I am a sucker for an explosive Prologue or First Chapter of a book, but the author had my undivided attention with just seven words."They found the bodies on a Tuesday." (Side note: I can tell you the book and the author who wrote my all-time favorite opening sentence, and it was ten words long. Please tell me I am not the only reader with this type of obsession!)
Sarah Keller, an FBI agent has the job of delivering tragic news to Matt Pines. His father, mother, sister, and brother have been found dead while on vacation in Mexico. Matt is stunned. This is not the first time the Pine family has been broken. His older brother Danny is in jail, convicted of killing his teenage girlfriend. His father never believed Danny was guilty and has spent the last seven years trying to prove his innocence. Could this have been an accident, or is it somehow related to Danny?
Told from multiple perspectives including a documentary that brought Danny's case to national attention, this is a tale of cover-ups, corruption, false confessions, and murder. Chapters alternate between Matt and Sarah, with Matt's family sharing their stories up until their fateful end. As each chapter added another piece to the puzzle, it became more and more apparent that the Pine family never had a chance. There wasn't one member of the family whose story wasn't gutwrenching, and when the truth is told, the injustice of it all just left me speechless. 4.5 stars.

Ok. Wow! Loved this advanced copy - thank you NetGalley!
There was mystery, suspense, thrills and twists & turns.
It was a page turner and I couldn’t stop reading.
Everything about the story worked - at times, I felt like I was in the story.
My heart hurt for Matt and routed for Sarah - I didn’t want it to end!
HIghly recommend!!

The best book I have read in years! This book had it all, great characters, super interesting plot and lots of twists. I love how books tie in something culturally relative like this one had a Netflix true crime documentary as the back drop. I read this book in less than 24 hours and was sad when it ended. I'd give this book ten stars if it would let me!

Excellent debut thriller. Suspenseful, resonant, and genuinely moving.

Matt Pine is a filmmaking student at NYU, with more than the usual reasons for angst. Matt's brother Danny is in prison for killing his girlfriend; Matt's family has been vilified by their hometown and consumed financially and emotionally by their attempts to clear Danny; and things are only going to get worse. Much, much worse. Soon all of Matt's un-incarcerated family members are dead, victims of an apparent freak accident while on vacation in Mexico. But was it an accident? Or murder? And if it was murder, what does that mean about Danny's guilt or innocence?

It's so much fun to read a thriller with characters and a setting that differ from the current Thriller Formula of privileged women in a posh area blaming one another for men's misdeeds. Even though much of the story takes place in Manhattan, D.C., and Chicago, we also get to spend some time in Mexico and Nebraska. (There's even a runza sighting!) Matt seems like a real college student - smart, sincere, sometimes prickly, sometimes pretentious, occasionally drunken, a loyal brother, and a tremendous friend. Many readers may relate to his simultaneous exasperation with but devotion to his family. I loved the FBI agent who finds herself in the position of repeatedly breaking bad news and then even more bad news to Matt. She is a multifaceted character - compassionate, analytical, and periodically ruthless. Her spouse is endearing, if too good to be true -- a Jiffy Pop-making wonder of endless validation.

The book has some of the common weaknesses of a debut. The plot tends toward the convoluted, and there are unnecessary characters. Partially because of the multiple layers of conspiracy, the most likely culprit is apparent early on. But it's still a great ride, with characters you will care about and an intensity that keeps the pages turning.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! What an amazing debut novel. This book kept me hooked from the first chapter, reading like a Dateline NBC show. Loved loved loved it! I cannot wait to see more from Alex Finlay. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy. I will look forward to recommending this book!

This was absolutely amazing start to finish.

It’s an amazingly woven web and it kept me guessing the whole way through.

It’s quite emotional. A father’s passion and obsession. Seemingly what got his family killed. Or was it something else all along?

I enjoyed the way the story was told. Alternating past and present chapters. Multiple points of view. All relevant. All significant. All slowly putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

I don’t usually feel emotionally invested in books in the genre. There was something about this one, though. It hit all the right places. Punched me in the feels. I absolutely hated the idea of almost an entire family being wiped out. Especially a little kid. Devastating and heartbreaking.

There was something likable about every character, too. Which was rare—especially with their faults. But perhaps knowing their fate helped.

I loved the culmination. It’s definitely guessable, despite all the misdirection and false clues. But I think hints are there early on.

I also liked how it somewhat reflected the Steven Avery case in some ways. The documentary that shed new light and support for a convicted murderer. The ways that the public took to a criminal. I have no idea if that case played any role in the making of this story, but the vibes are there!

