I was asked to read this book by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, as they had also asked me to read Megan Collins' debut, Winter Sister. In her Acknowledgements, Collins hopes that we readers will find this book worth our time, that it will make us feel something. So to Megan Collins and to S&S, yes I certainly did feel something, and it was that this author has very quickly and adeptly honed her skill at writing psychological suspense, and that I cannot wait to read anything else she turns out in the future!

This book is about so many things, but everywhere I look, I see damaged, broken people: Fern, a young social worker whose parents admit that they never wanted children and think they did the best they could under the circumstances; Ted, Fern's dad, a retired professor of Psychology who thought it okay to conduct mind bending experiments on Fern the child if he never physically abused her, as his own father did him; Fern's mom -- also a piece of work who breaks her pottery creations and glues the broken fragments to wherever they have fallen, making artwork entitled Exquisite Fragments; and her best friend's brother, an admitted a$$hole. Broken things, broken people trying to glue themselves back together.

Central to the story is an area kidnapping from twenty years ago, still unsolved, and now the victim has disappeared again after publishing her memoir. Everyone in the town is a bit on edge and eager to see the case solved once and for all, including Fern who seems to be having flashbacks about ... what, she is not sure.

I was absorbed in the story and these weird characters so much that I finished it in less than two days. Un-put-downable.

After reading Megan Collins’ previous novel, The Winter Sister, I knew I was a fan of her work. With this in mind, I was very excited to receive an advanced readers copy from Netgalley and Atria Books in exchange for my honest review. Behind the Red Door is an intriguing and fast-paced story detailing a woman’s hazy memory of an abduction. She is uncertain whether her memory can be trusted, but almost certainly feels she was a witness to an abduction decades earlier.

The characters in this novel were well-built; however, I did find the protagonist’s choices frustrating. I questioned her stability and therefore I questioned her ability to tell the story objectively. The subplot of this story details the protagonist’s childhood. Her relationships with her parents, particularly her father, are maddening. As the story evolved, I couldn’t help but wonder if Collins wanted the reader to feel more aware than the protagonist. At times, the foreshadowing made me want to scream at the obtuseness of the main character. While this was frustrating for me, it was equally motivating. I raced through the pages that much faster to unveil the ending. Behind the Red Door is a solid four-star read that reinvents the abduction story.

Behind the Red Door by Megan Collins is a thriller that I figured out early on. Very creative writing but it was difficult to connect and really like the characters. Interesting story line but predictable ending.

Wow. I was not expecting this book to be as good as it was. This is the best book I’ve read so far this year!!! Absolutely incredible writing, incredible character development. I can’t express enough how absolutely genius this book is. There is no way you can predict this book. I thought that I had it figured out so many times and was completely shocked. If this book isn’t on your TBR as soon as it is published, you’re going to miss out!! Once again, I literally can’t express enough how amazing this book was. It was such a breath of fresh air in the mystery/thriller genre. I can 100% say this plot is so original and definitely unlike any thriller you’ve ever read before.

I was very excited to read this book, because I had loved the Winter Sister, but I found that Behind the Red Door was not a very good book. Although Collins is a great writer and capable of holding an audience with her writing and ideas, I felt like this book was a waste of time because I figured out the ending 40 percent into the book. It has become so glaringly obvious that I could no longer connect with the character, and her search to find the truth.

Thank you so much to net galley for sending me a copy of this book. I was so excited to read this book and I was not disappointed.

This was a captivating book, and I would look forward to the next one by this author. As a former psychology researcher, however, I find the premise a little silly, and has to do quite a bit of suspension of disbelief. A fun read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Behind the Red Door is a dark and twisty thriller which tells the story of Fern, a young social worker from Boston who comes to believe that she has a connection to a decades old kidnapping and now that the victim has gone missing again, begins a frantic search to learn what happened in the past. Fern is an unreliable narrator who struggles with anxiety and spiraling thoughts. The story is well-paced and will have the reader addicted. Highly recommend.

Behind the Red Door
A Novel
by Megan Collins
Atria Books
Mystery & Thrillers
Pub Date 04 Aug 2020 | Archive Date 18 Aug 2020

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC. I have not read Megan Collins before but I do love Mystery/Thrillers. This one, however, was not the book for me. I would have enjoyed more twists and turns and had the plot figured out way to early in the book.

3 star

I was immediately hooked by the premise of the book, and Fern drew me into the story from the get-go. Fern's trauma and anxiety made for a truly unsettling character, and that fit the world of the story perfectly. And I loved the concept of Fern's father's experiments - the whole thing was really creepy and weird and made for a fresh and unique take on dysfunctional family relationships.

