"Take Me Apart," Sara Sligar's first novel, was one of my favorite books of the year. It was so well written and kept me captivated until the very last page. I've been anxious for her next book and am so thankful to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book.

This book dives into the dark world of deepfakes and their effect on those targeted. An affluent political family becomes entangled in this dangerous web and suffers a tragic aftermath.

Sligar is a very talented writer but there were some shortfalls in this book. None of the characters were likable and there was too much focus on the tech side of the deepfakes. I am hopeful that her next book will return to the level of intrigue that I loved in "Tear Me Apart."

All I needed to know to pick up this book was that Sara Sligar wrote it (I'm a fan of her debut novel!), and once I'd picked it up I couldn't put it down. Moody and atmospheric, it's a family drama squarely within the rich-people-behaving-badly subgenre—a favorite of mine! It's also a page-turning thriller in which it's hard to pinpoint the true threat: Is it the family curse? Someone making deepfake videos? The family members themselves? D, all of the above? This kept me on my toes the whole time, and I loved it.

first of all, thank you to the publishers and netgalley for the arc!

this was sharp and well-written, and certainly something that will have me thinking for a while about the implications of our evolving technology - the stuff about deepfakes is creepy and fascinating, and beyond that, it was a pretty tightly done thriller. the characters felt fairly real and i did find myself wanting to know what was going to happen.

there's something that's keeping me from rating it at a 4, although i'm not sure what it is. the ending is fairly satisfying. maybe it's the pace? a lot happens in the last 5-10% of the book, which is pretty standard for thrillers, but idk. it's missing an element to get that extra star.

overall, though, like i said: well-written and sharp! definitely see the comparisons to succession and megan abbott's novels.

I liked certain parts of this a lot. I enjoyed the plot about the videos and the mystery behind them. I enjoyed Clara's character and her eating disorder back story. The story itself was slow moving and I had a hard time getting into it, besides those portions.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the free e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The Weiland family own the Vantage Point estate on a small island off the Maine coast. Rumor has it that there is a curse on the family. When Clara, her brother Teddy, and his wife Jess move into the mansion, bad things begin to happen. Is it the curse or the self-fulfilling prophecy of the "family curse"?

This is a modern-day gothic novel with all the nuances and atmosphere of a vintage tale set in our technological time. The writing is good, the story is entertaining, and the ending is satisfying.

3.5 stars rounded up.

Mystery with a scifi element that just felt both silly and/or unbelievable

The Wielands, an uber-wealthy WASP family who have a compound on an island off Maine, have a history of dying in unusual circumstances in the month of April, leading some to believe they are cursed. The current generation is Teddy, a successful businessman now running for the Senate, and his younger sister Clara who has suffered many mental health issues since she witnessed her parents drowning.

Just as Teddy’s campaign seems to be running smoothly, two videos appear that push it completely off track. Clara is featured in both of them and it sends her spinning further out of control, particularly when she then thinks she sees her parents being swept out to sea all over again.

Much of this is nicely built up and we see Clara’s spiraling deterioration over the years through both her eyes and those of Jess, her best friend, who is now married to Teddy. But the present day shenanigans, which start promisingly enigmatically, ultimately end up being ludicrous, not just in terms of what actually happens but also the very weak motive behind it. Similarly, Teddy, who has been a steady rock for both Clara and Jess for decades, suddenly, and unbelievably, becomes a completely different character in the space of a few days.

I was caught in a bit of a bind here. While Clara is having hallucinations, I wanted there to be a rational explanation for it but once I got it, I found it wholly unsatisfying and a little ridiculous. The author warns us that it’s not too far off reality (and I’ve seen Abba Voyage, so I know) but it just doesn’t seem feasible that even with the AI technology, as not really explained here, this would be do-able. So, not really recommended.

Thanks to MCD and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

This was an interesting thought experiment and devolved exactly as I expected. The author did well in depicting the sheer disbelief one would display if approached with this theory.

The characters felt very one dimensional. They read as caricatures and never made a decision that I didn’t see coming. The villain had no depth and I was very confused why he would admit anything to Clara - the author pinned it on ego, but I think it was just obvious plot progression at that point.

This was a story of tell, don’t show. Not my favorite but a worthwhile read.

