reaction of events. Who killed the the 4? Was it Rusty? If not, who else could it have been. Wave? Dusty? or maybe Kate? Or maybe someone entirely different? The story is told from several different viewpoints and time periods. In present day, Dustin, Rusty's brother, is grown up, married with 2 sons. His wife, Jill, has recently died from cancer, which somewhat sends Dustin over the edge. He is a psychologist and becomes close to one of his clients, Aqil. Now, also, in the present day there may be a serial killer that is targeting young college boys. Wow, so much going on. But it all fits in together. There are lots of twists and turns that take you to the end. I thought it was a well-written book and the characters were very complex and realistic. I loved the book. It is a roller coaster ride of darkness, fear and intrigue.

Dustin Tillman had been drifting along in life . Dustin was a psychologist and had two teenage sons. Then his cousin Kate called from L A about Dustin's older adopted brother Russell who had been sent to prison for the murder of his parents Colleen and Dave and his Aunt Vicki and Uncle Lucky. Russell was six years older that Dustin. Dustin remembered how Russell had: shot him in the back with his BB gun. Listened to death metal, carved a pentagram into his forearm, who had destroyed a snowman Dustin had built. Russell who was delighted by Dustin's fear of the dark and would wait until Dustin was settled in bed and turn off the light and close the door until Dustin screamed. A body had been found by some college girls his name was Peter Allingham- he was a college sophomore and one of Dustin’s patients thought it was a link to several other drownings. Dustin thought back to when he was thirteen and his parents were murdered as well as his aunt and uncle. He had been in the camper with his twin cousins Kate and Wave until the next morning when Dustin found his mother and held her for one last time. Kate told Dustin that Russell had not killed his parents or hers that three different laboratories had done independent DNA tests proving Russell’s innocence. Russell had spent almost twenty nine years in prison for this crime.
I could not get into this story it was just all over the place and even repeated itself. It did not hold my interest in any way.

This one features the dove-tailing of multiple plots to harness the most dramatic effect. Perfect for readers who enjoy becoming really immersed in a story that covers a longer time-span. Another startling work from a master storyteller.

Ill Will's protagonist, Dustin Tillman, is - in my eyes - the cliché of a middle-aged psychologist. A married man and father of two sons, who has bigger issues than many of his clients, who lives in denial and doesn't see the wood for the trees. Probably not surprising, when you consider that Dustin's childhood was marked by the violent deaths of his parents and his aunt and uncle. A crime for which his adopted brother, Rusty, was subsequently sentenced. Now, new evidence has exonerated Rusty, and he is being released from prison. At work, in the meantime, Dustin is becoming increasingly mixed up with the ideas his patient, Aquil, is relaying to him. A serial killer is supposedly murdering young men, and Dustin crosses patient-therapist lines and becomes actively involved in exploring Aqil's theories. So at the heart of Ill Will, there were two intriguing mysteries. One in the past, one in the present. What really happened the night Dustin's parents were murdered? And what is behind the deaths of the young men?
Suggestions of repressed memories, people's perception of reality and truth, a lot of manipulation and the 80s Satanic rituals all play a part in this book that jumps back and forth in time between the 1980s and now. Perspectives change: there's Dustin's first-person, there's his son Aaron's, his cousin's Kate's and later on, there's also Rusty's perspective. The story didn't flow smoothly.
Some reviewers have commented on some of the unusual devices the author used, e.g. the use of columns. A couple of times, it made sense to me and I thought it was a reasonable device for mirroring situations. At other times, I couldn't see the point of it at all.
Sometimes, sentences were left unfinished. Dustin had a habit of not completing sentences, which was frustrating initially. But as it went hand in hand with his character, I began completing his sentences just like his wife and sons had been doing all their lives.
What really bothered me was the end. I was left with so many unanswered questions. It was too vague for me. This part is difficult to explain without giving away how the book ends. I really wanted to know about the motivation behind certain things that took place. Perhaps it's my fault, and I simply didn't understand it, but something was missing there for me, especially considering how painstakingly detailed the author was in other parts of the book. The end was frustrating and left me deflated, a definite let down. It wasn't the dark and disturbing literary thriller I was expecting. To me, a lot of this was more like staring at a murky lake or impenetrable, greasy fog for hours on end, if that makes sense. Maybe that was intentional considering the heavy presence of drug use in the story. It was a weird reading experience. I can't say that it was all dull. But it wasn't thrilling or even mildly suspenseful either. Nor did I care about any of the characters.
It took me ages to get through it and I mostly finished it out of a sense of duty and odd curiosity. So I can't honestly say that I liked reading it which, according to GR, would be 3 stars. In an ideal GR-world with a sliding scale, I would give this 2.5 stars overall. This was my first book by Dan Chaon and I would read another one just to see how they compare.
I received an ARC via NetGalley.

