Dustin Tillman's parents - Colleen and Dave and his cousins Kate and Wave's parents, Vicki and Lucky, were killed in June 1983 in Nebraska. They were gunned down with a shotgun. Dustin was the one who found the bodies. Dustin's adopted brother, Russell, was seen racing off from the scene. The children were hauled off and forced to live with their grandmother. Russell was arrested and Dustin and Kate testified against him that he was the person who killed their parents. Russell was sentenced to over 30 years in prison. As the years went by Dustin went to college and became a psychologist. He married and was the father of two boys. One of Dustin's clients, Aqil, was an ex-cop who had some issues of his own which consisted of paranoia and OCD. Ability started presenting evidence to Dustin about college aged boys who were being murdered on certain days of the month. The evidence was overwhelming. Instead of Aqil going to the police, he Asked for Dustin's help in solving these murders. Eventually Russell was released from prison, after 30 years. He received help from the Innocence Project. Dustin's wife dies and their sons are dealing with it on their own ways. Russell wants to know why the Kate and Dustin lied and basically took his life away from him. He decides to become friends with Dustin's son, Aaron. The storyline goes back and forth between the current day and the days in the past. What will happen between Dustin, Kate, and Russell? Will Dustin and Aqil solve the murders? Will Dustin's sons eventually heal from their mother's passing? There was definitely Lot of intrigue and mystery to this book. I was not able to give this book 5 stars. The back and forth from past to present was too confusing to me. The book seemed to go on forever. I feel that it could have been accomplished in a much shorter book. The formatting in quite a few pages were in columns instead of pages and made it hard to read. The ending lest the reader to decide what they would take away from this book. I can't say that I really enjoyed this book because it was so long and confusing.

Dustin Tillman has a lot on his mind. His wife died less than a year ago and his relationship with his two sons seems to be drifting away. He’s a psychologist and he has a new patient,Aqil, he can’t quite get a handle on. And now, his cousin Kate has called to let him know that his adopted brother, Rusty, is getting out of prison twenty-nine years after being convicted of murdering all of their parents. A conviction that was obtained through the specific testimony of Dustin and Kate, but has now been overturned by DNA evidence proving his innocence. This is Dustin’s world in Dan Chaon’s new novel, Ill Will. A world that is going to get a lot more complicated.

Yet, even given all these circumstances Dustin seems relatively unfazed by this latest news. In fact, he’s largely unruffled by almost anything. Instead, he exhibits a distracted air in much of his life and always has. He has been joked about within his family as being spacey—a fact Chaon highlights in Ill Will’s formatting by leaving many of Dustin’s sentences open. No ellipses of thought, no trailing off, just a stopping of whatever he might have been trying to say. This dreamier mental pace serves him well as a psychologist, allowing him to assess why Aqil is obsessed with a series of drowning deaths of college-age boys that have occurred in their area over the last decade, but won’t talk about his own past at all. Until, Aqil’s fixation becomes Dustin’s own and what was a harmless inattention begins to feel like negligence in and denial of his own life for some wild theories about serial killers.

Dustin is not the sole focus of Ill Will. Chaon makes use of his cousins, Kate and Wave; his younger son, eighteen-year-old Aaron, and even Rusty, as narrators. Not surprisingly, even going back to the summer of 1983, each has a very different story to tell. Chaon ups the creepy factor by tapping into a very real social phenomenon of those times: the belief that there were widespread Satanic cults committing heinous acts of ritual abuse throughout America. Some of Rusty’s teen behavior aligns with the sensationalistic news and is, ultimately, what Kate and Dustin say led him to murder four family members. Now, Rusty is out and has chosen Aaron as the only member of the family to contact. Aaron, who didn’t even know he had an uncle, much less one that murdered his grandparents.

Because there are so many ways a mystery can go I have to give credit to Ill Will for choosing an option that only works if the tale has been strong enough all along—that of the ambiguous ending. Whereas Dead Letters slammed an unexpected reality into my face, Ill Will insinuates right up until the very end. Throughout the novel Dustin Tillman is a vague figure—is he troubled? Gullible? A dupe? Or the exact opposite of all these, the Keyser Söze of the novel? No spoilers from me. Suffice it to say, what I liked most about the novel was that Chaon made sure I wouldn’t stop reading until the last sentence and he did so not just with murder, but by delving into the always intriguing concept of reality, specifically how we perceive the world, ourselves, and how we are perceived. Scary stuff.