The writing style was a nice blend of commercial and literary and the author did a great job of cultivating a sense of unease and discomfort, as well as an oppressive atmosphere that rounded out the whole experience.

However, I did catch on to who was behind the kidnapping very quickly and I would've liked if there were one more twist to the tale. I felt the clues were too heavy-handed and Fern was always a few steps behind. On the one hand, that makes sense given her mental state, but then when she confided in others they too didn't make what I thought were very clear connections.

Bravo, Megan Collins! You defiantly made a fragile character come to life.

I’m not going to lie, it took me a bit to get into Behind The Red Door. I would pick it up and put it down multiple times. About 30% in though, Collins started to hook me.

Fern Douglas is probably the most delicate character I have read about in a long time. Her backstory was gripping and had my attention. Her memories and her nightmares were fascinating and I had to figure out what her connection was with Astrid Sullivan who was kidnapped once again on her 20 year anniversary of being returned the first time.

I loved watching Fern grow, she became brave and outspoken. Determined and strong and she was defiantly the reason why I kept going all the way until the end. The characters were defiantly a strong reason to read Behind The Red Door.

I do have to warn you though, it didn’t take me long at all to figure out what the ending would be like. The suspense and the shock was just not there for me and that did take my rating down quite a bit.

Although it wasn’t my favorite, I did enjoy reading it. I liked Fern and her husband and all the other characters that came a long the way. They were defiantly interesting!

Behind the Red Door

Thank you to Atria Books and Netgalley for an ARC of Behind the Red Door by Megan Collins. This is my first novel of hers but my favourite genre, so was excited to see how she stacked up to my usual authors. At 10% into the book, after seeming to read the same sentences over and over, it felt like we hadn’t gone past the narrator’s question “did I know Astrid?”...and was the reader going to care? Here’s yet another character with a suppressed childhood trauma, eccentric beyond belief parents and on anxiety meds that cause her to question everything she sees and hears. The author smartly points out: “Trauma doesn’t care how old you are; It makes children of us all.” Sigh. We’re all familiar and can enjoy the unreliable narrator but I’m not keen on the narrator who is unsure about every single memory and just comes off as spinney. She second-guesses every thought and action, making the plot points shaky and unbelievable at every turn. At one point, Fern says “my anxiety is not a broken record” but it quickly felt that way to me. How is this woman a Social Worker? Her investigation does prove to be intriguing, revealing the past as she progresses and many odd characters. It will be up to you to decide how invested you’ll become in the discovery, or how surprised you’ll be at where the Red Door leads....

I was given the opportunity by @netgalley to read Behind The Red Door in exchange for an honest review. Behind the Red Door is an atmospheric thriller, which tells the story of Fern, a young social worker from Boston who returns to her childhood home to help her father pack for his upcoming move to Florida. As she prepares leave, the news reports the story of missing woman, Astrid. Fern’s husband Eric remarks at the coincidence. What are the chances that a woman, who was kidnapped as a child, would later go missing as an adult? As Fern reflects on the case, she starts to have dreams and reflections. In her dreams, is she being grabbed by a woman or is she trying to save someone?

Once Fern arrives at her father’s she begins to close in on the case and realizes Astrid’s original kidnapping occurred in very close proximity to her home, which can be described as anything but warm. Her father, who she calls by first name, has spent his life studying and researching psychology and specifically fear, often using his daughter as his personal guinea pig (leaving his daughter at a store, not coming home for a few day). All in the name of eliciting fear and later interviewing his daughter in the name of research. Reading this section was tough because I can’t imagine such cruelty between a parent and child, but it does make for an interesting story. Add the kidnapping mystery to an incredibly strained parent-child relationship and you have all the makings for a psychological thriller. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Behind the Red Door starts with social worker Fern who is planning to return home to help her neglectful father pack up his home to move to Florida. Ted, her father, is a now retired university professor, obsessed with fear, who created various "Experiments" which were really more like pranks on Fern as a child to document her fear and response in the name of science. Not a great parent, to say the least. Fern has accepted his limitations (and those of her mom as well, who's off on a cruise somewhere, always having been emotionally detached from Fern), and has come to help because her father expressed that he needed her, which was basically like emotional catnip.

Fern's been dealing with some reactions to some new medication her psychiatrist has prescribed, and as she's making the journey back to her hometown, we get the sense that maybe she's not doing so well. She's experiencing hallucinations and nightmares which are hinting that there may be some repressed memories coming up for Fern that finally need dealing with.