This novel was just pretentious honestly. The ending was lackluster and seemed to end too quickly especially when there was a lot of build up. I was never satisfied at the end of any chapter nor was this ever “something good has happened to the character, albeit very small”. it was just straight tragedy after tragedy after tragedy and it ended in tragedy. like even with novels that are on a down ward slope, there are some good parts. can’t say the same about this one. i ended this novel feeling heavy and saddened and i don’t think that’s the novels’ intentions but here we are. also, it was so slow and redundant. so when the ending happened at such a fast pace, i got whiplash. i will say, i do like the authors writing and how she weaves in her prose but she would have been better writing a literary novel instead of a “gothic” thriller?

This book was very different, it read like a suspenseful read but I felt something was a little OFF. We meet Clara, the troubled sister, Teddy the responsible brother and his wife and Clara’s best friend Jess. Teddy is getting into politics, just has to be the due to full politician’s wife, and Clara is going through a lot. Not only if she living with the fact that she thinks her family is cursed, because something always happens some of their family members from years ago, it’s like there is a bad luck looming around this family. But Clara gets exposed, and this can really hurt the family legacy and what Ted has been working hard for.

There is a mention of “deepfakes” and holograms, and someone is out there to ruin this family. So we get two different POV’s, between Jess and Clara, and what led to this point, it is a page Turner, and you want to keep on because you want to find out what’s really going on. Unfortunately, the book was not for me, I felt like I was left with more questions than answers here, but the plot was amazing though, it was good enough that it kept me invested in the book, I just wish the ending was a little bit different.

5 stars

Thank you @netgalley and @fsgbooks for the ARC of @sarasligar's book "Vantage Point". I heard about this book because @janellebrownie mentioned it in her stories a month or so ago. And since I like her books, I thought I should check it out. I'm glad I had the opportunity to read the book and the timing was quite incredible. It's almost like a ripped from the headlines story line with the AI used against the characters. It definitely makes you think twice whether your experiences are real or if someone has manufactured them. I really enjoyed reading the story from the perspectives of the characters. It added to the story line to know what's happening from many angles.

Highly recommend!! Just a little more than 2 weeks from hitting store shelves.

#netgalley #VantagePoint

Vantage point is about the lives of extremely rich brother and sister Clara and Teddy and how their lives intertwine with a regular outsider Jess. This book will have you questioning if the videos are actually deepfakes or coverups to protect the rich and Teddy's campaign. The use of new technology, holograms and video editing made this book different than just a mysterious island/house novel. I would recommend to anyone who likes techno-thrillers!

3.75

I enjoyed this! It was a very quick read - the way Sara writes always had me continuing to read the next chapter. I never wanted to put it down!

Dual POVs are my favorite. We cycle between Clara and Jess, two best friends who are ignoring the fact they've grown apart lately. Jess is married to Clara's brother Teddy, and the 3 of them live at Vantage Point - owned by Clara & Teddy's very rich late parents. Some strange and spooky things start happening that make everyone question who to trust, who's going insane, or who's trying to ruin their lives. Not to mention a decades long family curse - I was never sure what might happen!

I wish we'd gotten a little bit more of the thriller-y stuff, but I had a good time with the family dynamics. The twist was interesting, one that I probably should have saw from the beginning but I'm never good at sussing those things out - which makes for a more fun experience when I do get to the reveal! This is definitely less of a thriller and more of a mystery/family drama.

Thank you Netgalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This publishes 1/14/25!

TW: eating disorder

Clara can’t remember when she learned about the family curse. There was no pomp and circumstance, nobody came out and said, Clara everyone thinks your family is irrevocably doomed.

Clara and her brother Teddy grew up on a small island in Maine in the shadow of their parents’ tragic deaths. Years later, with Teddy married to Clara’s best friend, Jess, and both believing they have put their turbulent past to rest, things start to fall apart in spectacular fashion.

An intimate video of Clara has leaked online, and the most frightening part, she can’t recall any of it. And that’s just the beginning. As things start to pile on for all of them, the reader will be pulled alongside as they frantically try to navigate a path they could never have seen coming.

The challenges of the internet age are front and center in this story. People feeling free to instruct you, to criticize you, to batter you with vicious commentary they would never have the guts to say out loud, and definitely not in person. The author has sounded an alarm on how thin, and insidious, the line between synthetic and real has become.

The End: our author chooses to play one last cat and mouse game with us. We have finished a book where we believed one person was the narrator. But what proof do we have?