I really tried to enjoy this book, but I found it to be very disjointed and the storyline was difficult to follow. The flow and characters were all over the place and at times I didn't know if I was reading fantasy or if it was part of the story. There are very few books that I do not enjoy, but this was one of them. I really had to make myself read it to the end as I kept hoping that it would get better and that everything would pull together and be explained, but that never happened. The synopsis sounded exciting and I usually enjoy this genre, but I was bitterly disappointed.
I do thank the publishers for giving me an advance copy to review through Netgalley.

First and foremost, a large thank you to NetGalley, Dan Chaon, and Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine for providing me with a copy of this book, which allows me to provide you with an unbiased review.
This was a very frustrating book to read, or let me say try to read. It was somewhat suspenseful but not enough to call it a "ground breaking thriller".
This book is in intense need of a good edit. I see why it has such a low rating on Goodreads.

Ok. This book reminds me of another twisted version of another book I recently read by Gillian Flynn called Dark Places. Especially the piece where the main character has a brother who was accused of murder and later exonerated. Only, in Gillian Flynn's case, the brother was not. Both stories bounce from the 80s to somewhat present date and they also bring in the satanic cult hysteria from back in the 80s as well. Besides that, Dan Choan takes over from there.

I don't like predictable books, in fact, I despise predictable books. When I read, I want to the author to make me think. To show, not tell. Dan does just that. He gives you these realistic characters in surroundings that reach outside the fictional world and grab you by the hand and will not let go till their mission is complete.

Are there rough spots? Absolutely, but the author rebounds and makes up with his suspenseful turns. Be prepared to open your mind and be taken on a wild ride!

"What do you call it when someone can't tell the difference between what's real and what's not real?"

Dustin Tillman's life is in a crisis. The sudden death of his wife to cancer has left him with little control of his actions and emotions. This is particularly troubling because Dustin's work as a psychologist sees him guiding patients through their own difficult situations. Without the support and better judgement of his wife, Dustin has taken a particular interest in his patient Aqil.

Aqil is a former police officer who is obsessed with a series of drownings. In each instance, a young college-aged man disappears after a night of binge drinking. They turn up days later, drowned in local waterways. All of the investigative authorities have concluded that these deaths are accidental and unrelated, but Aqil has other theories. Blinded by his grief, Dustin willfully encourages Aqil to explore the case and even joins in the investigation. Is Dustin on the heels of a serial killer who has evaded any notice by the authorities, or is he simply supporting the delusions of a madman?

To add to Dustin's emotional stress, we learn that his childhood was no walk in the park. Along with his twin cousins, Dustin stumbled onto the bodies of his murdered parents, aunt, and uncle. We learn that his older adopted brother, Rusty, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison. Dustin's descriptive testimony of both Rusty's abuse toward him and participation in satanic rituals played the largest role in the conviction. Now, 30 years later, Dustin receives word that Rusty has been released and exonerated of all crimes. Dustin is sure that Rusty is guilty, but he can't recall specific details of that horrific night. Has he repressed these gruesome memories from his mind? Did all of the things he testified even happen?

"In the end it is the mystery that lasts and not the explanation."
- Sacheverell Sitwell, For Want of the Golden City

Ill Will is told from the shifting perspectives of various characters in the novel. While the central focus surrounds Dustin and his ironic descent into the kind of madness his profession fights against, the supporting characters are also allotted time to develop. By moving to different characters and times within the story, author Dan Chaon disorients the reader and creates a murkiness to his consistently suspenseful narrative. In a device that is as equally unique as it is satisfying, Chaon presents portions of the novel in columns. This allows different pieces of the story to unfold concurrently across perspective and time.

The subject matter is extremely grim. If you are looking for a "light" read, this may not be your cup of tea. Chaon writes of sexual and emotional abuse, drug addiction, and mental breakdown with a clarity that brings the characters to vivid realization. Despite the difficult subject matter, I was immediately sucked into the story and wasn't released until the very end. Ill Will works as both thriller and character study, shedding light upon dark situations. Chaon's dexterity with the material and inventive methods of presentation make Ill Will a disturbingly riveting read.

Thank you Netgallery for the opportunity to read Ill Will. The weaving of the present and the past was done well in this comtemporary suspense thriller. I have not read any of Dan Chaeon's novels previously and will defintiely look for future books.
Chaeon writes in first person and sometimes third, which makes this an interesting read. This is not just a thriller, but a disfunctional family journey. Readers will feel as if they are under water while they read this sometimes terrifying novel.
Recommend.