I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys trying to solve mysteries. By far one of my favorite books in recent years.

This book hooked me from the start and turned out to be so much more than I expected. And while the mystery ends up being more complex than it seems at first, it never feels less than real or believable. Bold and bright work from a debut author, whom I'll forgive for being born so close to Auburn.

Thank you to Minotaur and NetGalley for the advance copy.

This was well written and has some twists thrown in to keep you guessing at what happened. There were a few different points of view, but they were easy to keep track of, which I appreciated. This is a solidly written thriller that I would recommend reading.

Kindly received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this debut by Alex Finlay. This story has a lot going on, the death of a family, a son in prison, the murder of a young girl, and an affair. Told from multiple perspectives and from different time periods, this book kept my interest from the beginning. While I was able to peg who was responsible from the beginning, there were some fine details just were a surprise. Then add a non-stop ending and you have all the makings of a fantastic thriller. Overall, a good read and I appreciate the opportunity to give this book my attention.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

This was excellent; a real-page turner, and a mixture of both mystery and adventure. Matt's brother Danny has been in prison for seven years for murdering his girl-friend. Matt's family has spent those seven years trying to prove his innocence. Now Matt is told by the FBI that his parents and younger siblings have died on a trip to Mexico in unexplained circumstances. The story is told both in the present (Matt goes to Mexico to retrieve the bodies and buries his family) and in the past (the reasons for the trip to Mexico and what happened during it). There are also segments from a documentary made in an attempt to secure Danny's release from prison. There are sections from different perspectives, including those of Matt and Keller the FBI agent.

The various threads and timelines were woven together well. The plot was continually twisting without becoming confusing or seeming extreme.

Highly recommended. I hope this author writes more novels featuring Agent Keller.

4.5 stars.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this suspenseful, grim, fast-paced psychological thriller. The dynamic plot is intricately crafted, complex and well-executed.

The story grips one from its opening sentence, " They found the bodies on a Tuesday." From this beginning, we learn members of the Pine family have died at Tulum, Mexico, a noted tourist site. The victims are Evan Pine, his wife, their 17 -year-old daughter, Maggie, and their young son, aged seven. First reports from Mexico indicate the cause of death was a gas leak in their hotel room. The story goes back and forth in time and allows us to get to know the well-developed characters, including the flawed Pine parents, and grieve for the death of the family.

NYU film student, Matt Pine, age 21, is having a bad day. His girlfriend has broken up with him, he has a hangover, and has left behind some of his belongings in a bar. He is now approached by capable FBI agent, Sarah Keller, who informs him of the shocking death of his family. He is devastated but now must face the dreaded task of breaking the terrible news to his only remaining sibling, Danny. His older brother, Danny, has been in prison for seven years. He was once a popular high school but is now serving a life sentence for the brutal killing of his pregnant girlfriend. Matt witnessed something the night of the murder that convinced him of his brother's guilt.

Matt is estranged from his father due to Evan's obsession with a miscarriage of justice leading to Danny's imprisonment. The Pine family who lived in a small town in Nebraska became notorious when a true-crime documentary was televised. The townspeople reacted with hostility because many thought the documentary put their town in a bad light. The father, Evan, lost his job and depleted most of their savings in searching for clues to free Danny. Maggie supported her father in his obsession to prove Danny's innocence. Evan brings his family to Mexico following a clue Maggie received on the internet and they die.

Sarah Keller is beginning to suspect there is a connection between Danny's life sentence and the death of the four members of the Pine family in Mexico and that they were probably murdered. The only part of the story that I found slow was her investigation into a case of financial fraud. She tells Matt that he must go to Mexico to sign for the release of the bodies in order to bring them home. Matt is apprehensive because a man with a facial scar pushed him into traffic and he feels he is being watched. His trip to Mexico goes from bad to worse. He is not met on his arrival in Mexico, he is threatened by a policeman and narrowly escapes death while being chased into a remote wooded area.

This is a tale of deceit, lies, secrets, conspiracy, and malevolent political forces. This is a complicated, but very readable, fast-paced, emotion-packed plot. Alex Findlay has written a great thriller and I can't wait to read anything he writes next.

