Mothers always know best don't they?

Ellen knew Kieran was bad news and didn't want him being friends with her son Lucas.

She couldn't talk her son out of spending time with Kieran. All the insisting didn't get the point across and ended up with Lucas being in a car accident with Kieran.

Ellen couldn't forgive Kieran, and when Kieran came back to town after his time in jail, she couldn't get over seeing him alive and not her son.

We follow Ellen, Lucas, Vic, Justin, Freya, and Kieran as the story unfolds from when Lucas was in high school to when Kiernan comes back to town.

What will a mother do to avenge her child?

There is an underlying tension and you know something bad did happen and is going to happen, but what is it?

You will also ask yourself what the significance of THE HEIGHTS is.

The book did drag a bit, but the overall story line ends well.

Surprises and the characters will keep you turning the pages.

Thriller fans will enjoy this book. 4/5

This book was given to me by the publisher both in print and via NetGalley for an honest review.

The Heights is a story of parents who must decide how far they will go for justice. It started out very interesting and I was intrigued but then about halfway I did lose interest. It was a good read but not as thrilling as other books I have read. I appreciate the chance to review this ARC and thanks to NetGalley and the publisher.

I always enjoy reading Candlish's books! This one started out very slowly and I had a really hard time getting into it. But once it got going it held my attention

Starting off we meet Ellen Saint who has two children: Lucas, her older son with her ex husband Vic, and Freya with her new husband Justin. The story alternates between the present and the past. Present day: Ellen sees someone who she believes to be dead or is it a case of mistaken identity? We then delve into the dynamics of the family and what events have happened in the past to bring us back to the present(don't want to give to much away on this). While I found it dreadfully slow it did setup the plot for the rest of the book. The rest of the book weaves in past and present that pulls everything together nicely

Things really started moving for me around the 40% mark as it begins to become very ominous. While you may think you know where it is going, there are a few nice twists and turns. Nothing overly shocking but did make for some very slow burning suspense/dread.

What I did like: The idea of the book reading and some of Ellen's commentary throughout, it felt like she was speaking directly to you the reader. Also enjoyed the change of POV throughout. Once the POV change came in, my attention was finally held

What I did not like: Part 1 for sure, way to slow. Again, understand the build up, but felt a bit repetitious. And Ellen, she was way over the top and made me super anxious. .

3.5 Star read for me. Did not disappoint once it got going

Thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for my advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

This novel was definitely a cut above the typical thriller. The plot was really intriguing and I found it really engrossing. The main character was very layered, and at time extremely sympathetic and others not so much. All of the characters were written very well. This was such an enjoyable read I was disappointed when I was done. However, I have found an author I would definitely like to read more from.

This is my third read by the author who continues to make a strong impression. It isn’t just that she’s a very engaging writer who can draw you into the story – a lot of people can do it, especially with thrillers – it’s that her writing is so much cleverer than the average thriller might offer, nay, that an average book of any genre might offer.
To be fair, what Candlish writes are technically more of crime dramas than outright thrillers, which denotes a stronger dramatic component. And though this might not be her favorite of mine, because I don’t care for “mommy thrillers” i.e. stories powered by the potency of mother’s love, there’s so much more to love here.
Technically, this is also a “daddy thriller”, almost thought not quite in equal proportions. So, let’s go with parental devotion drive work instead. The parents of Lucas adore him and think the world of him. They disapprove of the new kid his prestigious school has paired him up with, a kid from less advantageous circumstances, a kid seemingly determined to steer their precious baby boy in the wrong direction.
And sure enough, Lucas and Kieran become fast friends and Kieran goes on to seemingly return the animosity Lucas’ mom proceeds to develop towards him. Difficult few years of parenting, but sure enough soon Lucas is off to the university, Kieran stays behind, life returns to normal. Until the two get reunited for a party weekend over the Christmas and that reunion ends in tragedy.
And Mommy cannot let it go. No punishment is enough. No consolation is there to be found. She becomes obsessed with a revenge-style form of justice and that obsession drives the entire story.
There are side players there, her family, Kieran’s cobbled together family, people who really just don’t have enough power to curb a mommy on the mission. She is desperate, determined and (ever so slightly) demented. It seems like a one-way trip into the darkness, but Candlish is too smart, too nuanced of an author to let that stand. Instead, she pivots the story about midway through to Lucas’ dad, to provide a completely different perspective on the events. And it won’t be the last pivot, either. Because what Candlish has such a terrific understanding of is that every story has angles to it, not just the traditional she said/he said dichotomy, but a proper multifacetedness. In other words, it’s fifty shades of grey on the moral scale and then some.
And so, the games unfold. Twisting and turning until the very end. Candlish covers all the conventional aspects of the thriller genre, but her approach is slower, more measured, more complex – hence me saying this is more of a crime drama – so I’m not sure it’s right for every fan of conventional thrillers. But if you’re into it for the dark psychology, excellent character writing and nuances…step right up. This book will thrill you. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

3.5 ⭐️

Ellen Saint cannot believe what she is seeing. As she gazes at the discreet rooftop terrace of “The Heights”, from the building across from it, she recognizes the man standing on it. But that isn’t possible. He has been dead for two years and she is the one who killed him.