I

I really like Dan Chaon's previous books, and the description made this novel sound fascinating. However, it got far too bogged down in drug culture--the long scenes about shooting up went on too long and did not feel fresh or interesting. The author's refusal to give the reader any real resolution to grab on to was also frustrating. Ultimately, the book just felt disjointed.

I also thought the side-by-side structure of large portions of the novel was too obviously designed to be clever, and sacrificed story to gimmick; also, reading those sections was impossible on Kindle and iPad, so readers who buy the ebook instead of the physical book will likely feel cheated.

“Ill Will” is a taut psychological thriller and at times hard to follow with its disruptive and unstructured grammatical style. It is definitely contemporary and highlights the seamier side of life. It is sure to frighten you if you want a suspenseful and scary read.

I was given an electronic copy in return for an honest review.

Thirty years ago, Dustin’s aunt, uncle, mother, and father were brutally murdered. His testimony helped to put his adopted older brother, Rusty, in prison for the crime. Now, Rusty is being released from prison, his innocence proven by DNA evidence. But if Rusty didn’t commit the murders, then who did?

In the meantime, it appears that a serial killer might be operating in northern Ohio. Dustin, now a psychologist in Cleveland, becomes obsessed with a series of suspicious deaths after one of his patients brings up his own investigation. As Dustin and his family are pulled apart by both the events of thirty years ago and today, the nature of right and wrong, sanity and insanity becomes more and more muddled.

This was a fascinating book, though at times I found it difficult to read. The story, which weaves between past events and the present day, is mainly from the point of view of Dustin himself, and his adult son, Aaron. The story begins with Dustin learning of Rusty’s release from prison. This knowledge, and the anticipation of retribution from his adopted brother, start off a chain of events leading Dustin down a rabbit hole of obsession. Aaron, dealing with drug addiction, is nearly as unreliable a narrator as Dustin.

As the two men move through the story, the narrative literally fragments, some pages having several competing point-of-views for the same people of the same event. Thoughts and sentences are often left unfinished, as minds drift and alternative thoughts impose themselves upon the narrative. Ill Will explores the fragility of self and the unreliability of perception and memory.

I enjoyed this book. It is a uniquely written thriller, and the plot twists and turns and doubles back on itself often enough to confound the reader. In places, the formatting, especially with the competing narratives, can make the book hard to follow. To me, the book is reminiscent of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, a psychological thriller which also used atypical formatting to advance the plot. And, like House of Leaves, I strongly suspect that this is a book you will either love or hate.

I would recommend this book to someone who likes darker psychological thrillers, but not to anyone who requires concrete endings or neatly tied loose ends. In that regard, Ill Will is a lot like the recently published Universal Harvester by John Darnielle (my review can be read here) in that it is a creepy book which will mess with your head, and the ending will leave you with nearly as many questions as answers. In sum, I enjoyed this book quite a bit, but it is certainly not for everyone. If you enjoyed either of the two books previously mentioned, then I strongly recommend reading Ill Will.

An advance copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Ill Will will be available for purchase on March 7th, 2017.

This is one of those books that you have to set time for. But more than that you want to lock the doors, get comfortable and make sure anything that you are going to need from the minute you start until the minute you finish is close at hand because you aren't going to want to move from your safe spot until you have all of the answers! This story centers around Dustin Tillman, a 41-year-old psychologist who recently lost his wife to cancer. While you wonder the grief's affect on how his mental state is as he starts dealing with a series of chaotic events that while at once appear to be random also seem to be linked and you want nothing more than to find out how they are linked. This book is like waking up in a Hitchcock movie.

This is a bold, unique and thrilling story that gets to the heart of the human psyche. Chaon takes the readers on a ride that can only be described as a plunge into the depths of paranoia and mental disorder.
Ill Will is unlike anything I've ever read. The structure of the story is fresh and exciting, inviting you inside the minds of multiple characters. The idea of unreliable narrator is turned on its head again and again. This is simply a refreshing take on the mystery genre and one that proves literary fiction can be page-turning.

The good news is that if you’re looking for something dark, then Chaon is your author. I received a copy free and in advance in exchange for an honest review; thank you Net Galley and Random House Ballantine. This book was released today and is available to the public.

The plot centers around a psychologist, recently widowed, who’s coming unstuck. One of his sons has developed an ugly drug habit right under his distracted father’s nose, but his dad just keeps giving him money and doesn’t ask questions. At the same time, the psychologist’s brother, who was sentenced to two life terms for the murders of their parents, aunt, and uncle, is exonerated when DNA analysis is done. Simultaneously a patient of Dan’s comes to him with questions about a series of drowning of drunken college boys that he says he believes are linked. At first, Dan assumes these are paranoid ramblings, but over the course of time, the patient begins to assume greater and still greater importance in Dan’s life, until the reader begins to wonder which of the characters is the psychologist and which is the patient.

