I was very excited to get this novel with mystery turns and linked disappearances, but I was sorely disappointed. It was a painful slog to even finish this book. To begin with I found both main characters to be whiny and unlikeable. Felicity who is understandable distraught about the disappearance of one child but is completely ignoring her other two including one who is dying. When a body is discovered Felicity says if its Vera she has nothing left to live for- ummm hello you have two other kids. Marin was worse she is self-absorbed, entitled and clearly hates her husband and thinks she should have married his brother instead. As other reviewers stated the second half was marginally better than the first with a few more secrets being revealed but nothing that readers didn't see coming. I like stories told from multiple perspectives but this was too disjointed and jumped back and forth without clear focus. I am sad to say but I hated the authors style, she uses way too many inane descriptions that make the pacing choppy. Was the author paid by the word count? I had the audio version read by Angie Kane; Caitlin Cavannaugh; Lesa Lockford; Carolina Hoyos. I generally like different narrators for characters, whether it was the performances or the content I am not sure but this just didn't work for me. Overall, this is a hard pass.

Thanks to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, and the author Pamela Crane for the advanced copy of A Slow Ruin. Upon reading the synopsis for this book, I was instantly intrigued. Alvera Feilds vanishes without a trace in 1910, leaving behind her husband and baby. The case is never solved. Years later her great granddaughter and namesake Vera Portman also goes missing on the same day, also seemingly without a trace. Unfortunately for me, the synopsis was the most interesting part of the story. This book fell completely flat for me. I found the characters unlikeable and the story seemed to drag without ever giving any real details that might hook the reader. This is the first book I have read by this author and I do think there was potential here for the book to be interesting it just didn’t seem to deliver.

The first half of this book was incredibly slow. It look me several days just to get to the halfway point. I’m a fast reader so this is unusual. Once I got past that point, it was so good! I’m glad I decided to keep going!

I will say the characters are incredibly annoying. The storyline saved it, but I can’t think of even one character I liked at all.

It’s pretty twisty and turny (is that even a word? Eh it is now). It honestly makes it pretty hard to believe. Yeah yeah it’s fiction - but real and realistic are not the same thing and there were some parts in this that were just incredibly unrealistic - thus making it hard to believe.

I got an audio copy of this from NetGalley, and the audio version was pretty good. The narrators were good at displaying the emotions of the characters as the story gets intense. It’s good good read - at least past that first 50%.

The ending saved it - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - I was set on just three until the end. Less than that until the 50% point.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Okay so.... This book was just not for me. It seems like a lot of other people like this one, so take my review with a grain of salt.

It was a mystery about a girl named Vera who disappeared 6 months ago. Her family is falling apart without her, and her mother refuses to believe that Vera is dead. Weirdly, Vera's great great grandmother Alveira disappeared on the same day 110 years ago. Alveira was a suffragette who mysteriously disappeared only 3 months after having her first child. Is there any connection? Is the name Vera cursed?

Overall there were several things I really didn't enjoy about this title:
- The author was just trying SO HARD to make sure you know what timeframe it was. Making a million references to COVID or what's on TV. In sections of the book set in the past, she mentions American Idol and who the finalists were that season and the series finale of Gilmore girls about 100 times. Yes, we get it. It's the past!
-Similarly she was trying way too hard to make one of our main characters, Felicity, a "cool mom." She's always saying things like "that's sus. My daughter Vera taught me the slang." Please. You doing that is cringy.
-One of our main characters, Marin, is half white- half Black. The author is not Black and didn't seem to write Marin's Blackness or mixed race-ness very well. It made me uncomfortable to read some of the things Pamela wrote about Marin since she isn't Black. Specifically, there's a scene with Marin's racist boss who says a lot of supremely ugly racist and sexist comments about Marin. It just felt..... wrong?... to know that that had been written by a white woman.
-The story had so many twists and turns. Just for the sake of having twists and turns. Many of them didn't really make sense or were just SO coincidental that I found myself rolling my eyes and snorting at the absurdity.
-The "mystery" with Vera's disappearance is dumb. I won't spoil the mystery here, but just know that it was incredibly stupid, especially for a smart teenager like Vera. It felt completely out of character and unresolved.
-The mystery of what happened to Alveira wasn't anything at all. It never ties into anything and is just there for no reason. It could have been completely cut.
-The resolution to the other things that happen to the family (threatening phone calls; vehicular intimidation) was also ridiculous. When we got the answer to this, I literally laughed out loud.
-Felicity's narrator had really sibilant S's in her narration and it was distracting.


