It was entirely too long for my taste, and I couldn't connect with the many different characters, ultimately. Sorry.

I have like other Dan Chaon books and I was really enjoying this book.  However, about halfway through it started to get tiresome and was a chore to continue to read.  I should say that I was given an ARC of this book and I'm not sure if the sentences that just ended or some of the formatting was intentional or was just errors in my copy.  It made trying to follow the plot hard.  I never like giving up on a book, but I wish I did on this one because the ending was blah and you could have seen it coming a mile away.  Not a bad book, but not a good one either.

Ill Will by Dan Chaon is a story that revolves around a family tragedy. That's all I could ascertain from this story. I couldn't get into the whole book being back-story. There was a lot of sexual situations. Way too many for my taste. The story was, for me, hard to follow most of the time. I had to read quite a bit of the chapter to find out whose point of view I was reading. The ending didn't reveal any true insight into the story, or have a real conclusion.

The book opens with the body of a young man bumping along at the bottom of a river bed. This is one of the mysteries in the story. Who is killing college youth and dumping their bodies in water with no signs of anything but an accident or suicide.

Thirteen-year-old Dustin and his two older girl cousins awake one morning in the camping trailer parked outside their house waiting to take their two families on a vacation. One of the girls goes into the house and begins to scream. Both sets of parents have been murdered, their bodies laying grotesquely throughout the first floor. This is the second mystery. Who killed them? Was it the adopted son who was not at home that evening? This young man is convicted and sent to prison for thirty years before declared innocent of the crime. Now he has been released, but the mystery deepens. 

With lots of flashbacks, the reader discovers that nothing is as it seems. Told from different points of view, we discovered a seedy side of living that is disturbing, delusional, and drug-infested. Author Dan Chaon is a good writer, and while this story may to fascinating to some readers, it will be viewed as not enjoyable by others.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an impartial review.

While reading Ill Will, I mostly felt icky - there was no joy here but just a mountain of horror and loss. Psychologist Dustin has an incredibly horrific past that justifiably colors every aspect of his life with his wife and children as well as impacts his practice as a psychologist. While still a young boy, Dustin's parents, aunt and uncle were savagely murdered. His adoptive brother, Rusty, is convicted of the crimes. Rusty had been abusive to Dustin so readers have little sympathy for him. Rusty's eventual vindication after decades in prison only adds to Dustin's stress level.

Dustin's loss is shared with his two slightly older cousins, Kate and Wave. The murders of their parents twists their lives in such a way that Dustin is the only one who, superficially at least, has a normal adult life. 

As an adult, Dustin is a psychologist with a dying wife and two sons who view him as odd. Older son, Dennis, escapes to college soon after the death of his mother. Younger son, Aaron, drug-addled and lonely, is seemingly unnoticed as he descends into addiction. Ironically, Dustin's practice revolves around recovered memories and hypnosis. Among his patients is Aqil, a former cop, who has a wild theory about drunken, drowned young men. Dustin and Aqil join forces to discover the truth about how these young suddenly disappear. This investigation provides a focus for grieving Dustin but it also encourages the separation of Aaron.

Chaon's use of multiple narrators is not seamless especially with the use of flashbacks. Aaron's narration is the most awkward since he has none of the backstory and his grief is so raw that he is never impartial. Most challenging was when multiple narrators were presenting their views with the type set in columns. I never knew if I should read the entire column over several pages or read the column to the bottom of the page and then go to the second column even though the first one was not ended. Perhaps this setup was more a function of the ARC then a chosen effect by the author. On a Kindle, the column text was incredibly small and I could not enlarge it.

This novel made me uncomfortable like watching an episode of Criminal Minds. Despite this, the author leaves readers guessing right to the end.

Ill Will by Dan Chaon is a chimera.  It shimmers just out of reach like a highway heat mirage, hypnotic, addictive, seductive.  Ironically, the same can be said for human memory.  How much of what we remember is actually true?

The tale is decidedly post-modern.  It is intertextual and follows no rules and respects no boundaries dictated by genre. It is mystery, horror, psychology and more.

Mr Chaon’s literary skills are phenomenal.  The prose reads like poetry.  He wastes no words.  Every pause is filled with action.  There is not one single info dump.  All the information comes naturally as it would in real life.  Even though various characters take turns telling the tale, they are all totally believable and somehow engaging even as they fall prey to obsession and begin to lose touch with reality.