Fast paced thriller. The oldest son of a well known family in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, though all the evidence is stacked against him. The family torn apart relocate to try and put the pieces back together each one of them hiding secrets not willing to share. Suddenly the unimaginable happens. The family is found dead in Mexico leaving the second son, Matt Pine, with more unanswered questions as the mystery unfolds. Why was the family in Mexico? Local police call it an accident but together with FBI agent Sarah Keller, Matt finds evidence that the Pine family was targeted by a professional killer. Who would want his family killed? When Matt flies down to Mexico to bring the bodies of his family back home for burial he is suddenly targeted by killers. All he wants to do is put his family to rest and get some answers but the hostility in the small Nebraska town when Matt returns is frightening. Who can he trust? Everyone seems to be hiding secrets and someone is after Matt to stop him before he can put the pieces together. Great story. Suspenseful, clever, brilliant!
Thank you NetGalley for providing me an opportunity to read this copy ahead of publication. My thoughts are my own and in no way solicited. 4.5 stars

Wow! Any reader who has looked forward to the debut novel from Alex Finlay will be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams. Every Last Fear is that good. It really is. Finlay has written a welcomed addition to our world of "true crime" documentaries and podcasts. His terrific thriller centers around a crime which was featured in a (fictitious) Netflix documentary. Fans of the "Six Stories" series by Matt Wesolowski (including me) will devour this gem in one sitting. Like the very best, Finlay engages the reader with a captivating story as seen through the eyes of many different characters. And, to be honest, there are no weak links among them. Each layer added to the story is as engrossing as what preceded it. The resolution is both satisfying and sensational. It will leave you eager to read more by Alex Finlay. Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC of this instant classic. #EveryLastFear #NetGalley

I would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. As soon as I saw the cover of this book, I wanted to read it, without even reading the premise. This book hooks you from the very first sentence and doesn’t stop. How far will one family go to prove the innocence of their son and brother? A fast paced, plot twisted ride that you won’t want to get off of.

Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay is a suspenseful psychological thriller that will pull you in from the very first sentence! I enjoyed every minute of this fast-paced, gripping page-turner. This is a book that I would definitely recommend, and I look forward to reading more from Alex Finlay.

Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay is a suspense filled, fast paced psychological thriller, a definite page turner. Told from multiple POVs , past and present, and integrating a true crime documentary script. Characters are well defined and reliable. Matt's frustration and helplessness in his attempts to find the answers to his family's killings are palpable. Keller's love of family and dedication to her job and her quest for justice are undeniable. A very noteworthy read by a debut author. Cannot wait to read Mr. Finley next thriller.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

First off I would like to thank Alex Finlay, Minotaur Books, and Netgalley for an e-book ARC of Every Last Fear in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Not much to say about a great book!! This is a book where you literally will be on the edge of your seat biting your nails!! It's a fast and trilling ride this author will take you on and by the end you will say WTF!! This is a must read!

EXCELLENT story that was very hard to put down! It was so good, so detailed, so fleshed out it could have been a true crime non-fiction story. Authors who write psychological thrillers should take notes from Alex Findlay on how it’s done. I enjoyed reading different POVs from the characters; it added to the suspense. I did not guess the ending, and it was exciting as well. So much fine writing and stark emotion packed into this gem. If you like mysteries, thrillers and crime, you will enjoy this book! Highly recommend and five well-deserved stars.
Thank you to the author, Netgalley, and St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was a fun suspense thriller. The genre that has become so much so a domain of female driven female author written books so much so that it was refreshing to read something less estrogen driven for a change. Disclaimer…I don’t know the author’s gender nor am I making any assumptions. Certainly not in this day and age. I’m just saying this book wasn’t yet another one of those wife discovers a cheating spouse / wife hides secrets / someone hides secrets in the marriage or tell fibs or maybe murders…that sort of thing, Instead, the protagonist of this book is a 21 year old NYU student, a nice boy by all accounts, from a seemingly nice family albeit (as we get to know) marred and mired by scandal, tragedy and lies, you know, like any proper thriller genre family. So how does a nice bunch of Midwesterners from Nebraska step into so much doodoo? Well, it started when their firstborn pride and joy of a high school jock son got convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend. Though this conviction was based on paper thin evidence and spectacularly terrible police work, it somehow stood. Guess the wheels of justice turn differently in a bastion of fairness, logic and intelligence that is Nebraska. Fast forward seven years and the family has had to take the remaining kids (they had four, good old midwestern breeding, enough for any eventuality) and start over near Chicago. Their eldest is in NYC, but the two youngest ones including a 17 year old girl and a 7 year old whoopsie of a boy still live with their parents, still have to deal with their father’s obsession with the miscarriage of justice his son was dealt. And this is all amplified, since the ten episode true crime documentary about their lives has come out on Netflix. Because that’s what sells these days, tragedy, milked out. So the family decides to go on a vacation to Mexico, not as suddenly as one might think, it’s actually to follow a promising clue in their son’s case…an obsession that’s shared by both the father and the daughter. And they get dead. That’s how the novel starts. 4 dead bodies are discovered. Tragedy that initially seems like a carbon monoxide poisoning. Initially…So now it’s down to their remaining (free) son and an FBI agent named Keller to solve this crime. Fairly straight forward plot, though the narrative is split every which way between the main kid, Keller, the family (one individual at a time, in the past). Frankly, it’s a lot. Almost messily so. But the narrative is too tight and dynamic for it to ever become an actual mess. It speeds along the way a thriller ought to the entire way. It has likeable characters that might have been but actually to author’s credit aren’t straight out of central casting. Especially the main kid, very decent for a 21 year old, none of the millennial histrionic angst and preconditioned exceptionalism. Must be all those good midwestern values. If you think I mention midwesternism a lot, wait until you read the book. So anyway, this was fun. Mae somewhat less fun for me for having figured out the culprit somewhere near the middle of the book. Just randomly so too, it wasn’t like it was heavily hinted at either. So go me, the (literary) crime solving genius. Though it does take something away from the overall enjoyment. Usually I do prefer the darker psychological variety of the genre, but now and again this sort of thing will do when done well or even just well enough. This was very much like a beach read, wish there was a beach to read it on. Relatively mindless middle of the road inoffensive estrogen free high octane entertainment with a nice (if you don’t figure it out first) twist in the end. Fun quick read. Suspense thriller fans should have fun with this one. Thanks Netgalley.