The narration for Marin and the other secondary voices was fine. Nothing special; nothing egregious. Like I mentioned before though, Felicity's narrator was really annoying to me-- and unfortunately, hers is the voice we hear most often.

I wouldn't recommend this book to any avid mystery readers as they would likely find this title over-the-top and melodramatic. If you're new to the genre though, this may be a fun place to start.

This was my first audio book. It was great a plot. Love the twist and turns. I will have to check out the rest of her books.

An excellent thriller with an historical element that is sure to delight those that enjoy a good mystery! The narrator was captivating. Highly recommended.

This was one of the hardest books for me to listen to as an audiobook. I think I would have enjoyed it more on paper with how much was going on in the storyline. The narrators sounded very similar and it was hard to keep them straight. Because there was so much happening with the story and the narrators sounding so similar, I had a hard time keeping up and kept having to rewind and re-listen. I give it 3 stars.

A Slow Ruin lived up to its name in that it is an engaging slow-burn mystery about uncovering family secrets. The 1910 timeline in A Slow Ruin is loosely based on events in the author’s own family history, which made those chapters even more interesting to me. I would have liked more of Alvera’s story and timeline, since her story seemed so unique and interesting. The jacket blurb really has very little to do with the actual plot.

Most of my strong thoughts about this story can’t be said without spoilers, so if you’ve read it, head over to my blog for a spoiler discussion:

I found it hard to like many of the characters.

Overall, the storyline was interesting and I wasn’t expecting the big twist. In practice, though, many parts were somewhat convoluted. It seemed like the author was leading the reader through a maze in order to surprise them with the ending.

Audio Review: The audiobook was narrated by Angie Kane, Caitlin Cavannaugh, Lesa Lockford, and Carolina Hoyos. I’m not sure which was which, but I didn't like the narrator that did some of Marin's parts. Her voice was unnecessarily whiny, and she kept alternating how she pronounced "Marin". MARE-in vs. muh-RIN. I noticed the discrepancy in pronunciation a few times and at first thought that it was different voice actors saying it differently, but then someone changed the pronunciation within two adjacent sentences. That would have been such an easy thing to clarify/edit that really stood out to me.

Other than that, the audio was enjoyable. I think I would have preferred a physical copy to be able to flip back and remind myself what was going on (especially in the prologue), but I was happy with the production in general.

Book Review: A Slow Ruin by Pamela Crane

A Slow Ruin is an adult domestic mystery suspense about a teenage girl that goes missing (just like her great-great grandmother over 100 years prior) and the dysfunctional family she leaves behind.
A Slow Ruin is told in alternating POVs between Felicity and her sister-in-law Marin as they navigate life without teenage Vera. Felicity is obsessed with finding out what happened to Vera and lives in fear that the police will find her body. Marin has secrets of her own and is increasingly frustrated with her house on the wrong side of town, the racism she tolerates at work and general dissatisfaction with her husband Cody who is not wealthy like his older brother. Also interspersed throughout the novel are newspaper reports from 1910 about Alvera Fields (Vera’s ancestor she was named after) a women’s rights activist who mysteriously disappeared leaving her husband and baby behind.
Unfortunately this novel fell flat for me. The story was overly convoluted with excessive mundane details and very little action. The characters were all unlikable and felt completely unrealistic. If a bot was put in charge of writing a domestic thriller this is the kind of book it would throw together with very little emotional connection or tension but lots of unrealistic human interactions. I also feel like the jacket copy overstated how important the 1910 story was to the plot as it was barely present and added little to the overall story.
2 stars ⭐️⭐️

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in audio. I really enjoyed this one. So many twists and turns, that last one completely blindsided me. The narration was excellent. Overall, a great listen.

