In Dan Chaon's  disturbing Ill Will (Ballantine, digital galley), horrific crimes -- the possibly ritual slaughter of a family and a series of drownings of young men -- are separated by years but linked in the life of a middle-aged therapist. His wife dies of cancer and his younger son slips into heroin addiction after the death of a high school buddy. At the same time, his older brother, wrongly imprisoned for the long-ago murder, is freed, and one of his patients, an ex-cop, becomes obsessed by a phantom serial killer. So many bad things happen in Chaon's beautifully written story that I thought at one point, "No one is getting out of here alive.''  Here's horror.

from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

I struggled through this book.  The storyline had promise, but I didn’t enjoy the writing.  At times it seemed to just ramble, other times it was confusing, and there were a few times I was just frustrated with it – especially with the dialog.  This was quite a surprise to me because I had heard good things about this author so was excited to finally read one of his books. 

This novel is centered on a family massacre in the past as well as a series of murders in the present day.  There are various potential scenarios regarding the past murders that I don’t feel are ever fully proven but then you are provided with an answer to the present day murders, and truly it wasn’t a surprise.  I feel like the book just didn’t live up to its potential regarding the story itself.  It was a good idea, but lacked the writing to make it work well and the ending just left too many questions unanswered.  

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House for an advanced copy of the book in return for an honest review.  I’m sure it’s not what you wanted to hear, but the agreement is for me to be honest so I’ve had to do just that

DNF - 21%

Slow, rambling and gratuitous. I feel like I'm wasting my time reading any farther.

Ill Will was as infectious as it was creepy.  This twisted story gave me the chills but I simply couldn't put it down.  Well done, Dan Chaon!

This is a hard review to write. The book grabbed my interest from the beginning but... I had a time loving it. There were good suspense filled parts, really strange parts, and downright irritating parts. Various characters did different chapters which I always enjoy. Sometimes a comment from the main character would just drift off into white space without an ending because he was know to not finish his thoughts. Worst were the pages where there were three columns to read. It was very difficult to read on a kindle since you could not enlarge the print to see it.

It involves two mysteries thirty years apart which was very interesting. A man who spent all of those in prison for a crime didn't commit. I liked that concept of trying to solving both mysteries. The author had me going back and forth trying to figure it all out and my mind was changed numerous times.

I honestly didn't get very attached to any of the characters. And while I don't expect an "happily ever after" in a good thriller, however, I do like an ending that ties up the storyline. This is my first book by this author and maybe this is his style. I just thought the ending was abrupt and left me wondering.

* I received an ARC from the publisher and NetGalley. My review is voluntary.

I have mixed feelings about this book. It is a deliciously dark and psychological story but the author's writing goes into these rambling moments with weird punctuation and INCOMPLETE SENTENCES, making me something think, Am I missing a page? This thought occurred quite often but I still enjoyed the twisty, weird plot and creepy characters.

Oh but this was a struggle to review. How do I rate a book that on one hand, I can't imagine specifically recommending, and I can't look back on as having enjoyed it, yet at the same time, I simply could not put it down or stop reading. I mean, this was a one sitting read for me because during the process, I was so completely engrossed.

The back and forth between characters and timelines kept me hopping on my toes trying to keep up with who and where we were. Sometimes the formatting blurred between creative and just plain annoying. Often I had to skip back and refresh myself on who was who or when. Yet, again, I couldn't seem to look away.

The deception and false reality was a unique method of delivering a heartbreaking story. So much happening to children, and young adults, so much hate and frustration in the world. A chain reaction of bad timing, poor choices, unfortunate coincidences all culminating in more heartbreak than seems fair. Wondering who was the bad guy, who was actually good, and did they deserve what happened?

At the end of it all, I was left with a sense of - Oh, ok - not a pleased sense, or even a displeased feeling. I read it, I enjoyed the process, and now it's over. I don't know that I'll go out of my way to read more by this author, but I won't avoid them either. It was a solid 3 stars for me, and that is just as it sounds, good enough. ~ George, 3 stars

The book consists of eleven "Parts", rather than chapters. Each part alters between characters and POV. One part is first-person Dustin, another is third-person his cousin, then first-person his son, then.... you get the idea. I've read countless books told from different view points and alternating characters or timeline, and I've enjoyed them, but Ill Will was too disorganized to pull this off. Maybe a contributor to the messy organization was the formatting.
WARNING: Don't read this on Kindle if you don't have to. There are instances in the book where the script suddenly goes into three columns, and the columns can't be read left to right, but up and down, so you're going forward, then back a few pages, then forward again... It also froze my kindle and I had to restart it three times while reading that format.