The quality of the prose is surreal and at times, dreamlike.

Every reader has a threshold for the level of violence he or she can sustain before a book ceases to be deliciously creepy and instead becomes a thing we wish we never read. I knew when I hit the term “snuff film” before the twenty percent mark that I might be in trouble, but it was a passing reference and since I had an obligation to the author and publisher, I brushed it off and kept reading. I read multiple books at a time, usually half a dozen or so, and I found that this book was the one that I just didn’t want to read. With the publication date upon me, I forced myself through to the end, and have been slightly queasy ever since.

I didn’t have any fun here; it was just too disturbing.

I want to be fair, and so I read carefully in order to see whether there are any clever literary nuances that might improve my rating, and the second star is included here because of some interesting and innovative stylistic tools that are employed. I liked the triple narrative that appears to be taking place simultaneously, and am interested in the business employed with sentence endings that begins with the father and ends with someone else.

The story’s ending is both unpleasant and disappointing, in that it doesn’t present any sort of epiphany or surprise. My reaction to the end of this whole unfortunate thing is, “Oh.”

None of this means that you won’t like this story. There’s a lot of buzz right now about the now discredited belief in Satanic rituals that were in the news during the 1980s, and if this is in your wheelhouse, maybe you’ll like the book. If your tastes run way out on the edge of horror, you might find it more appealing than I do. On the other hand, it won’t make the ending any less anticlimactic.

Recommended to those interested in extreme horror stories and with a bottomless wallet, or that can read it free or cheaply.

Dustin Tillman has a fairly normal life. On the surface. He's a psychologist who specialized in hypnotism, to help his clients quit smoking or deal with chronic pain or anxiety. He enjoys his work. He has a lawyer wife and two sons. Their lives in Cleveland go on as most families do. 

Except Dustin has a secret. He has a past, one where his parents and aunt and uncle were brutally murdered when he was a child. His older brother Rusty, adopted after his foster family died in a fire, is charged with the killings. He was convicted after Dustin and one of his cousins testified to witnessing Satanic rituals, and teenaged Rusty had no real defense against the rising panic.

So when one of Dustin's patients, a cop on disability, comes to him with a theory about murdered college students, Dustin is interested. And as he gets pulled deeper into the story, there are questions about whether the killer in question (if, in fact, it is a killer--the victims are drunk college guys who are found drowned in nearby rivers or lakes) is more than one individual, or even a group . . . or a cult. 

And then Dustin gets word that Rusty is getting released from prison. The Innocence Project had taken on his case, and they found DNA evidence that exonerated him. So now Dustin has more questions. Will Rusty try to contact him? What should he say if he does? And who was behind the murder of his parents, if not Rusty? 

Dan Chaon's Ill Will unwinds in layers. You think you know what it's about, and then it all changes. It shifts, the way a memory can shift, the way time plays with our heads, the way other people add meaning or secrets or depth to a story in ways we don't always understand at the time. The pieces of the puzzle fall into place slowly, with painstaking precision and breath-taking detail. 

I will be honest. I'm still waiting for my head to stop spinning on this one. It's complex. There is a part of me that wants to say that I highly recommend this book, and I do. It's masterful in ways I can't even talk about yet. So it will take me some time to know for sure how and when to recommend this book. But once I figure that part out, I will be recommending it for a very, very, very long time. 



Galleys for Ill Will provided by the publisher through NetGalley.com.

This story is dark, intense and fascinating. It starts out with the murder of 2 couples, who have 4 children all together. One, Rusty, was convicted of the murders and has spent some 30 years in prison. However, a group that works for innocent inmates gets his conviction overturned. This starts a a chain reaction of events. Who killed the the 4? Was it Rusty? If not, who else could it have been. Wave? Dusty? or maybe Kate? Or maybe someone entirely different? The story is told from several different viewpoints and time periods. In present day, Dustin, Rusty's brother, is grown up, married with 2 sons. His wife, Jill, has recently died from cancer, which somewhat sends Dustin over the edge. He is a psychologist and becomes close to one of his clients, Aqil. Now, also, in the present day there may be a serial killer that is targeting young college boys. Wow, so much going on. But it all fits in together. There are lots of twists and turns that take you to the end. I thought it was a well-written book and the characters were very complex and realistic. I loved the book. It is a roller coaster ride of darkness, fear and intrigue.