📰 B O O K • R E V I E W 📰
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Title: A Slow Ruin
Author: Pamela Crane
Rating: 4/5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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Two women missing a century apart, tied together by a mysterious link? Oh this had my name written all over it! I was super stoked to find this on Netgalley as an audiobook and even more stoked when I was approved for it.
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This story was so cleverly written. This is written in dual timelines, via newspaper articles from 1910 and in the present. This story is also told from two POV’s in the present. Sounds a bit confusing, but trust me it is not, this story is very easy to follow along with.
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This story had me gripped from page one, the prologue was so intriguing, I needed to know what it was about. I loved how each character had something to hide, and how throughout the story, each one came to light. This story was so intricately woven through time, with such a shocking ending that I never would have seen coming. I loved how it ended, I thought it was perfect. It was really a great read!
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What’s extra interesting about this book is that the newspaper articles from 1910 are actually related to an unsolved missing heiress case and one of the characters is loosely based on the author’s relative. This gives so much more meaning to this story in my opinion.
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The narrators do a great job at making this story come to life. I really enjoyed listening to this one! Huge thank you to @netgalley and @dreamscapemedia for this audiobook in exchange for an unbiased review! If you’re a fan of audiobooks, check this one out it is available now!
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#astorywoventhroughtime #twomissinggirlsonesenturyapart #mysteriouslinkstothepast #audiobook #netgalley #dreamscapemedia #aslowruin #pamelacrane

A Slow Ruin is a domestic thriller that spans over 100 years. The story begins in 1910 when Alvera Fields, a fierce women's rights activist, completely vanishes leaving her husband alone with their newborn baby. The case is cold and no one knows what came of Alvera.

We fast forward to 2021 and on the anniversary of Alvera's disappearance, her great-great-granddaughter, Vera Portman vanishes on the same date and in a similar fashion. Vera's family prays that she is still alive, but as 6 months have passed and the police find a body, they are beginning to lose hope. Her mother, Felicity makes the connection between her daughter and great grandmother's disappearances and points her suspicion onto her sister-in-law, Marin. Marin just happens to be the last person who saw Vera alive.

Felicity reads Vera's journal and discovered that she didn't know her daughter as well as she thought. Vera was keeping secrets and had also found out about Felicity's secrets. Everyone has secrets in this book and some are deadly.

A Slow Ruin meshed several timelines together and alternated between them as the story unfolded. I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see if they found Vera and what everyone's secrets were. I wasn't sure which characters could be trusted. None of them seemed trustworthy and they kept me guessing. I really enjoyed this thriller and want to check out more from Pamela Crane.

15 year old Vera Portman has gone missing, and coincidentally on the anniversary of her great great grandmother's disappearance.  6 Months later a body is recovered and the family is beside themselves worried that it may be her. Vera's mother Felicity has taken it upon herself to dig more into her daughter's personal life trying to see if she's able to find anything that the police may have missed. She stumbles across her daughter's journal and discovers that her daughter has many secrets, causing her to feel even more estranged from her missing daughter. From a tattoo, to a secret boyfriend and best friend, and even drugs, there is so much she was clueless about. She discovers the last person to see her daughter was her sister in law, Vera's aunt Marin, who also knew about her daughter's secret life. What else does Marin know? Why did she hide so much from Vera's parents knowing how frantic they were trying to find her? Does Vera know about the secret that Felicity has been harboring from the family for years?
Thank you to Netgalley, Pamela Crane and Dreamscape Media for the opportunity to read and review this book.  I was granted the audiobook version. There were four narrators for this book, all doing a pretty good job. The overall storyline of this book was pretty good with several twists. There were however some parts that I found quite confusing and some that could've been cut out altogether. I also got a little confused by the whole timeline of the story. I thought most of the story was around 6 months after Vera went missing, but I was wrong. It was a decent book and I enjoyed the overall storyline. I rate this ⭐️⭐⭐💫

A Slow Ruin showed a lot of promise and had several good storylines, but ultimately felt disjointed (particularly regarding the grandmother/Alvera--that entire part of the story could've been left out and it would've made for a tighter weave). I greatly appreciated the plot twists, but ultimately feel the title is worthy of a simple 3-star review given too many characters who were barely used and could've been cut, and overall lack of editing that was desperately needed to tighten up an otherwise suspenseful story.

