*received for free from netgalley for honest review* pretty wild read for sure. I'd reread it eventually in the future because so much was going on a reread will likely give extra earlier clues lol would recommend!

This is the first book/audiobook I have listened to by Pamela Crane. I was immediately interested in this one because it takes place in Pittsburgh and that is where I grew up. The author builds great characters that you really get to know and deepens the story for me. It storyline draws you in and keeps you listening until the very end. I loved the narrator on this one too!

A Slow Ruin
By Pamela Crane

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the advanced copy for my honest review. I appreciate it.

Teenage daughters and mothers rarely see eye to eye and this holds true for Felicity Portman and her daughter vera. Felicity feels as though she is losing grips with her daughter, then her daughter Vera disappears. Fast forward 6 months and no one has seen or heard from Vera, or have they? Felicity’s husband is at the ends of his rope with Felicity and her sister-in-law/best friend seems as though she is hiding secrets. But she couldn’t know Felicity’s secret. I’m this story it seems that everyone has a secret but which secrets will tell Felicity where her daughter is?

Was instantly drawn into this story I really liked the narrator. Very detailed but left me wanting more.

I really enjoyed #aslowburn written by #pamelacrane. It’s set in Pittsburgh and I grew up near by. I liked the characters development, the setting and that it is really up to date. It mentions Covid and I though that was neat. I be talking to my family and friends about this one. Thank you #netgalley and #dramscapemedia for giving me the chance to listen to this fantastic audiobook.

Although this book was so detailed, I still was left wanting a bit more. I liked it and the second half really had me interested as things began to twist and eventually tie up, but the first half felt slow and at one point I considered stopping. I do wonder if the audiobook was the culprit for my lack of investment. I feel I lost out on some of the details related to formatting by listening rather than seeing. Overall, I ended up thinking it was middle of the road, but with that being said - I would still give this author a chance again because the writing was very nice and thought provoking.

The premise of this book was fascinating. A missing teenage daughter, a grieving mother, family secrets, and historical house with a dark history. It had a lot of wonderful elements. I enjoyed the narration and the twisty, turned storyline all the way through. However, to be honest. the ending of this book fell a little flat for me. I found parts a bit too far fetched and was unable to relate with the characters motivations.

I loved the story but i wished they picked a different narrator. Because the story blew me away and. Just left wanting more

It didn't all come together for me. A little too much going on with the mysterious aspects of the various plot threads.

A Slow Ruin was such a captivating and fascinating book. I loved all the nuanced mystery and multiple timelines, dark subplots, and important themes. There was really a lot going on within this story, but I think the author did a fantastic job weaving it all together and creating a story that was greater than the sum of its parts.
I listened to the audiobook of A Slow Ruin and enjoyed the narration and storytelling. It's a great way to experience the book.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

Kudos to the author for taking on a complex storyline with unconventional characters: other than the missing daughter, Vera, and possibly the missing suffragette Alvera, there are no heroes in this book. Every character is fatally flawed, including all of the POV characters, making it tough to connect with, let alone like, any of them. In fact, I ended up disliking all of them so much that the only one I really cared about was Vera and the hope she would be found safely--a task that itself was challenging at first thanks to the prologue. After all, if we "know" she's going to die in the end, why should we care? Fortunately, without giving away the ending, this isn't exactly what happens. When I finished the book, I felt cheated at first, but then I went back and reread the prologue and I could see the bread crumbs were there--I just hadn't spotted them the first time around. There are some big twists in the second half that make the journey worthwhile.

Despite the clever plot line, there were some continuity issues, especially when it came to the medical aspects. First, a major plot point is that Vera is the only donor match for her younger sister, who is dying from nephrotic syndrome, a serious kidney disease. A plot twist makes this seem ridiculous when you consider how donor matches are done; the likelihood of Vera being a better match than Elliott, Felicity, or even Marin is quite low (it's different for marrow donors. Second, if the sister is dying from nephrotic syndrome, why is she not on dialysis throughout the book? Why is she not getting worse over the six months Vera is missing? Even if Felicity is so worried about Vera, would she really neglect her dying daughter, whom she barely even sees throughout most of the book?

Third, a character is dying from pancreatic cancer in one chapter, and then claims to have beaten prostate cancer in a later chapter. Fourth, a critical clue comes from a reference to the missing Alvera, and Felicity finds the clue in the same furniture--except I don't recall the book ever saying they had that furniture, and they don't live in Alvear's old house. For that matter, the storyline with Alvera is confusing and very loosely connected to the rest of the book. Several plot twists make the connection to Alvera tenuous at best, and as much as the author tries to make Alvera's story parallel the main one, It feels like quite a stretch. The book could've been tighter without the distracting cutaways to news articles about Alvera's disappearance and would've been more focused on the main characters Felicity and Marin. Even though much of the book is from Felicity's POV, we lose the resolution to her story at the end of the book, as she's barely even mentioned in the final chapters, and suddenly the book shifts to the POV of two other characters who were not the primary POV. This is rather jarring and a bit unsatisfying.

The narrator for Felicity was appropriately whiny, reminding me of an unfunny Moira Rose, but Marin's narrator was flat, making it much harder to connect with her (and she kept alternating the pronunciation of Marin for no apparent reason).