I received an ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

I was excited to read this book. The premise sounded intriguing, with a different spin than what I normally read.

Unfortunately, it seems like I got almost an unedited copy. There were several sections that abruptly ended mid sentence. It took my a LONG time to read this one, because I kept reading those sections over, trying to figure out what I missed.

Some sections almost felt like a rambling diary, where some chapters held my interest and kept me reading.

The story is interesting, it just is a bit too choppy for me...

Dammit to hell. This book has such promise. Such promise. It's the story of a gruesome murder committed in 1983, and a series of seemingly unrelated deaths in the present day. A psychologist, his family, and one of his patients are the main players. And you spend the entire book waiting for the other shoe to fall.

This book is in intense need of a good edit. And I'm not just talking about our main character, Dustin, and his half finished sentences and casual drifting off. The confusion and disjointedness actually works brilliantly for him, because his mind is clearly not all there.

But this confusion and lack of a simple bloody outline follows every single chapter, from the twin sisters to the son, Aaron.

I wanted very badly to follow along. I figured out immediately where the serial killer angle was going. I suspected the ending to the family story, but fell for a few red herrings along the way. The family storyline was more compelling, even if it was the D plot of the book. Much easier to follow along than the serial killer plot.

Which is also a damn shame, because this is an untapped idea. The falseness of the belief in Satanic cults has been touched upon in other books, and in much better ways. But a serial killer taking out drunk frat boys? It's absolutely perfect. Comparisons could be made to how prostitutes are the most common serial killer victims, because no one looks too closely at "high risk victims".

Such a massive playground to work with, and this is what came of it.

I am so disappointed.

Ill Will by Dan Chaon is a highly recommended psychological thriller that contains murder, drug addiction, and satanic ritual abuse.

In June of 1983 the parents of Dustin Tillman, 13, and his cousins Kate and Wave were murdered. At the time his adopted brother, Rusty, was convicted of the crime. Now Rusty is being released from prison as DNA evidence now proves he was innocent. Dustin testified about his memories of witnessing a satanic cult ritual at Rusty's trial which helped convict him.

Now Dustin is in his 40s and a psychologist in Cleveland who uses hypnotherapy. He is still recovering from his wife's death from cancer. His oldest son is off at college, but the youngest son, 18-year-old Aaron, is quickly acquiring an addiction to heroin and has been secretly talking to Rusty and learning about his dad's past. At the same time a patient of Dustin who is a former police officer is telling him about the series of drowning deaths of drunken male college students that seems to point to a serial killer on the loose.

Dustin is someone who is easily persuaded and influenced by others, although the extent of this isn't clear at first. The story is told through several characters, flashbacks, and in multiple timelines, as well as following two different story lines. At one point Aaron's narrative is even shared through a split two-column page and in first-, second-, and third-person points of view, which works surprisingly well in this story where disconnection is a theme.