Sarah Sligar’s debut Take Me Apart was a taut psychological thriller that made a few award short lists and best of lists in 2020. Just as that book was hard to pigeonhole genre-wise so too her new book Vantage Point – with elements of gothic, thriller and lifestyles of the ultra-wealthy. Although, in the end, Vantage Point if anything is a more down the line psychological thriller. While the subject matter is very different, Vantage Point shares many of the same underlying themes as he debut.
Clara Wieland has taken over running the family grants program to allow her older brother Teddy to run for the Senate. The two surviving Wielands are the descendants of an obscenely wealthy family who own the grand house and land on an island off the coast of Maine. They are surviving in the sense that many of their ancestors died in strange ways, including their parents, always during the month of April. So much so that there is a rumour of a Wieland family curse (elucidated through Wikipedia entries scattered through the novel). As April starts, a sex tape of Clara is released to the internet, putting a spoke in Teddy’s campaign. Clara had a checkered adulthood and so is too embarrassed to reveal that she remembers nothing of the events depicted in the video. But then another video emerges and Clara begins to suspect that they a part of a deepfake campaign. Meanwhile Jess, her childhood best friend and now Teddy’s wife, is trying to keep her marriage together under the pressure of a political campaign.
There is alot going on in Vantage Point but Sligar manages to keep it all together. Central to that is the characters of Clara and Jess, not only their current circumstances but glimpses of their childhood friendship. But there is a particular leap of faith needed from readers that pushes this novel from psychological thriller into technothriller territory (if they need to define it by subgenre) as the plot reveals itself.
But actually, the plot, while pacey and page-turning, exists for another purpose. And that is Sligar’s continuing exploration of the way in which women are treated in society and the different standards expected of them. She does this in many ways, from the different reactions to the various fake videos, to the way in which Jess sublimates herself into her marriage, to the banality of the ultimate reveals (which seem to be deliberately anticlimactic), to the consequences of those. But she is also interested here in concepts of class and perception. Jess is seen by the community as marrying up, essentially marrying for the money. So that different rules apply to her than to those who are born into that life, this is made clear not only by the townspeople but by Teddy’s campaign staff and ultimately by Teddy himself.
Vantage Point is another great novel from Sligar. Driven by two extremely flawed and fascinating characters involved in a well-constructed mystery. A little bit of suspension of disbelief is needed to make this work. While deepfake technology is possibly more insidious than portrayed in the book, there are some other technologies employed that may be leaning more towards the day-after-tomorrow. But, as already mentioned, this is all in service of much larger themes and help Sligar to land her punches.

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
Clara and Teddy Wieland have grow up in the public’s eye with a last name like theirs how can you not.For the Wieland name comes with a curse,one that claims its victims lives in unexpected and bizarre ways.While pragmatic older brother Teddy is a firm skeptic Clara is not so sure,especially when she suddenly begins seeing ghosts of her past and strange shadows lurking in the forest surrounding her Maine island home. Clara knows the only person who will believe her is her best friend Jess, but ever since she’s married her brother Teddy things have been different between the trio.With the public’s eye once again heavily fixed on the Wieland family is it truly a curse or something or someone more sinister plotting against the family unit.

I went into this book thinking I was getting a twisty gothic suspense thriller filled with long held family curses.What I ended up with was a dual POV, flashback filled technology and dysfunctional family focused deepfake drama.And while this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing it just wasn’t what I was expecting.I will say there is in fact an absurd amount of quite questionable and strange deaths that transpire in Clara and Teddy’s family history, however the majority of this book is spent seeing these two characters along with our other narrator Jess and their dynamics and history among one another.Add in the amount of baggage/trauma both narrators Jess and Clara had and I began feeling like I was reading a tragedy with sprinklings of modern tech gone wrong rather than a true thriller.I will say the premise was initially interesting and the setting of the small Maine town had me intrigued but ultimately I found this one just falling flat. Overall the stakes just did not seem believable or high enough and then the ending just really went off the rails for me.The book wasn’t objectively bad or not interesting it just was not at all what I was expecting.

Vantage Point comes out Jan.14th,2025. Thank you Netgalley and MCD for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The most intense read of the year! I was a little skeptical about the premise but was pleasantly surprised by the execution! Absolutely loved the writing style and I can't wait to read her next book!

This is a tale of two books. One has a fascinating premise and stretches of twisty activity that keeps you turning the pages. The other has a completely incredulous resolution that makes you want to toss the book across the room. That is VANTAGE POINT.