Again, I appreciate the huge task this author chose to tackle and much of it is executed well in the aspect of portraying a storyline reminiscent of a Greek tragedy. But making it overly complex left some plot holes that kept it from being as great as it could've been.

Thank you to Netgalley, Tabela House, and the author for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair review.

Solid 4.5 stars! Thanks to Netgalley I get to give a short review of the book.
The narrators did a fantastic job. I especially enjoyed Marin's voice, I think it fit her personality. Honestly, I pondered how the prologue was going to work into the plot once the story got going, but in the end it all came together. A family woven together with lies, betrayals and more lies. This is definitely an author I will start following.

This was a solid thriller! I audibly gasped at one of the plot twists! I loved how the story had multiple POVs that spanned across 100+ years. I was a little confused by the story at the beginning, but it was so satisfying to figure out how it all came together at the end. 👏

🟤Here’s a summary of the plot:👇
In 1910, Alberta Fields was a prominent activist fighting for women’s suffrage. When she disappears, people think it’s because of what she stood for. Flash forward to 2021, her great-great-granddaughter Vera disappears on the exact same date, 111 years apart. How are the two incidents connected? In a family that loves to bury secrets, who can you really trust?

🟤I love when a book has multiple plot twists and this one delivered. 👏 I didn’t expect any of the plot twists and it was so satisfying to see how all the different parts of the plot meshed together at the end.

4.5 stars
Oh wow! I really liked this psychological thriller! It was probably one the twistiest books I’ve read in recent memory. Deceit, lies and secrets…you’ll find all of this and more. In the spirit of giving nothing away, I will just say that I had to go back and re-read some parts. My mind was blown!

When 15 year old Vera disappears from her home, her mother Felicity and father Oliver are beside themselves with worry. It is presumed that she ran away based on a cryptic message Felicity received from her earlier that day. However, as time goes on, there’s no sign of Vera and the police run into a brick wall, Felicity takes it upon herself to start digging into her daughter’s life to hopefully find clues that will tell her where she went and why. Mixed in with the plot is another mystery that involves Vera’s great grandmother, a suffragette involved in the early 20th century women’s movement, who disappeared without a trace leaving her wealthy husband and young daughter. This mystery is told through a series of newspaper clippings dating back to when she disappeared.

My only criticisms were that the two mysteries didn’t really converge all that well despite, what appeared to be attempts, to do so. The ending was a tad far fetched with one reveal explanation not making much sense to me. But I still had a fun time with this audiobook. The narrators are all seasoned performers and were able to add depth to the characters.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the dual POVs and timelines between Marin and Felicity and how they both had deep, dark secrets. It definitely made it hard to figure out the mystery behind Vera's disappearance. The twists and turns were great, meowzabub was also a great addition. thank you netgalley for the opportunity to listen to this arc.

Pamela Crane does a great job at captivating the reader right from the beginning. In A Slow Ruin, Vera and her great grandmother disappear on the same day, yet years apart. As the story unravels and Vera’s mother tries to use pieces of her daughter’s journal entries to solve her case, we learn so many family secrets - secrets I was not expecting!

This book had a bunch of twists and turns in it in places I was not expecting to find them, which made for a pleasant surprise. The way the book came full circle was such an interesting twist that you couldn’t have predicted from the beginning.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this arc. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Felicity’s daughter is missing! She has been missing for quite some time. The odds are…something terrible has happened to Vera. But, Felicity will not give up hope. She continues to search and dig deeper. When she finds Vera’s journal, Felicity knows her secret is out!

Felicity has a huge secret. Only a select few in the family actually know the truth. But, Vera discovers her hidden secret and disappears. Now, Felicity must do her best to stay sane and keep her family together.

This is definitely a roller coaster ride. I felt Felicity’s terror all the way to my bones. And when all the secrets start to be revealed and then all the truths are uncovered…it brings about new terror and what will happen next!

The narrators were superb! Absolutely the best!

***SPOILER***

Let me just say…if my daughter pulled what this girl pulled…I would not be as calm as Felicity! And I definitely would not be as understanding. Vera absolutely destroyed Felicity!

Need an emotional mystery/thriller from start to finish….THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today!

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

I must be honest and tell you that I did not finish this book. Unfortunately, It was too slow for me.

I can't begin to imagine who is the intended audience. I don't repeat the synopsis or give spoilers. I did have only the audiobook. The multiple narrators could not save this book for me.

There are bits and pieces of the story that are intriguing; however I did stop, shaking my head, frustrated with how all the pieces ended, and reminded myself I asked to read and review this. So, not finishing wasn't an option. There wasn't any time during the reading that I was comfortable. The story jumps around with different narrators and points of view, le aving me always wondering but not in a good way. This is the equivalent of an audio soap opera. The happenings were so far fetched in a story that I was already bored with and the author kept the ridiculousness up through the end. Giving specifics will spoil.

There is very little to no profanity, and I appreciate that.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for accepting my request to read and review A Slow Ruin.

#NetGalley
#DreamscapeMedia
#ASlowRuin

I was a fan of this book. I loved the complicated family dynamics and the twist and turns of the plot. The ending was not exactly shocking but unexpected nonetheless. I liked the incorporation of the historical piece, I kind of wish it was incorporated more. Definitely worth the read (listen).