I fell down the rabbit hole myself with this one. Rabbit Hole is exactly that-a very fast fall down into an obsession only to desperately try to seek answers! Kate Brody weaves a story about an unhinged, self-destructive main female character, Teddy, who becomes obsessed with her sister's murder that went completely cold and why her dad/uncle killed himself all the while making friends with a stranger that inserted herself into Teddy's life that is unstable herself. Rabbit Hole is a great read all around!

I had trouble with this book. It was too slow burn, dark, and basically about a disturbed woman making horrible decisions. I can’t deal with the animal part. I was just not a fan of this one, unfortunately.

Wow I absolutely loved this book! It had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. At times, I caught myself holding my breath! Definitely highly recommend this!

This book was slightly different from what I was expecting. I expected a literary thriller along the lines of Notes of an Execution but instead it was more an unhinged main character story with a side of mystery. I personally was more interested in the mystery than the self destructive behaviour of Teddy Angstrom.

I didn't like a lot of the decisions Teddy made, I didn't like her unhealthy relationship with Micky or Bill and I didn't like the relationship between her and her mother. Whilst I enjoyed the plot at first, focusing on the disappearance of Teddy's sister Angie, her Dad's struggles and the Reddit rabbit hole she found herself drawn into, the second half seemed to focus less on that and more on Teddy's spiral into depression.

It's difficult to read about such self destructive behaviour and I found the book quite frustrating at times and became tired of all the decisions Teddy was making. It was quite draining to read. The ending I felt was just a bit ridiculous.

From now on, if a book is described as being about an unhinged main character, obsession and grief I'll probably give it a miss.

Read this if you enjoyed I'm a Fan, Motherthing or Death of A Bookseller

Have you seen bookstagram go up in arms this week?

That's because they are all buzzing on what I promise will be the next bestseller...

Rabbit Hole

Although the content at times can have you cringing, the way the story comes together for an explosive ending will have it all making sense.

I have seen a few people mention the trigger warnings, and although I say I can't stomach animal cruelty I was happy to have been provided the warning and I skipped around those parts without getting lost. (I still wish they weren't included but also understand it assists with character development)

This is a mind bending, slow burn, psychological thriller that digs deep into female friendship and will have you doubting everything you once thought you knew. Don't believe me? See for yourself..

check out this teaser :

Ten years ago, Theodora “Teddy” Angstrom’s older sister, Angie, went missing. Her case remains unsolved. Now Teddy’s father, Mark, has killed himself. Unbeknownst to Mark’s family, he had been active in a Reddit community fixated on Angie, and Teddy can’t help but fall down the same rabbit hole.

Teddy’s investigation quickly gets her in hot water with her gun-nut boyfriend, her long-lost half brother, and her colleagues at the prestigious high school where she teaches English. Further complicating matters is Teddy’s growing obsession with Mickey, a charming amateur sleuth who is eerily keen on helping her solve the case.

Bewitched by Mickey, Teddy begins to lose her moral compass. As she struggles to reconcile new information with old memories, her erratic behavior reaches a fever pitch, but she won’t stop until she finds Angie—or destroys herself in the process.

Rabbit Hole is an outrageous and heart-wrenching character study of a mind twisted by grief, a biting critique of the internet’s voyeurism, and an intriguing exploration of the blurry lines of female friendship.

The perfect edge of your seat, can’t stop turning page of a psychological thriller. Haven’t had a book like this in awhile. Will definitely recommend to my audience.

Rabbit Hole will have you wading through a miasma of raw thoughts and feelings. A well crafted debut.

Full Murder in Common review available here: https://murderincommon.com/2024/01/07/kate-brody-rabbit-hole/

💻BOOK REVIEW💻

Rabbit Hole - Kate Brody

Thank you @recordedbooks for my ALC and @soho_press for my printed copy!

“Conspiracy theories from Reddit seduce a disaster-prone woman into an obsession with solving her older sister’s cold-case disappearance

Ten years ago, Theodora “Teddy” Angstrom’s older sister, Angie, went missing. Her case remains unsolved. Now Teddy’s father, Mark, has killed himself. Unbeknownst to Mark’s family, he had been active in a Reddit community fixated on Angie, and Teddy can’t help but fall down the same rabbit hole.