Charon has created a disturbing thriller with Ill Will and presents its many complexities in surprisingly straightforward eloquent prose. There is more going on, in the past and present, than is evident at first. The characters are complicated and unreliable. There is a sense of foreboding and doom that looms over the novel while you are reading. Because of the multiple points-of-view and timelines, you won't have any answers to nagging questions right away and some questions will never be answered.

My only complaint about Ill Will is that it seemed to drag a bit in the middle, making it feel overly long. If the narrative is compelling enough that it commands my complete attention I normally don't notice the length, which makes me think that there could have been a bit of tightening of the plot in the middle to keep the sense of foreboding at the fore-front of your mind rather than allowing the "this seems a bit long" thought to enter.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the Random House Publishing Group.
on 3/7/17 http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1933916968

I found the premise of this book to be very interesting, but the story itself left something to be desired. The two separate mysteries would've been gripping had the story stayed on track with those, but there was just too much going on in the periphery - too many different characters to keep up with. I found the constant changes in the timeline, tense, and persons to be more distraction than anything else and the ending was less than satisfactory.

Ill Will is a story told from multiple narrators, which is confusing at first and continues to be as the reader switches from voice to voice. In general, I do not like the "books as performance art" concept. That means incomplete sentences, multiple columns on a page for simultaneous stories (especially when they go over multiple pages) can really turn me off on a book. I was thankful this one wasn't as ridiculous as a few others I have read. Ill Will is a long slowly revealing book that comes to a somewhat sudden conclusion. I would have preferred if Mr. Chaon would have cut down on the excessive detail leading up to the end and had spent more time on the reveal and conclusion. It was as though he was happily writing along with no destination in mind but then was told "you have 1 hour to finish" and did it. But despite the many winding paths and distracting issues with presentation, the underlying story is a good solid one.

This book keeps you guessing until the end. A psychologist Dustin Tillman from Cleveland Ohio gets a patient in who is a retired cop looking into a case of a college boy who drowned. Dustin then gets a call and learns that his adopted brother who was in prison for murdering their parents is getting cleared of charges after spending 30 yrs in prison. The story then goes from past and present working the drowning cases and Dustin remembering the family life he had which included drugs; adultery; satanic cult. Was the past real or a drug haze memory. The author did a nice job keeping you guessing. The only part I did not like was the ending. It ends abruptly with no real closure. Maybe another book to continue where this left off?

It was a great read. I feel the character development was good and I would recommend to friends.

The lives of Dustin and his cousins were changed forever by the horrific murder of their parents thirty years ago. Even after they are grown adults and have gone their separate ways, Dustin and his cousins never forget the brutal incident. However, each one of them remembers it in very different ways.

Now, Dustin’s brother, Rusty, is being released after 30 years in prison. He had been accused of the murder of his own parents and of his aunt and uncle. Somehow, evidence came up that showed that Rusty had not committed the murders after all.

Just as this is happening, a psychiatric patient of Dusty’s convinces him that the drowning deaths of several young men are, in reality, linked, ritualistic murders. Once convinced of this, Dusty becomes obsessed with the idea, neglecting all else. He and this patient begin investigating these murders.

This story is a psychological thriller in its truest sense, because so much of the interpretation and, consequently, the telling of the plot takes place in the minds of the characters. Even the ‘fuzziness’ of memory is depicted in the way the writer wrote some parts. Sadly, this story was so overly long that it dragged in spots. When I finally arrived at the end, my questions were not fully answered. The author left, in my opinion, too much of the interpretation of what actually happened, to the reader.

This is one of those books that make me unsure whether I liked it or not. At this point I don't think I did although the premise is great. I like my loose ends tied up and this book did not give me that. I am still unsure what exactly happened. Perhaps that is one of the points the book is making? This book is bleak. Plus I felt a bit cheated by the turns in the latter part of the story. The shifts from time period to time period I did not find helpful. There seemed to be too many of them. I suppose that was to keep some stuff hidden until later but ti me it didn't add anything but confusion.