Readers experience this dark tale of obsession through the memories of highly flawed characters.  Each has a unique, believable voice, and each struggles to understand the present by unraveling wavering memories of the past.  These house-of-mirrors discrepancies pull readers into the text and keep them guessing.  Even at the end, many readers will continue to stare at that last page, waiting for more mirages to appear.

The protagonist is Dustin Tillman, a psychologist haunted by garbled memories of abuse and a mass murder that involved his parents. Perhaps in an attempt to come to terms with these childhood memories, he becomes involved in investigating a series of current murders.  Tillman appears to have a tenuous hold on reality that makes him vulnerable to manipulation and allows one of his patients to slip into his personal life.  This mistake creates an avalanche of disaster that threatens to bury all those he cares for.

Ill Will is very highly recommended and will leave readers questioning the veracity of their own memories.  After all, obsession is indeed contagious.

If we are defined by our traitorous memories, then who are we, really?

rougeskireads

Ill Will by Dan Chaon- At first I had difficulty getting into this book with it's short, choppy chapters and jumps back to a past with the immediate returns to the present.  I found it a bit jarring to change gears back and forth.  After a while the story begins to grab you and I mean in a good way.  Dustin is a psychologist, whose adopted brother, he has just learned, is about to be released from prison for the crime of killing their parents, on Dustin and his sister's testimony.  It's been thirty years and Dustin doesn't know what to expect but he's sure it will be bad.  In the meantime, one of his patients has sucked him into an amateur investigation of recent college drowning victims, with the dubious theory that a serial killer is at work.  This sets the stage for a lot of chaos and mayhem, and a meaningful look at memory and how distorted it can become.  Not a slasher tome.

This book had me guessing the whole way through. At times I didn't know what was real and what was not. I loved this book, will recommend to all

Sorry - I could not finish this book.  The writing was fine, but the plot line was not for me.  I can handle 'ugly characters and story lines, but I do need a little hope/lightness somewhere.  This was just too ugly, with unlikable characters and little hope for redemption.  My apologies but it was just too depressing.

Unique, dark, suspenseful psychological thriller that cycles back and forth in time focusing on 2 separate sets of murders.  In the 1970s, Dustin’s parents and aunt and uncle were brutally murdered while he and his cousins slept in a trailer in the driveway.  It was his and his cousin, Kate’s, testimony that landed Dustin’s foster brother, Randy in prison.  As a result of this traumatic event, Dustin became interested in studying the psychology of Satanic cults and violence expressed through them.  He developed his thesis around it, testified in many cases as an expert, and currently works as a therapist.  In present day, Dustin’s life starts unravelling as the delicate tendrils that were holding it together gradually give way.  His wife dies of cancer at the age of 43, his two sons have graduated from high school, and his foster brother Randy has been released from prison with the help of the Innocence Project working on his behalf.  In current day, Dustin is drawn into investing a possible homicide cluster of drunk college boys who were determined accidental drownings by the police.

The books chapters are narrated by various different characters (sometimes in the first person and sometimes in the third) and they deeply reflect the mindset of the characters.  The characters become more and more isolated from each, so the reader knows more about what is going on with them than they know what is going on with each other or in some cases themselves.

The chapters from Dustin’s mindset are particularly troubling.  His thoughts and sense of reality seem to be losing footing.  He takes up drinking and smoking.  His thoughts are repeating themselves.  He trails off not finishing thoughts or sentences.   He wonders if he’s in a fugue state.   His cousins and foster brother describe the young Dustin as trusting and gullible.  It seems without his wife as an anchor, he has become so again, particularly with regards to his patient Aqil.  Aqil is obsessed with the “murders” of drunk frat boys that have drown in waterways while intoxicated.  Dustin becomes drawn into “investigating” these incidences with Aqil, presenting himself to others as an investigator or writer.  He confides in Aqil so much that it seems there is a role reversal.  In fact, he knows very little about Aqil, but has become emotionally dependent upon him.  Dustin has trouble seeing what is right in front of him.  His son is getting deeper into drugs and pretends to go to a college he never enrolled in.  Dustin becomes an easy victim once again, trusting and gullible as always, without a strong sense of self.

This book brings up many questions.  What are memories composed of?  How reliable are our memories?  Can a fictionalized statement in the past be remembered as a truth?  What defines us?  Is it our perception of ourselves or how others perceive us?  How does grief shape our thoughts and mental stability?