The idea of using deep fakes and artificial intelligence to ruin someone’s life is terrifying. The parts of the book dealing with the fallout from leaked salacious videos held my interest. The family drama was gripping - watching the spiraling and ultimate downfall of a particular character was extremely gratifying. Unfortunately, the amateur sleuthing was completely out of left field and felt inconsistent with the rest of the story.

I liked a lot more than I didn’t, but my overall reading experience was disappointing because of the unrealized potential. I would be interested in reading more from this author.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advance copy in exchange for my unbiased review.

Vantage Point was a wild ride. I enjoyed the setting the author described and the characters were quirky. More than anything, I appreciated that the plot wasn’t a run-of-the-mill, which kept me on my toes.

I think there's something wrong with me. I am having a tough time enjoying any sort of thriller these days. I don't know if my month of Halloween reads caused it or if I'm just tired of the genre in general. While this one had an intriguing premise and promised to be reminiscent of HBO's "Succession," I was left disappointed when all was said and done.

Set against the backdrop of the cursed Wieland family, the novel delves into the lives of Clara, her brother Teddy, and her best friend and Teddy's wife, Jess as they navigate the haunting legacy of their parents' deaths and the pressures of modern public life.

Teddy is running for a Senate seat (or maybe it was Congress - I forget), so he and Jess are on the campaign trail. Things look promising for Teddy's chances, so he steps down as head of the family's corporation and appoints his younger sister, Clara, as head. When a video surfaces of a drugged-out Clara having sex with an unknown man, it brings Clara's former addiction struggles to light and reignites the Wieland family curse. The video is only the beginning of the family's problems. As Clara falls deeper into paranoia, she begins having visions of her dead parents, and Teddy's poll numbers begin to tank. When more questionable videos appear, the family drama intensifies. April has always been a dangerous month for the family, and it looks like this year will be no different. The question is - which one of them will die?

On the one hand, the premise was really intriguing. I love stories about rich people behaving badly; this one has it in spades. One thing that worked well for the book was the dual narrative structure, alternating between Clara's and Jess's perspectives. Clara, with her chaotic and unreliable narration, is the novel's most compelling character. Her erratic behavior and fractured sense of reality make her fascinating to follow, even if she's not entirely likable.

Jess, on the other hand, serves as a counterbalance—calmer, more grounded, and ultimately more relatable. The dynamic between the two women, particularly given their shared history and complicated ties to Teddy, is one of the novel's strengths. Their relationship is layered, shifting between loyalty, resentment, and unspoken tension, providing much of the emotional weight.

Another thing that worked really well (and was probably my favorite part of the novel) was the Wikipedia-style articles that closed each chapter. These entries chronicled the deaths of various members of the Wieland family, reinforcing the idea of the family's supposed curse.

One of the biggest drawbacks of this book was its lack of surprises. From the outset, the story lays its cards on the table and pretty much spells out that we are focusing on AI and deepfake videos. Yes, these things are prevalent today, but I'm kind of tired of these plot points. It could also have something to do with the fact that I don't really care for technothrillers, which this book definitely is. By the time the final revelations come, they feel more like confirmations of what readers have long suspected rather than shocking twists.

Teddy, Clara's brother and Jess's husband, is another weak point in the story. As a character, he feels like a collection of clichés. His presence in the narrative is less engaging compared to Clara and Jess, making him feel more like a plot device than a fully realized person.

I was also disappointed that the book is marketed as being similar to "Succession" (a show I love), but I failed to find any real comparisons between this book and the TV show besides the story focusing on a wealthy family of broken characters.

Overall, this book was pretty underwhelming. The story, while competently written, lacks the edge and unpredictability that might have made it memorable. It's worth a read for fans of unreliable narrators and intricate relationships or those who are into technothrillers, but it may leave others feeling unsatisfied. I know I certainly was.

3.5⭐️

This book sounded so good as someone who loved succession and this was sold with similar vibes and it was an enjoyable read but I didn’t find it as gripping as I would have liked.

The story follows Clara who is a member of the Weiland family; an extremely wealthy family in Maine and Jess, Clara’s friend and Clara’s brothers wife who married into this family. The family is rumoured to have a curse in April and Clara seems to be the latest target. She has struggled with mental illness and starts seeing things which others refuse to believe.

I found the mystery aspect of this book slightly lacking and would have preferred more of this rather than general family dynamics but overall it was entertaining to read.