My thanks to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for the opportunity to listen and review the audiobook of A Slow Ruin.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for a free audiobook copy to listen and review. Overall, I really enjoyed this while I was listening to it, but quickly forgot about it and had to reread the synopsis and a few reviews to refresh my memory on the details, since it's been a couple weeks since I finished..

There are several different things happening in this book, but the main focus is on the missing teen, Vera. The story unravels in perspective between the mom, Felicity, and aunt-by-marriage, Marin. In Felicity's chapters, we get a distracted mother who is distraught over her missing daughter and ignoring her children who are still alive. In Marin's chapters, we get a peek into the guilt she has of being the last to see Vera. Of course, being the family drama that it is, everyone is hiding something, including Vera.

Added to that, is a secondary storyline of the past, when a suffragette relative went missing on the same date in 1910, from the same house the present-day family are living in, which is ominously called The Execution Estate. There are other threads and stories throughout the story and it's a great premise, but is confusing at times and overall could be better. I would read others by this author.

A Slow Ruin by Pamela Crane is full of twists. I enjoy how the author writes and develops the characters. The meshing of two time lines was well done. The multiple narrators all brought great performances and added to the enjoyment. Angie Kane, Caitlin Cavannaugh, Lesa Lockford and Carolina Hoyas. Thank you #NetGalley and #Dreamscape Media for letting me review this audiobook.

This book started off so slowly that I almost gave up on it. I also found Felicity so unlikeable that I didn't really want to continue. There was so much going on in this story that, at times, it was difficult to keep up. The ending, while unexpected, wasn't all that satisfying. It took so long to get to that I had stopped caring at some point. The suffragette story was unnecessary and could have been revealed in a conversation between two people rather than dragging it out in and expanding on it. It played no part in the present. Had the beginning not be so drawn out, I would have probably rated this higher because it did pick up about halfway through. It just took too long to get there.

Multiple narrators made this story easier to follow.

This is the story about the sudden disappearance of a young teen Vera Portman. Ironically, Vera's namesake and great grandmother also disappears on the same day as Vera in 1910.

Vera's parents are besides themselves with worry wondering where Vera may have disappeared. Felicity Portman worries that she may be responsible for her daughter possibly running away.

Things get exponentially complicated when the body of a missing teen girl appears, the family anxiously awaits for the forensic report hoping that it is not Vera.

Suspicions further arise when Felicity's sister-in-law Marin, the last person to speak to Vera may know where she is, or what happened to her. Marin doesn't fit perfectly into the family. Marin isn't rich, she's had a broken past, she isn't....well perfect.

A Slow Ruin is a slow burn book with twists and turns. It was like putting a key into a lock and turning until you think the door is fully unlocked but then you realize you haven't fully unlocked it.

I like to pride myself on having a good sense of where a book will turn, but I must say that Slow Ruin really took me in different directions. I was left with a gaping mouth as the story unraveled.

Pamela Crane does a wonderful job of surprise and mystery. However, the connection between the great grandmother and Vera never came together for me. I believe the book would have done better as a stand alone without the secondary mystery.

Overall, A Slow Ruin was a fun thriller/mystery.

4/5 Stars.

Thank you to Pamela Crane, Tabella House and NetFalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A Slow Ruin
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Thank you to NetGalley + Dreamscape Media for the eALC in exchange for my honest review!

This book to me was an incredibly complex story of lies and deceit that I felt suffered from (at least) one too many twists. To paraphrase Coco Chanel’s take on accessories… less is more. Between multiple timelines, multiple POVs and multiple unreliable narrators, it just all felt a bit much. I did think that the story underneath all of that was extremely compelling, and even though I would classify this more as a slow burn, I flew through the audiobook in under two hours. I did also feel that unnecessary miscommunication and lack-of communication led to a majority of the obstacles our MCs are trying to overcome. I will say that I was pretty blown away by what I would consider the two bigger twists at the end. Overall, I was very entertained during this story and think it would have benefitted from a few less storylines.

This is my 3rd Pamela Crane book. I have enjoyed everyone of them. I think this was may be my favorite of hers.
I enjoyed the family aspect of the characters.
I really enjoyed all the secrets that everyone had and the twists. I look forward to reading more of her books.
I listened and read this book. I really liked the narration of the audio.