Teddy’s investigation quickly gets her in hot water with her gun-nut boyfriend, her long-lost half brother, and her colleagues at the prestigious high school where she teaches English. Further complicating matters is Teddy’s growing obsession with Mickey, a charming amateur sleuth who is eerily keen on helping her solve the case.

Bewitched by Mickey, Teddy begins to lose her moral compass. As she struggles to reconcile new information with old memories, her erratic behavior reaches a fever pitch, but she won’t stop until she finds Angie—or destroys herself in the process.

A biting critique of the internet’s voyeurism, Rabbit Hole is an outrageous and heart-wrenching character study of a mind twisted by grief—and a page-turning mystery that’s as addictive as a late-night Reddit binge.”

I am so torn on this one. I LOVED the writing style and immediately was drawn into the story. I loved the character driven story and the Reddit/true crime aspect. I found the relationship between Teddy and Mickey very odd and slightly predatory. The ending was so unsatisfying and unresolved though! Which I guess is the honest hard reality of some missing persons cases.

Also CW: there was a graphic unnecessary death of a pet that almost made me stop reading.

Recommend if you like:
- True crime rabbit holes
- Character driven stories
- Unsolved mysteries
- Unreliable narrators
- Exploring grief/unanswered questions

I just finished The Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody and here are my thoughts.

Teddy has had a lot of tragedy in her life and when he father, Mark, kills himself, she finds that, 10 years on, he was still trying to figure out what happened to her sister Angie. Falling down the same rabbit hole he did.

Her investigation leads her to Mickey, someone her dad was talking to. She tries reaching out to her brother but is shunned and threatened. Mickey has skills that help Teddy dig into the who, what, where and why from the night her sister disappeared for good.

Drinking too much and sleeping too little, Teddy has trouble keeping fact from fiction while processing her grief in a way that could put her in danger.

It was a weird book. It really wasn’t what I was expecting at all. It is a lot of reddit threads and Teddy trying to piece together clues and she is following all kinds of things she is seeing online. She is the very best in unreliable narrators and that made it more interesting. The whole story surrounding her sister's disappearance was pretty interesting but the book wasn’t very fast paced and it did drag in places.

I didn’t much care for the reddit threads and there were a lot of them. I don’t use reddit because it irritates me so this really wasn’t an enjoyable format for me. It was very dark and you could feel the grief coming off the page and I am glad we discovered what happened. It felt nice to have the closure.

I’m still not 100% sure I loved it but it was definitely an entertaining read.

4 stars thank you to netgalley for my gifted copy.

#rabbithole #katebrody #darkread #bookreview #bookinfluencer #bookstagram #booknerdigans #readersunite #netgalley #ebook #kindle #mondayblues

We’ve all been down the rabbit hole of the internet. In this case, Teddy ends up on Reddit reading old threads about her sister’s death. Taking some internet trolls a bit too seriously, she restarts the hunt for answers into what really happened to her sister years ago. She meets Mickey though Reddit and begins spending a lot of time with this young girl who is also obsessed with her sister’s death. As with anytime you go digging up the past, some truths are discovered that Teddy may not have really want to know.

This book ended up being a low rating for me due to being marketed as a thriller, which it was NOT. It was more of a study in grief and how people deal with losses. It was actually quite a sad story. There was also some difficult subject matter involving animal death that I was not wholly prepared for and it made me incredibly uncomfortable. Overall, the book was well written, but it was so far from what I expected it to be that it did not meet my expectations. The ending also left me wanting something more.

Thank you to #netgalley and Soho Press for an ARC of #rabbithole in return for my honest review.

This mystery/thriller has a lot going on. Several threads of ideas are weaved in here, but ultimately, I just didn’t get into this one and did not finish.

KATE BRODY’s debut, RABBIT HOLE, is the next powerhouse book that started my 2024 reading year.

The premise of this story absolutely intrigued me - a missing sister, a study in grief and an obsessive deep dive into the true crime world of Reddit threads and chat boards. And while I expected darkness I was not wholly prepared for what a devastating and difficult, yet impactful book I had in my hands.

