This was spooky and atmospheric. I don’t like being in the dark. This book freaked me out in the best way.

Overall a good thriller but not great I enjoyed the Chazracters and it was well written but it wasn’t unique or memorable

Blackout is a wild ride of a thriller. The perfect amount of edge of your seat to keep reading and staying up late to finish it. Loved it!

I was not expecting the direction this story took. This was a little bit thriller, a little bit science-y (okay a little more than a little, hehe), and a whole lot of white male privilege wrapped up in one infuriatingly complex, twisted, crazy, what-the-hell-did-I-just-read story. It was good. It got better in the later parts. I admit I took a big break in the beginning so maybe it didn't keep my interest all that well but it could have been my mindset at that time too. Anyway, moving on. I did find this enjoyable (as much as one can enjoy reading about men that think they can tell a woman how to think/ feel/ do their job/ what jobs not to be part of/ etc-- you get the idea). The male characters (mostly) here were INFURATING. Like, I wanted to reach through my Kindle and strangle them. Alas, that must mean they were quite well-written. I really loved the aspect of "woman POWER" with the group of women that come together to figure shit out. They rocked. Probably my favorite aspect of this novel was them.

TW: there are some heavy themes throughout so check into that if you have triggers: Alcoholism, SA, and misogyny (still makes me mad thinking about that freaking character).

If you've stuck in for all these rambling thoughts... hey, thanks!

If you're a skimmer... TL;DR: I liked it, it was well-written and it was certainly unexpected.

Thank you to the publisher via Netgalley for this read (it was also First Reads a few months ago).

got this read from scene of the crime I like Paul Tremblay. He’s really a good writer.
This book is a mix of horror and relevant music - punk. Which I like.
Written with irony and classic Tremblay fans will read this one and enjoy a different Tremblay. I did! Recommend

After a scary night in February, Maris stops drinking cold turkey. 8 months later, she starts experiences blackouts, one of which lands her in the hospital after she blacks out behind the wheel.

This book obviously is partially inspired by Brock Turner and the Steubenville football team, so triggers for rape and victim blaming.

I really enjoyed this book, the sciency side of it with the neuroscience and social sciences reminded me a lot of Blake Crouch’s most recent books. I do think that this book needed to be a bit longer to fully flesh out certain aspects (such as Hollis and his relationships to more than just Eula and Maris).

I was so intrigued by the premise of this book! I thought the story was great, but it petered out too early for me. Felt like a lot of the second half of the book was just filling in what we already knew.

I liked this in the beginning, but I felt like the general mystery of the blackouts was answered early and then it became repetitive and a little dry. It was more science fiction than I was expecting, which isn't a bad thing, but possibly just not what I was looking for from this particular book. The main character's struggles with alcohol didn't match up well with the futuristic technology ideas--it felt like they belonged in two separate books.

I would give this author another try, but this one didn't do it for me.

This is my 3rd time trying 2 submit. Not doing it again. It was a great read. Enjoyed it very much. A good old fashion summer thriller read, where you're trying to figure out what's going on. The situation was bananas. Can't begin to know what it feels like blacking out with no initial resolution. Enjoyed the characters and I finished in 2 sittings. Written from the female point of view helped me enjoy the story all the more. Overall, this waa a 3.5 star read.

#Blackout #NetGalley

No. Just no.

Okay let me preface this: I am a speed reader. I average 70 books per month. So when I say it took me a month and a half to finish this thing - it’s saying something.

This book was boring - there was nothing that would make it a “thriller”. Maybe suspense, but thriller it is not.

I did find the Ohio setting to be interesting as an Ohioan, but other than that - no thanks. The idea behind this book was great, but the execution needed some work. The characters felt flat and I felt absolutely nothing for them. It just wasn’t great.

It definitely had potential and I’d love to see this book done in a way that made it interesting - but unfortunately for me, this wasn’t it.

⭐️💫

I wanted to like this one because it dealt with sobriety, but it had an exhausting preachy, social justice bent and the main character was narcissistic. Beyond all that, the plot did not make sense at all.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. The plot was unique however. It was a little far fetched. It’s a thriller with a touch of sci-fi. It has a slow beginning but the pace picks up. I loved the strong female characters. It’s suspenseful and covers various heavy topics. I found the Sci-Fi part a little weird but interesting. There’s a lot of academic politics that I could have used less of and I feel like the storylines didn’t really mesh. I would recommend if you love technology/sci-fi thrillers.

**spoiler alert** This book was a tough one to rate. I really enjoyed the twists and confusion within the story. Very much on the edge of my seat, so this was a quick read. That being said, Maris, the protagonist, seems a little self-absorbed and not always very likable. Despite this, she has a good arch and grows through her issues, which leads to a satisfying ending. The supporting characters are sometimes without depth or personality and I feel like I didn’t get to know them at all. Feminism is a major theme throughout and it seems a little inauthentic and over-stressed at times. The book reads a little choppy in my opinion but wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t keep up. Overall I enjoyed it but I don’t think it’s for everyone.

This story started out with the impressions of All's Well: a middle-aged woman, teaching and making not nearly enough, being overruled by her department, etc. And then it gets weird.