This is a long, dark twisted mystery delving deep into the psychology of its characters.  At points it’s hard to read as the writing reflects the altered and distressed mental states of its characters.  It experiments with writing in chart format, chunking bits of information together in little boxes,  letting the reader grasp that it is not making coherent sense with the character.  I enjoyed the story and the writing, although it felt more difficult to get through because of it’s style.  I felt the quotations at the beginning of each chapter were perfect for setting the chapter up for it’s intended purpose and were very thought provoking in and of themselves.   The last chapter begins with this quote: “In the end it is the mystery that lasts and not the explanation.” – Sacheverell Sitwell, For Want of the Golden City.

Describing one of the characters as a somewhat hesitant or bumbling speaker created a story with incomplete or broken sentences, at times confusing the flow of the story.  The story overall was just okay but a smoother flow of the story would have made for better reading, although it may have detracted from the character of the father.  It portrays a very dysfunctional family with a tragic past now living a mysterious present, still dysfunctional and drug induced disillusionment of at least one of the main characters.  An interesting read but lack of continuity just too much of a distraction.  Note also it is a difficult read on an e-reader as some pages had some very small print.

I thought that this book was very entertaining and suspenseful! The author is very talented and the story is told in an interesting way. I thought that the ending was sort of weird, but I liked it. I really liked the whole thing!

As a straightforward mystery, Ill Will left me wanting more. The novel really is less about the murders (then and now) and more about the characters, their motivation, and certainly their capacity for self-delusion. For the longest time, I was confused because I couldn't figure out what the main story was--or the point. Perhaps that's why the story seemed to creep along . . . That and the fact that I really did not care for one of the narrators. But perhaps that's yet another example of skillful character creation on the author's part.

Despite these "issues," I appreciated the author's experimentation in the style and form of the novel. Reading an e-book made certain elements--specifically, multiple perspectives presented simultaneously in a multi-column format--difficult to follow, and I'm not entirely sure what was happening in those sections. Ultimately, however, the book made me think and reflect on the characters and the story long after I put it down. Perhaps part of my initial dissatisfaction was actually discomfort that arose from inhabiting the lives of these not-entirely-likable characters. 

The book was a literary train wreck that I couldn't help but watch--and I suspect that I would appreciate it even more with subsequent readings. Not many books have that effect on me, so that's something unusual and positive. Should I embark upon a second reading, I'll likely pick up a physical book and see if that eliminates some of the stylistic confusion in the e-book.

Thanks for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review, NetGalley!

A psychiatrist (and the protagonist) in Dan Chaon's new novel, Ill Will, warns a new patient about the danger of "apophenia:" "People can find patterns in all kinds of random events . . . . It's the tendency we humans have to find meaning in disconnected information." "Sometimes," as another character puts it, "a dead bird is just a dead bird." This could also work as a nice public service announcement for the novel. Chaon creates complex characters on two different timelines, multiple perspectives, and drug-induced first person perspectives. By weaving theories about apophenia, schizophrenia, and fugue states, you are never quite sure what is going on. Chaon even goes as far to make the format of the novel seem disjointed (at one point in the novel there are three parallel columns rather than a whole page). Is there a point to all of this madness or is it a kind of illness to make sense out of it?

Ill Will is the story of two murder cases: the first takes place in the 80s. All of the adults in a family are massacred. Their adopted son, Rusty, is arrested for the murder. The second case happens thirty years later (approximately the same time Rusty is released from prison). Rusty's psychiatrist brother, Dusty, takes on a new patient who claims that a serial killer is drowning frat boys. These two cases are closely intertwined but isn't quite clear how.

It is not merely the complexity of this novel that makes it such a challenging read. The content covers just about every disturbing theme imaginable: drugs, molestation, incest, masochism, mass murder, Satanism, cancer, insanity, the death of loved ones, etc.

This novel sucked me in. However, I'm left wondering, "What was the point?" Was there a point to all of this madness or is it crazy to try to find a meaning in the chaos?

When I read the blurbs about this book, I thought it sounded fascinating - a promising thriller.  And maybe there IS a fascinating thriller hidden somewhere in the confusing narrative that makes up this book but I couldn't find it.  The timeline goes back and forth constantly, the narrators change without warning so it's sometimes a page or two before one realizes exactly who is talking and when.  The two stories - murders in different times - that sounded so interesting, are muddled and confusing.