Ten years ago Teddy’s older sister, Angie, snuck out to a party and then vanished. Dismissed by the police as a runway, Angie’s disappearance slowly destroyed their family. And on the 10 year anniversary, Teddy’s father drives his car off a bridge, leaving Teddy and her mom to once again pick up the pieces.

Sorting through her father’s things, Teddy starts to learn his secrets, including the fact that he’s spent the past ten years investigating Angie’s disappearance — tracking down leads, looking for witnesses and spending time on the dark web. Teddy decides to pick up where her father left off and finds herself chasing the same threads and fixated on figuring out what happened to Angie.

When Teddy meets an amateur sleuth online, who is equally obsessed with Angie’s case, the two form a bond that may be the thing to save Teddy — or to destroy her.

This book is a dark descent into grief, obsession and a desperation for answers. KATE BRODY doesn’t shy away from exploring some disturbing subject matter, though it’s done in a way that so expertly suits her characters and their stories. It can be difficult at times to watch Teddy try to navigate her pain, to see the strain and hurt between her and her mother and to hope that Teddy will find the answers she needs.

This book is somber and there’s a loneliness to Teddy as she navigates her losses, seemingly in a haze that gets murkier as we go. From self-destructive choices born out a desire for the truth, we bear witness to Teddy’s descent down the proverbial rabbit hole.

The book is intense, but KATE BRODY’s writing is so evocative and puts us squarely in Teddy’s head forcing us to experience even emotion alongside her. This is a very character driven story, with an emotional punch. It lured me in and I have no doubt will stay with me for a long time to come.

Teddy’s sister, Angie, has been missing for a decade. Now her father has killed himself. These two events lead Teddy to Reddit, down a rabbit hole (hence the title) of conspiracy theories, harsh commentary, and someone who seems to know more than they’re willing to tell. Characters surround Teddy, from her new much older boyfriend, to her mother who is holding on to Angie’s aged dog, to Mickey, a nineteen year old who is more than eager to help Teddy.

This book is dark and twisted from the start. There is essentially no light. Even the dog is dying. I struggled to get through this for that reason, but kept going because the book is definitely well written. There are a ton of trigger warnings needed, and I’m hard pressed to think who I would recommend this book to because it is so dark.

When this book starts, main character Teddy's father has driven his car off a bridge - on the ten year anniversary of when her older sister Angie, who was 18 at the time, disappeared without a trace. Teddy's dad was obsessed with investigating it, and after his death, Teddy finds herself suddenly picking up his work - which leads her down the rabbit hole of the title trying to figure out what happened.

This was a really good one - not just a good mystery but a good character story tackling themes of grief and self-destructive behavior. I got totally sucked into it and went a bit down the rabbit hole of this book myself, reading the whole thing within 24 hours. I feel like this book was the weird love child of a Megan Miranda book and a Gillian Flynn book, and I was here for it.

I don't know exactly what I expected as I'm new to this author but it was nothing that I expected going in. A slow-burning mystery full of emotion, deep-rooted family trauma and history with a true-crime thriller edge. It's highly character-driver with intense narration and a lot of thought-led monologuing to create something very absorbing.

This book was not quite what I expected. It was much more of a family drama than a thriller, even though it had the "true crime" angle. The mystery took second stage to the unreliable narrator and their obsession with the older sister's disappearance and father's suicide. It had a lot more to do with dealing with grief and what that can do to a family than finding out what actually happened to the sister. Still, I was interested in the characters and their fates so it was bad a not read at all, however, I would recommend it to fans of family drama more than mystery. Thank you to Netgalley and Soho Crime for an ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

What an unexpected thrill ride! Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody is a well-written, completely addictive read. Maybe it’s because I am also prone to falling into internet rabbit holes, but this book hooked me immediately and wouldn’t let me go.

Teddy Angstrom has just lost her father to suicide and is living at home to help her mother cope when she discovers that her dad had been working on solving her long lost sister’s missing persons case. She gets sucked into the Reddit shaped-hole he’s left behind and in the process befriends Mickey, a younger female amateur sleuth.

