I wasn't able to complete this book....at about 34% through, the set up changed and there appeared to be two unrelated pages on each page. It made no sense and the type was very small....sorry.

I hate to say this but I did not like this book at all. I couldn't even finish it. Dark, depressing. confusing and just wierd. The changing of the font, text and format of the pages was very annoying as well. This book sounded so interesting, but it was a total let down for me.

Disturbing and depressing is the most apt desciption for Ill Will. Not a single character takes responsibility for their actions, and those actions are horrific.

The book is a great advertisement for really being present in your childres' lives. It is not for the faint of heart..

For me, it didn't ultimately live up to the promise of the earlier parts. One of the final surprises, which was apparently meant to be shocking, was telegraphed long before it occurred. Thanks anyway, but it just didn't do it for me.

When Dustin Tillman was a young boy, his parents and aunt and uncle were brutally murdered, and Dustin and his cousins were the first to discover the bodies. His adopted brother Rusty was charged in the murders, in large part due to Dustin's testimony. Flash forward to Dustin in his forties. He's a well-respected therapist with a happy marriage and two sons. He finds out that Rusty has been exonerated and has been released from prison. At the same time, one of his clients, an ex-cop, draws him into an amateur investigation into some drownings of local college boys that he believes are murders.

What Chaon does well is peel back layers slowly that reveal things we never could have guessed about the characters. He's clearly good at building and maintaining suspense. However, we've got several different mysteries here, along with a lot of other plot elements. After awhile, the stories and characters get a bit muddled. It's almost like this should have been two different books. Still, the stories flow along pretty well until we get to the ending, where they all crash into each other in a big, unbelievable, letdown of a mess. This book is the definition of anticlimactic, and it's a shame, because it had a very promising start.

A father with a past he's never shared with his sons. Sons who see but are told, "That's dad." Relatives they can relate to, and relatives that don't relate. Yes, this is a crime novel, with a bit of horror and mystery thrown in. But it's also a story of family secrets and a family ignoring what is right in front of them. And, it's a story that experiments with multiple points of view, which, while the technique could serve to simply inform the reader of what really happened, instead serves to complicate matters even more. An extremely interesting read, but you may find, as I did, that it doesn't quite all come together.

Dark and suspenseful and completely unpredictable. Plan on reading it straight through! I will be adding this one to the list of suggestions for Gillian Flynn fans.

It truly was a thriller. Frustrating that things don't have a clean finish.

ILL WILL by Dan Chaon is eerie and unsettling and bleak. Chilling and teaming with IL WILL while at times confusing the book is a strangely compelling psychological thriller. .

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

I have mixed feelings after reading this book. The various points of view used throughout the novel got confusing at times. The storyline- what was real, what was imagined- added to the confusion. The ending... no spoilers... I simply didn't get it- and felt like it had no true ending.

I enjoyed this book in part because there were two mysteries to figure out. One took place years ago: Dustin, who is now a married psychologist with two teenage sons, was just a kid when his parents and aunt and uncle were murdered. His adopted brother, Rusty, was convicted. One of his cousins—a twin named Wave—found the bodies. Her sister, Kate was there, too.

Rusty was a messed-up kid then, and Kate and Wave, who were much closer to Rusty’s age than Dustin’s, were pretty reckless, too. When Dustin learns that Rusty has been exonerated and is out of prison, he doesn’t want to tell his wife, who is dying of cancer. If Rusty didn’t kill his parents, who did?

At the same time all of this is going on, Dustin has a patient who is a former cop obsessed with all the drowning deaths of college-age boys in the area. In every case, the drownings are ruled accidental—the boys were all drinking heavily, so their deaths are all blamed on them falling into these various bodies of water. But the cop, Aqil, has a different theory, and he gets Dustin involved.

The narrative bounces around from past to present, from one character’s point of view to another. There is a lot of stuff about satanic ritual and lost and recovered memory. Dustin himself doesn’t trust his memory of the past, and he seems to go into fugue states now that he is an adult, which all makes for an intriguing and suspenseful read.

I read- and really liked- Dan Chaon’s novel, Await Your Reply so I was excited to get my hands on his latest which promises to be an equally compelling page turner. It’s called Ill Will, which I think is a catchy title for a suspenseful novel.

Here is the synopsis:

A psychologist in suburban Cleveland, Dustin is drifting through his forties when he hears the news: His adopted brother, Rusty, is being released from prison. Thirty years ago, Rusty received a life sentence for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle. The trial came to symbolize the 1980s hysteria over Satanic cults; despite the lack of physical evidence, the jury believed the outlandish accusations Dustin and his cousin made against Rusty. Now, after DNA analysis has overturned the conviction, Dustin braces for a reckoning.

Meanwhile, one of Dustin’s patients gets him deeply engaged in a string of drowning deaths involving drunk college boys. At first Dustin dismisses talk of a serial killer as paranoid thinking, but as he gets wrapped up in their amateur investigation, Dustin starts to believe that there’s more to the deaths than coincidence. Soon he becomes obsessed, crossing all professional boundaries—and putting his own family in harm’s way.

This book sounds like something I want to crawl up with and read over a long rainy weekend!

Wow! A surprise even though I read the book description before reading... an amazingly complex and breathtaking read! I will be getting more of this authors work!!!

I'm not sure why I accepted this book. It's not what I normally read. Too much language, too many F bombs for me.

A thriller built around Satanic Ritual Abuse, drowning bros, and an aloof psychologist (with a staggeringly traumatic past) and his dysfunctional family, Ill Will created a consistent and deep sense of anxiety in me while I read but I couldn't put it down. If that is not the mark of a successful thriller I do not know what is. Shifting perspectives throughout, Chaon's prose is at its sharpest when dealing with his most morally dubious characters. Dennis, the psychologist and for all intents and purposes the main character, is expertly crafted as dreamy with Chaon often letting his thoughts peter out midstream (a technique that might grate on some readers). His drug addicted son Aaron and adopted brother Rusty are equally compelling. The novel loses focus on some of the chapters devoted to more fringe characters that don't seem to coalesce with the larger narrative, but thankfully the missteps are simply a minor blemish to an entirely captivating read.

Ok, this is a difficult one for me.

I can see where this book would definitely be really good to some, just not me. I couldn't connect with any of the characters and the plot was odd and clunky for me. I stuck with it till the end, but ultimately got no satisfaction from it.
I love dark reads and I don't mind ambiguity, but this one just felt...meh? Maybe? It just wasn't a good fit for me.

I enjoyed this psychological thriller that follows two mysteries: a quadruple homocide in the past and a drowning in the present. Fans of Chaon's earlier work will find the tone and storytelling familiar. Quick pacing and good build up of tension. I was a left a little unsatisfied by the ending, which lowered my overall opinion slightly. A solid stand-alone read for readers of the mystery/thriller genre.

The premise of the story was interesting. However, it was all over the place timewise. It was a cacophony of flashbacks and pov changes which made it very tedious to read.