I was really excited to read Ill Will. The blurb sets the story up around Dustin, a psychologist whose parents were killed when he was a child by (allegedly) his adopted brother, who is now getting out of prison. All the while, Dustin chases a serial killer of young men with one of his patients.
All of that is true, yet despite being almost 500 pages, not much actually happens concerning those conflicts. A lot of it is just unnecessary and sometimes, confusing.
You experience Dustin's life as a child; how his cousins dealt with the loss of their parents; how Dustin's son deceives his father in order to feed his drug habit, and more. What you don't get much of is the background on the deaths of the young men that keep drowning. There is a lot of speculation surrounding both the deaths of Dustin's family and the possibility of a serial killer in their midst, but practically no answers.

If you're hoping for an exciting thriller with a satisfying conclusion, move along. If you want to read something that will invoke absolute hopelessness and depression, this is the book for you.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Published by Ballantine Books on March 7, 2017

Two brothers are married to two sisters, which is weird for their children (the biological and an adopted son of one couple, twin daughters of the other), who are cousins and nieces/nephews at the same time. When the youngest child, Dustin Tillman, is still fairly young, both sets of parents are murdered. Dustin’s adopted brother Rusty is convicted of the murders and sent to prison.

The murders occur in the 1980s, when juries eagerly believed in nonsense about “Satanic ritual abuse” that (like many of the sensationalistic phenomena reported by Geraldo Rivera) turned out to be nonexistent. One of the key witnesses regarding Rusty’s satanic tendencies was Dustin. How that came to happen is revealed slowly as the story unfolds.

Now middle-aged, Dustin is a psychologist. Like many psychologists, he’s a mess. He once worked as a forensic expert, specializing in Satanic ritual abuse and recovered memories, two fields that were widely discredited in the years that followed. He reinvented himself as a conventional psychologist who hypnotizes patients to help them stop smoking and deal with chronic pain.

As the story begins, Rusty has been released from prison, having finally established his innocence. Some of Ill Will recaps Dustin’s childhood and his relationship with Rusty and his twin cousins, Kate and Waverly. Some of the novel follows Rusty’s telephonic relationship with Dustin’s son Aaron, a young junkie who can’t find any motivation to make a life for himself. It is a challenge to decide whether Dustin or Aaron is more damaged. A small part of the story focuses on Aaron’s brother, who sensibly wants nothing to do with his family.

And some of the story centers upon Dustin’s relationship with a patient, Aqil Ozorowski, a police officer on medical leave, who is preoccupied with the deaths by drowning of several intoxicated students in Ohio. Ozorowski believes they are part of a pattern. An urban legend has grown around that theory, giving birth to a hypothesized killer known as Jack Daniels. If Jack Daniels exists, is he responsible for the death of Aaron’s friend Rabbit?

The key theme of Ill Will is that events have the meaning we choose to give them. Truth is ambiguous. Truth is whatever we believe truth to be. If we choose to see a pattern, one exists. If we choose to give the relationship between events no meaning, the events are unrelated. Seeing patterns where none exist explains why conspiracy theorists are so troubled about unrelated facts, but not seeing patterns between connected events (perhaps for fear of being labeled a conspiracy theorist) can lead to false conclusions. Untrue things (like the spread of Satanic cults) become true when enough people believe them to be true — at least until most people finally realize that they never were true.

Other themes include the power of suggestion, the malleability of memory, the ease with which children can be manipulated (and their unreliability as witnesses for that reason), how abuse is like a virus that turns the abused into abusers, how “accidental and random” life can be, and how bullying can have unexpected consequences.

Dan Chaon’s prose style is often unconventional. Some sentences trail off or have extra spaces between words, reflecting the way people pause or stop talking when they don’t know what to say. Some of the story appears in text balloons. One section is written in three adjacent columns representing three different points of view. None of that put me off and some of it is clever, although the columns are hard to read in digital format. This is yet another reason to believe that print editions of a book make for better reading, even if they are less convenient.

The first half of Ill Will builds characters and background, while the second half builds tension. The plot is based on a series of misunderstandings and mistaken conclusions that prompt characters to take unsound actions ... or malicious actions that are true to their nature.

I didn’t care much for Ill Will’s unlikable characters and strange plot until it began to grow on me. By the time the story reached its conclusion, after I realized what Chaon intended and how effectively he accomplished that intent, I became a believer.

RECOMMENDED

In “Ill Will” we are presented with a very disturbing question: What if what you think is true actually isn’t?

The story revolves around Dustin as he learns that this adopted, Rusty, is being released from prison after serving thirty years for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle.  But DNA analysis has overturned the conviction.  While he is dealing with this he also becomes entangled with one of his patients as they hunt down a “serial killer”.  As his family falls apart in front of his eyes, will Dustin finally understand one of his favorite quotes: “We are always telling a story to ourselves, about ourselves.” 

I received a copy of this book through Net Galley and have given my honest review.

I'm not sure that I'll finish this book. The disjointed nature of the story is not holding my attention. Based on reviews of readers who enjoyed it and are fans of Chaon, I think I have a good idea of who will and won't appreciate it as a recommendation.