That is all the synopsis says and for me-less is more!!

I was completely intrigued!

You could say, that this is a story of a woman’s descent into madness, unfolding over 4 parts:

In Part one, (the first 55% of the book) we learn about when Ellen Saint, our main protagonist, met this man. And, why she hated him enough to want him dead. It was easy to figure out what the reveal would be, and it took MUCH too long to confirm it.

In Part two, a second POV adds to the narrative. Though some of what we learn is repetitive, we are also given some NEW information, and the pace finally starts to pick up.

Part Three has a VERY SINISTER feel. This section reminded me of why I am always eager to pick up a book by Louise Candlish!

Part Four delivers ANOTHER clever ending! Even when I have worked out some of what is coming, I have NEVER guessed one of her outcomes in its entirety.

The gaps to the story are filled by both a Sunday Times magazine article entitled “Killing Time” by Michaela Ross and a memoir “”Saint or Sinner” written by Ellen Saint in a writing class, designed to explore the impact that violent crime has had on the students taking the course.

Many authors can write an entertaining story but few seem able to deliver a satisfying conclusion. Never a problem for this author who nails it every time!

3.5 ⭐️ from me means it’s better than average, but I rounded down since I struggled to stay engaged with the first 55% which was more than half of the book. Disappointing because I DID really enjoy the remaining three parts.

Thank You to Atria books for the gifted copy. It was my pleasure to offer a candid review!
Available March 1, 2022

A powerful, compelling, and addicting story about a woman who sees the man who is responsible for the death of her son. She doesn’t understand how that can be possible since she was responsible for his murder over two years ago. So much depth to this story. Highly recommend!

Ellen is visiting a client when she sees a man on the rooftop of a neighboring building. But it can’t be who she thinks it is—because she killed that man two years ago.

The story has multiple POVs: a present-day news article and Ellen’s memoir (set in the present-day and flashbacks).

The timeline jumps were jarring, but the author does a good job of quickly orienting you at the start of each chapter.

Ellen’s grief and rage were so consuming that I started to wonder if we could fully trust her version of events. Are we witnessing the power of a mother’s love, or the obsession of a grief-stricken woman? The answer, I think, is somewhere in the middle.

Then, about halfway through the book, the POV shifts from Ellen to her ex-partner, Vic. The unexpected switch offers another perspective on Ellen’s behavior.

The story is tightly wound, full of Ellen’s tension from the first page. It was a page-turner, but I was wondering how it would all play out. Living in her grief and terror was heavy, even just for the length of the book.

The twists were satisfying, and the short chapters and cliffhangers had me flying through the book, turning pages as fast as I could read them.

I really enjoyed the moral ambiguities and sensitive portrayals of each fully fleshed-out character.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon&Schuster for an advance copy of the ebook.

Check out this book if you’re looking for a compelling page-turner, with similar themes to The Collective.

Holding grudges feeds and waters a giant Redwood of hate.

Louise Candlish infused The Heights with buckets filled with emotions. As readers, we unpack this one carefully and try to categorize just where to set them down and where to separate the thrills from the spills. There will be moments of sheer pity and empathy for the main character while then suddenly flipping the switch to frustration and vexation.

Candlish begins with Ellen Saint in a circle of fellow writers. Ellen has taken to revealing a portion of her life that will cause us to turn pages rapidly in the telling. She has quite the story to push forward.

Ellen lives with her family in London. She's a lighting technician by trade. This is her second marriage since things didn't work out with Vic who is the father of her son, Lucas. They still remain friends. Currently, she is married to Justin and they have a young daughter, Freya. Candlish lays out the typically busy lives of these characters with work and with attending school. It's all day-to-day until the wheels dramatically come off.

The spotlight shines on Lucas through much of this storyline. He's been chosen as the assigned friend for a new boy at his academy, Kieran, red-haired and awkward, is a foster child living not too far from them. Upon meeting Kieran for the first time, Ellen senses something outright disrespectful and challenging in the boy. His cold stares leave Ellen uncomfortable. But Lucas is taken with Kieran and refuses to curtail their friendship. We'll experience a deep change in Lucas as the threads start to unravel.

