Such a good suspense read! I highly recommend starting when you have a lot of time on your hand! That ending wow oh wow!!

From the first line “Sometimes I wish my husband would die.” To the last line I was hooked. The mystery of who did what and who knows what kept me reading. Each character brought their own intrigue to the story, and held a key part. Being under 200 pages meant that I flew through it quickly. Thank you for letting me read this! I’ll be reading more of her work!

The first line "would you like to kill your husband" wow what a way to open the book and grab someone's attention, and keep the reader interested. The story did not disappoint with the twist and the turns and kept me wanting to read, the short chapters were great and it was a fast read for me. This is a first book I've read by Amanda McKinney and looking forward to getting some of her other books to read.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of The Widow of Weeping Pines by Amanda McKinney.

Have you ever read a book and then wondered, "what was the point of that?' That's what I'd like to holler from the hilltop right now. I want to be fair though, sometimes we're just not the target audience, but I still read it, so now I'm going to review it.

My biggest peeve right off the bat was how deeply unlikable every single character was. I just don't feel like life works that way, IMO, we are all just different gray shades, so I can't stand it when people are either classified as saints or villains. Also, the story was just duuuuumb. Way too contrived, not believable, and just vampiric? Everyone just devouring everyone else for gain. I just couldn't get into it.

The Widow of Weeping Pines is a great quick read. It’s definitely a page turner and I enjoyed how we learned different aspect about the narrator through other characters. It gave me a different perspective on Betts than how she presented herself.

I went into this book pretty blind. I read the synopsis but that's about it. It seemed like a quick and simple read. I was only right about the quick part. This book was wild and it really had my attention for all of it.

I couldn't tell who to trust, who was lying, who wasn't in their right minds. I couldn't even tell if a crime had been committed or not. This may seem like it's all over the place but honestly the author kept me enthralled. And for it being less than 200 pages she did a great job of giving a back story to all the characters that needed them.

If you are looking for a book where someone has a redeeming quality...this isn't for you. If you are looking for a book where the end may be a little preposterous...this isn't for you. But it was definitely for me.

2.8 Stars
One Liner: Fast-paced but has weaker second half

Betty Lou Abbott is a therapist and an author. However, her life is far from simple or normal. She has too many secrets to keep, some of which are in the basement of the house she inherited from her husband. Her fiancé, Ian, seems to have his secrets too, and so does Carmen Marquis, Betty’s client and a bestselling author. Nicholas Stahl is a crooked detective with an agenda of his own.
The lives of these characters are entangled in a twisty game of cat and mouse. But who is the cat, and who is the mouse? Can a person be both?
The story comes from the first-person POV of mostly Betty, with a couple of chapters by Nicholas.

What I Like:
This is a short book (a novella) with a fast-paced narration. The short chapters further add to its advantage and keep the story going.
The beginning is perfect. It hooks the reader and draws them into the plot while indeed sounding like the narration of a mad woman. In fact, the first half of the book is very good.
The setting was great, though somehow I feel it isn’t fully utilized to up the atmosphere. Makes sense, given the pacing, though.
The characters are distinct and show promise of being something unique and powerful. However… (more in the next section.)
The revelations come in stages and are neatly arranged to further the plot. But then… (more in the next section.)

What Didn’t Work for Me:
The last part of the book is more focused on twists and a shocking ending rather than the characters. The story shifts from being something disturbing to a more commonly found trope in domestic thrillers.
It doesn’t help that the heroine, Betty, is an alcoholic with tons of psychological issues. She is almost always drunk and still manages to act like a functional adult (or so she says). Betty is already an intriguing character. I’d have liked it if she let her craziness stand out on its own without relying on alcohol.
Detective Nicholas’ arc isn’t explored much. Just when he should have taken over, he gets sidelined. Ian was pretty much a cookie-cutter useless fiancé. Carmen’s character faces the same issue as the detective. They end up more as convenient parts of the plot in the second half.
A couple of cases go nowhere. While they provide a sort of reference to the hidden side of the involved characters, this could have been achieved without the loose ends.
I’m not a fan of pull-the-rug twists, which happens here. While I am still okay with it, what disappoints me is the lack of a proper explanation. What’s given might be enough for Betty but not me.
There are a couple of graphic sex scenes that don’t add much to the plot. These might have worked if the book is longer. The ending is rushed too. Extending this to a book of around 250 pages would have made the characters twisty instead of twisting the plot.

To summarize, The Widow of Weeping Pines is a fast-paced thriller with a solid first half. The plot has potential, and the writing is easy to read. I’ll check out more books by the author.
Thank you, NetGalley and HH Tisevich, for the eARC. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

First off, I appreciated that this book, coming in at less than two hundred pages, didn’t drag on like a lot of books tend to do. Nothing wrong with a shorter book that moves along at a brisk pace. However, this one might have been a little too short.
It started out really promising; an interesting, complicated protagonist and a plot with definite potential. Unfortunately, the last quarter of the story took a turn that I didn’t enjoy and really couldn’t buy into. It also ended with some dangling plot points, which was disappointing. It was almost like the author realized she was past deadline and had to throw together an ending by the end of the day.
Thanks to #netgalley for this #arc of #thewidowofweepingpines in exchange for an honest review.