I really wanted to like the story, but if I have to read the word "vitriol" one more time I might lose it.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the premise of this book, and parts of the execution of it -- the plot moved quickly and I found it a fast read. The writing fell flat for me; it seemed fairly basic (though that also means its accessible for a lot of readers!) and at the same time, there was a LOT going on. I love a book with feminist themes but this book, though not a *bad* book, had feminism, social media, teenage drama, alcoholism, academia, and an oddly evil villain shoehorned into it. I think it tried to do too much at once, and while it was perfectly readable it's not a book I'd go out of my way to pick up again.

This book started off so well I was loving it. I couldn't wait to see what was happening, but by 50% it had started to go downhill and by the end I was so disappointed.

Maris is an alcoholic who is trying to white knuckle sobriety by herself. She really won't even admit she is an alcoholic or talk about it with anyone, not her husband, not her daughter, not her ex who has been sober for a long time, no one. She thinks if she just keeps it to herself everything will be fine.

Then Maris starts having weird blackouts where she doesn't remember anything. Like when she was drinking but she swears she hasn't had a drink in months. So what is going on? Now Maris is not the most sympathetic or likable character, but I was enjoying reading her story. She was trying to hide everything that was happening from her family, lying to them, being more like she was when she was drinking. So of course when she says she hasn't been they don't really believe her. It was interesting the snippets about her parents and how her dad was an alcoholic who she looked up to. Who she wanted to be.

There are also a few chapters from another character's point of view, but they are so few and far between I kept forgetting about them. There is a lot of talk about this one rape case where a rich white boy only served 4 months because of the aforementioned rich white boyness. Maris has written many articles about the case and everything surrounding it. Rape culture and believing women and everything. It was very heavy-handed, but I didn't mind.

Now just before halfway we get to what is actually going on and what is causing the blackouts and...I just rolled my eyes and almost put the book aside right then. Maybe I should have as it didn't get better after that...and the resolution of everything was so quick and easy. It wasn't great which is a shame as I was really loving the book until then.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and publisher for a copy of this book

In lesser hands, a thriller like BLACKOUT might be a disaster. Any plot that juggles alcoholism, gaslighting, rape, murder, white-male hostility and an incredible conspiracy involving brain waves, neural transmissions and cellular towers — all to a backbeat of social media — could easily collapse under its own weight in splatter of histrionics and implausibilities.

But Erin Flanagan, author of DEER SEASON, which deserved its prestigious Edgar Award for First Novel, is too assured and smart for that. In her hands, BLACKOUT is the riveting story of Maris Heilman, an alcoholic who suffers strange blackouts months after her last drink, just as she's trying to land tenure as a professor at her Dayton, Ohio university in the face of some sexist headwinds. To everybody close to Maris, her blackouts are the product of a secretly resumed drinking habit, and the more she tries to convince her husband and teenage daughter — and everyone else in her orbit — that she hasn't relapsed, the more she looks exactly like someone who has. It's only when Maris discovers that other women have experienced similarly mysterious blackouts that she gets a glimpse of a monstrous conspiracy to discredit her — a conspiracy tied to her advocacy for the rights of victims in the wake of a well-connected local rapist's relatively light prison sentence. Even as she bottoms out — and relapses — other women in her orbit are helping her connect the dots of the conspiracy, and come to realize that if they don't take down the plotters, they themselves will be taken down — perhaps fatally. As Maris realizes: "He could create women as he saw fit. All free thinking could be taken away, replaced with submission ... a scientific gaslighting. It wouldn't just be a reverting to the old ways of seeing women as inferior, but a literal dark age where women would have no free well."

Flanagan's genius is in delivering all this in a level tone that subtly, even deceptively, ratchets up the tension without ever giving way to linguistic hysterics or implausibilities. She makes a plot that tilts into Michael Crichton-meets-Mary Higgins Clark territory into something utterly terrifying and utterly believable with each measured passage and page. All in a story that's as fresh as tomorrow's headlines, as America flirts with theocracy and stares down the barrel at a future in which women's reproductive rights are restricted and women's sexual agency closely regimented.

BLACKOUT is a knockout — a compulsively readable pulse-popper with wide appeal that never dumbs itself down for a wide audience. Don't be surprised to see it in the conversation for the Best Novel competition come next year's Edgar Award nominations. It's that good. And Erin Flanagan is on her way to becoming one of the finest voices in contemporary crime fiction, one of those authors whose books you'll come to want to read simply because her name is on them.

Blackout by Erin Flanagan is a thriller you would't want to miss. If you interesting in sobriety, alcoholism and how life can be you wouldn't want to miss how sociology professor Maris Heilman. The topics can be heavy it talks about rape, murder, white privilege and feminism. You enjoy the book. It is well written. I did find a few moments a little unbelievable but the story line will hold your attention.

This one didn’t hold up for me. The main character came off as self involved and shallow. Did not capture my attention or my curiosity on what was happening.

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the ARC!

Recovering alcoholic, Maris Heilman, has her first blackout. She hasn't been drinking, but her husband and daughter don't know that. Maris fears what they'll think of her if they knew this was becoming a frequent thing. After waking up in the ER after one particular blackout, she discovers that she's not the only woman this is happening to.

The plot description pulled me in, especially since it's categorized as a thriller, but this one didn't hold up for me. It was more sci-fi than anything, which I don't mind but I wasn't mentally prepared for it. It seemed a bit far-fetched, even for a fiction novel.