Simultaneously, Fern's become aware of a woman called Astrid Sullivan who went missing from a neighbouring town 20 years ago because she's just gone missing again. After her initial abduction she was eventually returned, drugged to a street corner near her house, without any explanation. Now, 20 years later, after having published her own memoir of the harrowing experience of being locked in a basement for days, Astrid has disappeared again without a trace, this time from her home in Maine. Fern starts reading the memoir, and Astrid is convinced that there was someone who saw who her captor was back then, and that this person knows something but has never come forward. Could Fern's nightmares hold the key to who this witness might have been?

This book had great pacing— it didn't drag at any point, and it also didn't feel like the story was too rushed, either. I will say that at times, the beginning felt a little slapdash in some ways: as if the middle and end had been fleshed out first, leaving the beginning without quite as much attention as it may have benefitted from. Having said that, I thought it was a solid story overall. 3.5 stars.

I was very excited to read this book! I am sorry to say that "The Winter Sister" has been on my TBR list forever but I just hadn't had time to read it. So when I saw that author, Megan Collins, had a new book, I had to hit up Netgalley and request it! I was so happy when I was approved!

The premise was promising. A decades-old kidnapping, the victim kidnapped again, and a women who starts having memory flashes which leads her to believe she may know what happened.

From the beginning I had a hard time. Fern is not a likable character. From the get-go I could tell her naive, shy, and over-trusting personality would get on my nerves. I was right. Fern heads home to help her father pack up his house. He is a physiologist, who has committed his life to the study of "fear". Fern was once her father's test subject- put in fear inducing situations so that he could study how she reacts. Her haunting childhood has obviously deeply effected her as an adult.

It was a VERY slow start and at around 30% I had most of the ending figured out. It made for a painfully slow read for the remaining 70%. I would love to say that Collins kept me entertained with plot twists leading up to the end, but that would be a lie. There was a single shocking element to the big finale, but overall I felt "meh" about the entire novel.

Thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for allowing me an advanced digital copy to read and give my honest review. Behind The Red Door is set to be released August 4, 202 0 here in the U.S. and you can pre-order it now on Amazon. This was a 3 star read for me.

Happy Reading!

I thought this was an excellent thriller. I was certain I had the end figured out at about 50% and I was wrong.... I had an idea of what it could be, but I swore it wasn't... I'm so happy I turned out to be wrong as I was completely shocked. Although the writing felt a bit clunky during dialogue at parts, overall this was a good book that I would definitely recommend.

Fern Douglas is on summer break from her job as a school social worker. When her father calls and says he needs her help to pack up his house before his move to Florida she agrees. Fern is consumed by her anxiety on a good day but it is amplified when she returns to her home town. She hopes the new meds her doctor prescribed will start to be effective. Author Megan Collins explains the reason for Fern's anxiety and I was definitely creeped out by pretty much everything. I'm not going into the details but will say if you enjoy a high creepiness factor it is here in spades. Fern is anxious about almost everything and can spiral from even minor triggers. I felt badly for her. That said, the good old unreliable narrator is alive and well in this novel and kept playing in the back of my mind as I read. Fern also worries about having children - something her husband very much desires. The way Fern was raised, while not physically abusive, makes her uneasy about her ability to be a good parent - but she has no doubt her husband (the opposite of her father) will be a wonderful father. The story moves between present day and the years of Fern's childhood (and the kidnapping of Astrid). Have her memories been repressed or are they imagined?  I wasn't so sure about Fern. 

My final take: although I skimmed through a few parts of this book (that creep factor) I think fans of psychological thrillers will probably like it. It's very different from others I've read in the genre. It made me feel anxious...

Fear, thrill, gripping, exciting! I was hooked from the first page of this book to the last. Didn't want to put it down.

If you like a good psychological thriller, you should definitely pick this one up. This is definitely a page turner. I couldn't put it down. I had to figure out what was happening.

Fern sees a kidnapped woman on the news and she looks familiar. Astrid had been kidnapped 20 years previously from her home in the woods in New Hampshire. When her face starts appearing in Fern's recurring nightmare, she has to find out what is going on, what happened 20 years ago, why this woman looks familiar, and try to help her if at all possible.

It sounds riveting, right? You should read it.

3 stars--I liked the book.

The good: This is a super fast read, and I flew through it to see if my suspicions would be true (they were). The main character, Fern, shows a lot of growth throughout the book, which I always enjoy. Learning about Fern's childhood was interesting too.

The meh: About 30% of the way in, it becomes pretty apparent (to everyone but Fern) what's going on, and there aren't really a lot of twists.

I received this review copy from the publisher on NetGalley. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review; I appreciate it!