Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Book Blurb:
From the twisted mind behind mega hit My Lovely Wife comes the story of a family—not unlike your own—just with a few more violent tendencies thrown in….
Beth, Portia, and Eddie Morgan haven’t all been together in years. And for very good reasons—we’ll get to those later. But when their wealthy grandfather dies and leaves a cryptic final message in his wake, the siblings and their respective partners must come together for a cross-country road trip to fulfill his final wish and—more importantly—secure their inheritance.
But time with your family can be tough. It is for everyone.
It’s even harder when you’re all keeping secrets and trying to forget a memory, a missing person, an act of revenge, the man in the black truck who won’t stop following your car—and especially when at least one of you is a killer and there’s a body in the trunk. Just to name a few reasons.
But money is a powerful motivator. It is for everyone.
My Review:
Without realizing it, I borrowed two audiobooks by the same author within a month. I previously read and reviewed Too Old For This and greatly enjoyed it, perhaps because it involved a female senior main character. Major dark satire. This book is also dark. Very dark and also quite original.
This one, however, doesn’t include the satire; no sense of humor. At first I thought the bickering between siblings was meant to establish a sense of familial connectedness. Boy, was I wrong. Grandpa died and the inheritance comes after a road trip.
Beth, Portia, and Eddie Morgan all have widely different personalities and they all remember their grandfather differently. For that matter, they remember their parents differently as well.
Not the first book I’ve read recently with totally unlikeable characters, truly dysfunctional. They all have secrets and are disturbed to varying degrees. You can’t believe what happens on this cross-country trip they are forced to recapture of the one with their grandpa when they were all little—some twenty years ago. There are caveats, of course, but they must all do the trip just like they did before, including the dumps they stayed in and the greasy spoons where they ate. Beth, the middle child, is both the narrator and a liar.
This trip is a little more complicated, given that now there is a marriage involved along with another significant partner. Beth was given the edict to find their missing sister by their mother—now in prison. But guess how that goes.
Yes, it’s a mind-blowing, skull-numbing read, with twists and whip-fast, shocking turns. Once I got my eyes back and focused, I’d reread that passage. No, that’s what I read. Who writes this stuff?!
Okay, so the deal was that the siblings had to complete the trip, report back and get their inheritance—no small change. So, how in hell did this ending solve that one? Hated the ending. So much drama, never-ending bickering, one extra little zinger after another. (Who is following them? Why did grandpa whisk the kids away from their parents and what’s with the calls? What’s the deal with Eddie?) It’s clever, keeps you hooked, entertained until the end. And did we find out what happened with the missing sister?
Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.
Rosepoint Publishing: Four Stars 
Book Details:
Genre: Dark Humor Literature & Fiction, Dark Humor, Psychological Thrillers
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Narrator: Karissa Vacker
Release Date: July 21, 2020
Title Links:
Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo
The Author: Samantha Downing is an internationally bestselling thriller author. Her novels include My Lovely Wife, He Started It, For Your Own Good, and A Twisted Love Story. Her debut novel, My Lovely Wife, was nominated for Edgar, ITW, and Macavity awards in the US, the CWA award in the UK, and was the winner of the Prix des Lectrices award in France.
Her latest thriller, Too Old For This, was released in August 2025.
©2026 V Williams