Conflicted feelings about this book.

Absolutely love the pace of the book, the author gets to the point and the pace is absolutely spot on (what I like to call no bs). The plot is so addictive and enticing, I couldn't stop reading it. On the other hand, there is close to no character development. I know that this is a short novel, but there were multiple times where I wished that she added a bit more colour to the characters. There are also a few 'incidents' in the book that I wasn't sure what purpose they served. I had a lot of theories in the ending but the actual ending was slightly disappointing.

All in all, a fun and light-hearted read.

If this book had a Netflix tagline, it would be Dark and Ominous. The whole story -- chapter after chapter -- just felt like the shoe was about the drop. I didn't really like Betts, but was interested to see what happened between her and Ian. The ending was underwhelming and very rushed. I'm glad this book was pretty short, since I was able to read it in a few short hours.

Um wow is all I can say. Um
I did not see the ending coming at all. There was several turns at the end that I just was not ready for nor did I expect them to happen. Overall it's a great book. I honestly enjoyed reading it and I could not put it down. It's a thriller and mystery and you wonder what is going to happen several times through out the book. I highly recommend reading this if you enjoy thriller and mystery books.

Lots of twists and turns keep you guessing throughout this book. You're never sure who the "good" or "bad" guy is in this story until the surprising end

The Widow of Weeping Pines is one bizarre read, centring on the protagonist Betty Lou Abbott, known to everyone as Betts.

Betts is a therapist and struggling writer with plenty of rather complex issues, which is evident from the first sentence, “Sometimes I wish my husband would die. Do you ever feel that?”.

Betts moved to the small coastal town of Weeping Willows from New York with her husband Jack, who decided after being a successful doctor he wanted to retire and move back to where he grew up. But Betts doesn’t like the small town, and the locals don’t much like her - hardly surprising when you start to get to know her! To keep herself busy and bide her time, she opens up her own therapist's office in her basement, albeit illegally.

Then Jack goes and has a heart attack and dies; Betts inherits a significant estate and becomes engaged to another man. She becomes obsessed with the thought that one of her patients, a famous writer, is having an affair with her fiance.

Enter into the mix the local detective, Stahl, who has plenty of demons to excise and an unhealthy obsession with Betts.

The short novel is told in the first person, mainly by Betts, and with a couple of chapters penned by Detective Nicholas Stahl.

The first chapter drew me in, the next couple of chapters were equally intriguing, it was unsettling but intriguing reading and made it quite clear that Betts was to be an unreliable narrator. But the book went downhill from there and fast; the ending was, well, simply ridiculous.

This is my first time reading McKinney; sorry to say, I doubt I’ll be choosing to read any more of their work. 2⭐️

Thank you, NetGalley and HH Tisevich, for the review copy in return for an honest review.

Fantastic quick read with compelling characters and plenty of twists. A lot of action packed into under 200 pages. I look forward to reading more by Amanda McKinney! Thanks to NetGalley and HH Tisevich.

This was so good! This is a compelling story and a very fast read. I loved all the twists and turns.
Recommended!

I definitely want to read more books by this author! This was fast paced, exciting, and twisty. Just how I like a thriller.

Betts, amazing character I loved and disliked at the same time. This was a very good thriller good enough to occupy the entire weekend.

Ohhh man, I finished this lovely little gem in one sitting. Set in the Forest of the Pacific Northwest, The Widow of Weeping Pines is an absolute page turner. The main cast is a (not) therapist, a detective with a grudge, a dead husband, an author with anger issues and a new dead-beat fiancé. Absolutely a must read if you like thrillers, and suspense.

The Widow of Weeping Pines is the complex tale of Betty Lou Abbott (Betts), a therapist and struggling writer. She may seem like she has it all: house, fiancé, and career, but with Betts, nothing is as it seems.
She thinks her fiancé Ian is up to no good and she’s becoming obsessed with one of her therapy clients, Carmen Marquis.

Betts lives in a historic mansion she inherited from her late husband, and the descriptive atmosphere was wonderfully immersive.

The Widow of Weeping Pines cautions us to withhold assumptions and question how well we can really know someone.

While I loved the twists and turns I felt like the ending was incomplete. It got where it was going without really explaining how it got there. Nonetheless, The Widow of Weeping Pines was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Thanks to NetGalley, HH Tisevich and Amanda McKinney for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Too many preposterous scenarios! Horrible characters, ridiculous plot, waste of time to read. In order to innumerate all the loose ends, would result in my retelling this nonsensical novel. So many good reads out there, skip this one for sure. Thank you NetGalley and HH Tisevich for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own. #NetGalley, #TheWidowOfWeepingPines