Dustin Tillman had been drifting along in life . Dustin was a psychologist and had two teenage sons. Then his cousin Kate called from L A about Dustin's older adopted brother Russell who had been sent to prison for the murder of his parents Colleen and Dave and his Aunt Vicki and Uncle Lucky. Russell was six years older that Dustin. Dustin remembered how Russell had: shot him in the back with his BB gun. Listened to death metal, carved a pentagram into his forearm, who had destroyed a snowman Dustin had built. Russell who was delighted by Dustin's fear of the dark and would wait until Dustin was settled in bed and turn off the light and close the door until Dustin screamed. A body had been found by some college girls his name was Peter Allingham- he was a college sophomore and one of Dustin’s patients thought it was a link to several other drownings. Dustin thought back to when he was thirteen and his parents were murdered as well as his aunt and uncle. He had been in the camper with his twin cousins Kate and Wave until the next morning when Dustin found his mother and held her for one last time. Kate told Dustin that Russell had not killed his parents or hers that three different laboratories had done independent DNA tests proving Russell’s innocence. Russell had spent almost twenty nine years in prison for this crime.
I could not get into this story it was just all over the place and even repeated itself. It did not hold my interest in any way.

This one features the dove-tailing of multiple plots to harness the most dramatic effect. Perfect for readers who enjoy becoming really immersed in a story that covers a longer time-span. Another startling work from a master storyteller.

Ill Will's protagonist, Dustin Tillman, is - in my eyes - the cliché of a middle-aged psychologist. A married man and father of two sons, who has bigger issues than many of his clients, who lives in denial and doesn't see the wood for the trees. Probably not surprising, when you consider that Dustin's childhood was marked by the violent deaths of his parents and his aunt and uncle. A crime for which his adopted brother, Rusty, was subsequently sentenced. Now, new evidence has exonerated Rusty, and he is being released from prison. At work, in the meantime, Dustin is becoming increasingly mixed up with the ideas his patient, Aquil, is relaying to him. A serial killer is supposedly murdering young men, and Dustin crosses patient-therapist lines and becomes actively involved in exploring Aqil's theories. So at the heart of Ill Will, there were two intriguing mysteries. One in the past, one in the present. What really happened the night Dustin's parents were murdered? And what is behind the deaths of the young men?
Suggestions of repressed memories, people's perception of reality and truth, a lot of manipulation and the 80s Satanic rituals all play a part in this book that jumps back and forth in time between the 1980s and now. Perspectives change: there's Dustin's first-person, there's his son Aaron's, his cousin's Kate's and later on, there's also Rusty's perspective. The story didn't flow smoothly.
Some reviewers have commented on some of the unusual devices the author used, e.g. the use of columns. A couple of times, it made sense to me and I thought it was a reasonable device for mirroring situations. At other times, I couldn't see the point of it at all.
Sometimes, sentences were left unfinished. Dustin had a habit of not completing sentences, which was frustrating initially. But as it went hand in hand with his character, I began completing his sentences just like his wife and sons had been doing all their lives.
What really bothered me was the end. I was left with so many unanswered questions. It was too vague for me. This part is difficult to explain without giving away how the book ends. I really wanted to know about the motivation behind certain things that took place. Perhaps it's my fault, and I simply didn't understand it, but something was missing there for me, especially considering how painstakingly detailed the author was in other parts of the book. The end was frustrating and left me deflated, a definite let down. It wasn't the dark and disturbing literary thriller I was expecting. To me, a lot of this was more like staring at a murky lake or impenetrable, greasy fog for hours on end, if that makes sense. Maybe that was intentional considering the heavy presence of drug use in the story. It was a weird reading experience. I can't say that it was all dull. But it wasn't thrilling or even mildly suspenseful either. Nor did I care about any of the characters.
It took me ages to get through it and I mostly finished it out of a sense of duty and odd curiosity. So I can't honestly say that I liked reading it which, according to GR, would be 3 stars. In an ideal GR-world with a sliding scale, I would give this 2.5 stars overall. This was my first book by Dan Chaon and I would read another one just to see how they compare.
I received an ARC via NetGalley.

I received an ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

I was excited to read this book. The premise sounded intriguing, with a different spin than what I normally read.

Unfortunately, it seems like I got almost an unedited copy. There were several sections that abruptly ended mid sentence. It took my a LONG time to read this one, because I kept reading those sections over, trying to figure out what I missed.

Some sections almost felt like a rambling diary, where some chapters held my interest and kept me reading.

The story is interesting, it just is a bit too choppy for me...