Louise Candlish circles the wagons around motherhood here. Ellen becomes transfixed on intervening in her son's friendship with Kieran. She enrolls her ex partner, Vic, into monitoring the situation. Eventually, Vic realizes that Ellen has become obsessed over it and he calls her out on it. We now realize that there's no stopping Ellen........ever.

The Heights is filled with unlikeable characters.........people fulfilling their own needs at the expense of others. Everyone seems to have hidden motives that they take to excess. Initially, we stand with Ellen and her Momma Bear intuition until this grizzly reveals a pack of sharp incisors. Drawing blood is inexcusable no matter how we convince ourselves otherwise.

Louise Candlish can always be counted on to deliver on heavy psychological thrillers. And she does here in The Heights. My only concern was the long winding road taken in respect to Ellen. It grew a bit tiresome towards the end. But Candlish cranked up the adrenaline in the last scene and won us over. The Heights proves that we all have hidden fears brought to the surface by someone who deeply recognizes them in an instant.

I received a copy of this novel through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Atria Books and to Louise Candlish for the opportunity.

I have such mixed feelings about this slow-burning thriller about obsessive, all-consuming hate and the quest for revenge.

I’ll start with the best parts. The writing is impeccable. The descriptions really paint a picture of the setting without being overly ornate. The dialogue was well done, as was the pacing. Even though some parts are slower than others, I was never bored nor sure of what was coming next. I also appreciated how the story was woven together, starting with Ellen’s perspective, switching to Vic’s, and interspersing snippets from Ellen’s book.

The characters are what didn’t work as well for me. All of the characters either came across as unreliable or one-dimensional. Ellen’s portrayal was the most challenging for me. As a mother myself, I wanted so much to be able to relate to Ellen, but from the start, something seemed off about her. Vic’s chapters do add insight, but I never could connect with her. I think it was because I never could quite envision her as a loving mother to Lucas and Freya, even before the events that take place that destroy her.

Overall, I would recommend this book and this author. I have wanted to read one of Candlish’s books for some time now and, for the most part, the writing and storytelling lived up to the hype.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing a free e-ARC for my honest review.

This review and others can be found on my blog, www.bookpicksandpics.com.

Fantastic book by a wonderful author! Highly recommend this book. Kept me interested from very beginning. Thank you to publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read this book..

I liked the way this was written. There are parts from Ellen’s book, comments from a journalist who covered the case, and parts written from Ellen’s first husband’s perspective. I thought the author did a great job developing the characters. I felt both sympathy and annoyance with Ellen’s behaviour. The author also did a great job creating suspense and building the narrative surrounding Kieran and their family’s history. My second read by the author and definitely not my last.

Thanks to the Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ellen is meeting with a client when looking out the window, she sees a man she recognizes on a terrace across the street. Only problem, that man died 2 years ago, and Ellen killed him. That’s the tantalizing set up for The Heights, and the hook is in as you fly through the pages trying to figure this one out! The story unfolds in a layered narrative that’s unique and keeps the reader off balance, adding more tension to a story that’ll twist you up. The less told here the better, or I’ll spoil the fun! I received an ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Heights
by Louise Candlish
The Heights is a tall, slender apartment building among warehouses in London. Its roof terrace is so discreet, you wouldn’t know it existed if you weren’t standing at the window of the flat directly opposite. But you are. And that’s when you see a man up there—a man you’d recognize anywhere. He may be older now, but it’s definitely him.

But that can’t be because he’s been dead for over two years. You know this for a fact.

Because you’re the one who killed him.

This was a writer I had never read before this. But, I was glued to the storyline. By the end, I was jaw-dropping. It just wrapped it in a nice box and hit you with it. Wonderful.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of The Heights.

I've read a book by the author before and the premise was so intriguing, I was pleased my request was approved.

Every author has a trademark; their writing style, the tone, how they develop their characters, all this matters and adds to the novel itself.

After reading The Heights, I understand the author's trademark; she loves a long, drawn out narrative before finally! finally! arriving at the conclusion.

The writing is good and the narrative interesting but slow; there is very little suspense and urgency.

There are no twists, except the ending, though I knew something like that was coming, and it was satisfying.

The cast of characters was unlikable though; I understand Ellen's obsession with Kieran receiving justice for the death of her son, but she was not nice and incredibly one dimensional. She had no life even before the loss of her son. All she cared about was getting revenge. And I'm all for revenge but she had a narrow minded vision of Kieran. She put her obsession ahead of her family and her daughter.