The book started out fairly interesting but the middle section was so, so, slow and bogged down.  It seemed to take me forever to get through that middle and to the last portion of the story which - though still not making much sense - was at least somewhat intriguing.

I didn't really like any of the characters and didn't particularly care what happened to them (which in this case, turned out to be a good thing)

No book is for everyone.  Some people will undoubtedly love this one.  Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people.

How reliable is memory?  Can it be influenced, even controlled by others?  Can you ever be sure that what you think happened, really did happen, given our tendency to sugarcoat painful memories to protect ourselves or others? This complex yet thoroughly satisfying novel explores how the line between reality and fantasy can become very blurred as memories interact with experiences over time. 
A man is sent to prison for thirty years for a horrific crime he did not commit. His conviction was based on a number of witnesses whose memories proved to be unreliable. Adding to the mystery is the fact that many of the characters are either high, drunk, or emotionally unstable when they witness events leading up to the tragedy. Due to these altered states, their grasp on reality is loose at best, and they continually struggle to separate reality from delusions. 
Looking at the reviews, it seems people either love this or hate it. I think it may have to do with expectations. 
If you are looking for an simple thriller with an ending where everything is tied up in a neat little bundle, you will be disappointed. However, if you like a complex puzzle that makes you think and keeps you guessing, as I do, you'll love it. 
This is so much more than the usual thriller. Chaon's writing skills are extraordinary. I was riveted from start to finish. Even though the plot is complex, I never felt lost or confused. I enjoyed guessing all the way to the end. I can't wait to read more from this author. 
Note: I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The summary of Ill Will sounded incredibly interesting when I was browsing on NetGalley. Two unsolved crimes across a span of many years connected by one man. It sounds intriguing, right? Well, the first part of the story did hold my attention, but as I read on, the novel became more and more drawn out. The narrators changed many times and went back and forth from past to present so often that my head was spinning, but I trudged on hoping for an exciting ending. 

As I continued reading, I found the characters to be completely self centered and totally incapable of seeing anything but what is right in front of them. I think Chaon purposefully wrote the characters to be this way, and I'm not sure I was really supposed to connect with them or like them very much. I hope not, because they were all extremely strange. There were many things I didn't enjoy about the book, but I still found myself unable to put it down. It definitely had a dark feel to it and I think that is why I felt so strangely about it. I liked it and at the same time I didn't. I wanted to put it down, but at the same time I really needed to know what happened at the end. I didn't like the characters, but I didn't want bad things to happen to them. See why I'm confused? 

All in all, Ill Will is a chilling thriller that truly makes you question your own perception of past events. It caught my attention from the first page, and even though it was dark and twisted, I found myself enjoying it. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy suspense and crime novels.

Dustin's adopted brother, Rusty, was convicted of killing his parents, aunt and uncle when Dustin was just a teenager but now the Innocence Project has found evidence that has allowed for Rusty to be released.  Dustin has severe anxiety from the memories of Rusty's abuse and ritualistic sacrifices of baby bunnies but Rusty wants to make a connection with Dustin's son, anyway.  Meanwhile, college students are going missing and then days later are found drowned in nearby bodies of water with large amounts of substances in their systems.  Dustin and Aqil believe that the deaths may not be accidents but, instead, the result of similar ritualistic sacrifices that Dustin has studied as a psychotherapist.

The synopsis of this book doesn't do it justice.  This book is a magnificent thriller that I read in one sitting.  Everything that a thriller requires in order to strike horror in the heart of a reader was included in this book.  I was left wondering who, or what, killed the young men until the very end.  There were some parts where the writing was a little bit strange but it did not overpower the amount of suspense that this book built.  The story is told by several different characters and they all have a unique voice.  Dustin's account actually stops mid-sentence as he disassociates in the book.   The characters are complex and interesting to read about.  I am excited to read more from Chaon and his haunted mind!  I really enjoyed this book and the characters, I just felt a little frustrated with the, sometimes, clunky writing style.  I recommend this to any reader looking for a great mystery or thriller who is not squeamish.

Two murders, past and present, that could be related to Satanic Rituals - what's not to love! Sadly the book fell a bit short of my expectations. Though the blurb sounds interesting, I found it to be a slow read that was difficult to follow (this could be from the eBook formatting).  The story switches perspectives and at time it's hard to decipher who the reader is supposed to be following. I wasn't expecting the ending though - so kudos!