This book starts off very interestingly; a psychologist learns that his adopted brother is being released from jail after serving 30 years for the murders of his parents, aunt and uncle. The book delves into that murder from 1983 and also a series of murders occurring in the "present day" (2012-2014). The psychologist is wrapped into investigating the current day murders because of the theories of one of his clients. At first, he thought the client very odd, but the more he listens to him, the more sense he thinks the client makes. So you've got two very interesting story lines and a promising beginning. I'm all set for a delicious dark read!

But I couldn't get past the author's writing style. He probably considers himself clever, but it was annoying, confusing, frustrating, insert other synonyms here. He rambles, he writes sentences that stop in the middle, he places two or three columnar entries on a page, each dealing with totally different content and/or time frames, running for several pages which forces the reader to try to keep the different subjects straight from page to page, or to read one column all the way through, then go back to read the second, and back again to read the third. Unique? Yes. Enjoyable? No!

The entire book was a mind game for both the characters and the reader. I will not read another book by this author.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House - Ballantine for giving me the opportunity to read this book!

ILL WILL by Dan Chaon was a very unusual read. The plot was suspenseful enough, and the characters with their strong expression and communication took off, otherwise, getting past the foul language was a bit sticky. Looking at the cover page and title, didn't give the reader an in-depth idea that the story was going to show some sad points, devastation, and heartaches that some of the characters had to go through. Through the author's skill, and once the story is read, then the reader will get more of the purpose or intent behind the title. Great concept for a story, though.

I can see this turned into a screenplay for Special Victims Unit, one of my favourite TV shows.  However, I doubt they would be able to conjure the depth of character contrived by this skilled author.  Well done, Mr Choan.

Ballantine Books and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Ill Will.  This is my honest opinion of the book.

Dustin Tillman has risen above the tragedy of his youth to help others, in his capacity as a psychologist.  His adoptive brother had been arrested and convicted of killing their parents, as well as their aunt and uncle, when he was just a teenager.  Years later, with the help of the Innocence Project, Rusty was released from prison.  With almost no one in the family willing to talk with him, Rusty weasels his way into Dustin's son's life.  Is Aaron, a teenager drifting through life due to his own tragic circumstances, the perfect target or is Rusty genuine in wanting to get to know his family?  When college students start going missing on a regular basis and turn up dead, one of Dustin's patients convinces him to help investigate.  Will the tangled web of the past catch Dustin, his cousins, and Rusty in the lies?

I was really excited to read Ill Will because of all of the hype, but I should have realized that I was setting myself up for a disappointment.  The author attempted to use a modified writing format to convey Dustin's fragmented thought patterns but, in the end, it just seemed like the editing was lacking.  The story really never has that "aha" moment or a clear ending, for that matter.  There was not a sympathetic character among the group and the book, at just over 450 pages, took too long to get anywhere.  Ill Will was a miss for me, so I would not recommend it to other readers.

Creepy novel that lived in the haze created by time and drug use. I enjoyed the uncertainty if not the resolution.

I received a free advance e-copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley and have chosen of my own free will to post a review.  Ill Will is very dark.  The characters all have major problems and are dysfunctional.  Even the psychologist has major psychological problems and is completely unaware that his son has a serious drug problem and isn’t going to college as he claims.  The author rambles from one character to another and it is difficult to follow which character he is talking about.  This book left me very confused.  The characters are interesting but need to be developed fully.  It takes the author forever to tell the story and he never seems to resolve anything.  It was very difficult for me to make sense of the story.  The story abruptly ended without a conclusion and without resolution as to why and who committed all the murders and if they were murders. I couldn’t make sense of what was going on and I’m confused. I feel I wasted my time reading this book.  Too many unresolved questions.

I found this book to be one of the most frustrating books I've ever attempted to read. I say attempted because I just could not make myself finish. 

It had potential to be a really fascinating story but between the sentences that ended abruptly without finishing and the sections split into columns, it was maddening. I get that they were trying to express the character's fractured mindset, but in an electronic format it just made it nearly impossible to read. I made it about 120 pages and just couldn't do it anymore.

I gave up on this book  for the twists were too obvious.

The mysteries in this book, past and present, held my interest and made me anxious to see what came next whenever I had to put it down. The protagonist, a widower, father and psychiatrist was rather cold, especially in relationships with his two sons, considering that they had recently lost their mother. He was closer, it seemed, to a man who morphed from a patient to a partner in solving an ongoing mystery concerning a number of young college men who had disappeared and turned up murdered. (I kept hoping that the elder of the sons would not be next.)  At the same time, an old crime was being introduced, the murder of the man's mother, father, aunt and uncle, which happened when he was 13. His older, adopted brother had been convicted of the crime (without any physical evidence) and had escaped from prison during the time just previous to the opening of the story. The older brother had been sent to prison mostly on the testimony of the three children of the murdered folks, and the psychiatrist had some doubts as to veracity of their testimonies. The escaped prisoner had formed a relationship with the younger son of the psychiatrist, unbeknownst to his father.
There were a number of story lines that were unresolved, some that were not explained and left you wondering where they were headed. Overall I enjoyed it but didn't feel satisfied when it ended.