Kieran is painted as a bad guy, a bad boy, but why? Was it his bad childhood? Was he just born bad? Why did Prisca foster him? Did Ellen resent Kieran for giving him the evil eye when he was just a teenager? Sounds like Ellen had personal issues with Kieran himself.

I wasn't a fan of Vic, either. His relationship with Ellen was better developed but as a man, partner and father, he was kind of a wimp. Maybe that's the vibe I'm supposed to be getting. At least he manned up in the end.

If you like slow burn novels with not nice people, The Heights is definitely the read for you.

This was a dark, slow read. Rich, unlikeable characters tell the story of a mother grieving her son that died in a car accident that she believed was caused by his best friend. The friend goes to prison, but to the mother’s dissatisfaction, only for 2 years. She becomes obsessed with making him pay. This story is told from multiple points of view, sometimes contradicting each other. This is somewhat confusing for the first half of the book. The saving grace? The ending is awesome! So satisfying!

I may or may not have read this entire book in one day.

You get the sense right off the bat that not everything is what it seems; each character is hiding something and you can’t ever seem to grasp exactly what that is. Each time you think you’ve figured them out, they reveal another little twist that completely changes things. It genuinely kept me guessing until the very end!

When we meet Ellen Saint, she is in the midst of writing a haunting memoir as part of a group of women impacted by crime. She is also being observed and written about as part of a major newspaper article.

Ellen is a grieving mother trying to move forward in the world after a traumatic incident several years prior. She’s succeeding, too (for the most part), a successful interior lighting designer who works with high-dollar clients. Until looking across the street from one particular clients flat gives her a direct view to a man that she shouldn’t be able to see.

Because years ago, she killed him.

As Ellen spirals, she reveals additional details to the story that lead us here, beginning back when her son was a teen and weaving darkly through the years. As her past is laid out, so to is her present; obsession takes over and she finds that she can surprise even herself with the lengths she’ll go to for answers - and revenge.

I read The Other Passenger over the summer and loved it so I was quick to request this from NetGalley. I didn't so much read this book as feel it. I felt the main characters pain at losing her son and the way she raged at the one she blamed for it. Ms. Candlish can write tension like no one else. Right away I was engrossed in this story of a mother's love for her child and the plot she devises to seek her revenge. There are a lot of characters in this story but really only two points of view, with the exception of a newspaper article. I loved how character driven the novel was BUT it also had an amazing plot and a pretty unique one at that. The author mentions that the novel gave her "In the Bedroom" vibes, I really enjoyed that film and have to agree completely.

I loved the flow of the story and how the author was able to give twists that were not expected. Can you feel sympathy for a person who is out to kill and destroy another human being? I did and that is a credit to the author's talented writing style. This is definitely a slow burner but in the best possible way...as the tension escalates it has you flipping pages...and that ending was just perfectly spectacular. This is my third book by Louise Candlish and they just keep getting better and better. She is now one of my favourite writers.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC.

I was so excited to be approved for this novel. I dove right into it the day or so after approval. Boy, what a disappointment, I am sad to say. I was absolutely completely bored, and I never connected with the characters. I honestly could have cared less what happened to any of them. I found myself skimming and rolling my eyes, and found it very difficult to even finish the story. I will not be giving up on Candlish's novels, but this was a HUGE miss.

This is hard to review, because such little about the plot can be revealed without spoiling anything! The synopsis says it all: our protagonist, Ellen, happens to be looking up at an apartment building one day, when she sees a man she knows. That’s impossible though, because she was responsible for his death.

The beginning of this one was slow for me - in fact, it wasn’t until Part Two of the book began that I started feeling more into it. The way it was written is different; Part One is written as Ellen writing this book in a creative writing class, and there are also excerpts from a presumed article about Ellen from “Sunday Times” magazine. Part Two is written from her ex-husband’s perspective before it bounces back again. It’s hard to describe, and slightly convoluted.

This actually bounces back and forth a lot, but it kept getting better as it went along, and the ending was pretty good. I think this was an interesting story, I just wish it had a faster pace and more cohesive way of laying out the premise. I feel like my review can’t really give it justice, because I can’t really talk about the cool twists and the underlying theme of grief - but they are there, and they are good.

I recommend this as a slow-burn suspenseful thriller, but you really don’t have to mind SLOW. This gets 3.5 stars from me, rounded up for creativity and learning about High Places Phenomenon (which I think I might have a touch of).

(Thank you to Atria Books, Louise Candlish, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.)