“They found the bodies on a Tuesday.“

That’s one hell of an intriguing, opening line for one hell of a story.

If that doesn’t immediately stop you in your tracks and capture your attention as soon as you embark upon this story (and I mean, how could it not?) then everything else that ensues sure as heck will!

In a genre that it currently vastly overcrowded nowadays, it takes a certain kind of story and a certain kind of writer to really stand out, and readers, this book is one of them!

This is not just your typical, run of the mill thriller. Sure, it is certainly thrilling. It will have you on the edge of your seat, flipping through the pages at a frantic pace, eager to delve through the conspiracies and lies and dark depths of it all. But along with all of that, it will also tug at your emotions and fill your heart with grief for the characters.

This is a thriller with heart.

This is both a mystery, as well an emotional journey that will at times punch you in the face with the feels, because you come to care about these characters, and are wrecked knowing the fate that lies in store for them.

This story, after initially learning about the “dead bodies being found on a Tuesday” first revolves around a character named Matt Pine who is having a bad day from the get go. He’s hungover, has just been dumped by his girlfriend, and has lost some of his belongings. But that all becomes mundane in comparasion when an FBI agent shows up and informs him that his entire family (with the exception of one of his brothers) has passed away in Mexico.

Matt is no stranger to grief and hardship, as his older brother, the one who is still alive, is currently incarcerated for the murder of his girlfriend. The murder captured wide media attention and was turned into a Netflix documentary, which cast major scrutiny on Matt’s family, and caused their small town to turn against them. Despite Matt’s family’s proclamation’s of his brother’s innocence, he was still imprisoned.

Even with Matt’s dark family background, nothing prepares him for the news of his family’ death, and he’s further grief stricken and shocked when it appears that their deaths, once thought accidental, were actually murder. Even more shocking and sinister, the deeper the FBI looks into it, the more it appears that their deaths may have something to do with the murder of his brother’s girlfriend.

Soon the entire investigation unveils a tangled, complicated web of deceit, lies, conspiracy theories, and other sinister happenings the more the layers are unraveled and the deeper Matt and the FBI dig.

This book was so good! Even better than I expected it to be! It was told from multiple POV’s, in alternating timelines between the past and present, giving it that much more depth into both the characters, the mysteries and the plot.

I love how we got POV’s from all of the Pine family members, so that you are able to gain insight to each of them individually and get background knowledge on all of them. That made it that much more gut wrenching knowing what lay in store for them, but at least you come to know the characters that you grow to care for throughout the story.

It was also nice to even get a POV from the FBI agent, as I found her to be an interesting, well fleshed out character as well.

Alex Finlay is a fresh, talented writer who contructed an excellently executed plot that was richly detailed, captivating, and complex without being too much.

A majority of the books that I have read in 2020 (and I have read a lot of books so far this year) have been thrillers, and this is hands down one of my favorites!

I would definitely read another book by Alex Finlay, and I urge you all to preorder this book/add it to your TBR shelves ASAP.

Absolutely amazing!