From there her life falls into disarray as she takes a scary-believable hard right into the morally-grey fog and totally loses her grip. Her friendship with Mickey turns obsessively toxic and the things she’s willing to do to unravel the mystery surrounding her family veers into something dark and dangerous.

This is such a great debut, full of darkness, lots of twists and turns, and a relatably messy train-wreck of a main character I couldn’t help but find insatiably entertaining.

Looking forward to reading whatever else she comes up with!

Thanks to @soho_press for the gifted copy.

This is a difficult review to write.
 
Partly because I loved it and partly because it bothered me.
 
This is a well-intentioned, beautiful written novel about mental illness and a life derailed by internet conspiracy theories. It deals with complex female and familial relationships in the aftermath of a family tragedy.  
 
I have to note that on the outset, this not a psychological thriller, but rather a slow burn mystery and character study on grief.
 
Teddi Angstrom, 26 is a teacher at an exclusive prep school in Maine. Ten years earlier, her sister disappeared, never to be seen again. On the tenth anniversary of her sister’s disappearance, Teddies father commits suicide. Left to pick up the pieces and deal with another loss in the family are Teddi and her mom.
 
During the clean-up of her father’s belongs, Teddi comes across his private investigation into her sister’s disappearance. There is an online forum via Reddit he was heavily involved in. Through this discovery, Teddi quickly becomes entangled with the group and all their theories (some quite outlandish). It doesn’t take long for her to be swept up in the true crime community and allow her personal life to spiral out of control as she becomes obsessive about solving what happened to her sister.
 
I don’t need characters to be likeable, but in all honesty Teddi and her mom were both incredibly “out there”. Not unlikable per se, but very full on through their actions and thought processes. There was also a running narrative about the family dog that just didn’t sit well with me. (That’s probably a me thing after just losing one of my fur babies!)
 
Overall, it’s a clever and darkly compelling read that tugs at your emotional heartstrings. While I don’t think it will be for everyone, I highly recommend it for those that enjoy character driven - heavy inner monologue, dark mysteries.

Many thanks @sohopress @netgalley #rbmedia for advanced reading e-arc and ALC.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with this ARC to review.

Ten years after her sister’s disappearance, Teddy’s father takes his own life. As she sets to work tying up his loose ends left behind, Teddy learns he was actively perusing Reddit to find out what happened to Angie and engaging with people who may have answers to her outstanding questions. As Teddy picks up where he left off, she finds herself tumbling down a rabbit hole. Will she be able to find the answers her father could not?

This book has an intriguing premise, but it falls flat in execution. The result is a complicated plot without any real resolution. It sounds like a mystery/thriller in theory, but this is an incorrect way to market the book. More of a family drama, fans of mysteries and thrillers are likely to be disappointed in this read.

Additionally, the book is not an easy read. There are several challenging and disturbing sections (the way the family dog is treated throughout the book is extremely upsetting; some of the sex scenes are not going to be easy for some) and Teddy is perhaps one of the least likable main characters I have ever read in a book. It is not simply that she is flawed or challenging; she is one of the few book characters I’ve continuously called an idiot while reading. Selfish and fancying herself as more intelligent than she is, it was hard to care what happened to her halfway through. With an ending that is less than satisfying, the fact I pushed through the book is even more frustrating.

As a dark drama, this book will have an audience. As a mystery/thriller, I would have a hard time giving my recommendation.

This book is the perfect example of what can happen when someone becomes completely obsessed. In this case, Teddy has made a life for herself. A good job, a boyfriend she loves. She hasn't let her sister's disappearance ten years ago affect her life - until her father unexpectedly commits suicide. As she sorts through his things, she finds information that lets her know she was still looking into Angie's sudden disappearance. Following the clues, Teddy gets mixed up in the lives of people she never knew, following a trail of crumbs down a rabbit hole to her own destruction.

Rebecca Quinn Robertson narrates this story beautifully. Her voice is perfect for this deep dive into true crime and how depression and other circumstances can alter someone's life forever. Although the content is dark, I easily finished this one in a day with the audio.

If you're a fan of true crime and amateur sleuths with dark themes, this book is definitely for you!

I received an advanced digital and audio copy. All thoughts are my own.