All the Dangerous Things: The gripping new psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark

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Thank you,” I say, my voice sounding like an echo. “Thank you all for coming out this weekend. What an incredible bunch of speakers.” Now Isabelle is giving talks to the public about her missing baby, who was taken from her home a year before. She knows she is a suspect in his disappearance. She knows people try to get close to her for their own reasons, such as the true-crime podcaster who offers to help her find out who took her son. He's had a successful case and is on a roll. She could use his help but fears a trap.

The portrayal of different female characters was very good. All of them felt genuine, authentic, but flawed and complex. Yet I didn’t find myself rooting for any one of them which is unusual given the subject matter – missing child, working mother, spurned woman etc.. and the reason was because Isabelle wasn’t very likeable – nor were any of the other women for that matter.Content warnings: Insomnia and sleep deprivation; disappearance; murder and attempted murder; mention of death by suicide; death and grief; depression; psychosis; postpartum trauma; night terrors; mention of pregnancy loss All the Dangerous Things Book Review / Summary The word ‘thriller’ applies to the book in its loosest possible sense. Most of the book is more of a slow-burn mystery. If you want adrenaline-filled thrills, this is the wrong book. oak trees have formed a giant archway over the Bluff, their limbs getting mangled together in time like the lacing together of arthritic fingers. As usual, the police didn’t find out anything important. It is our unreliable narrator who manages to resolve the case almost entirely on her own, a whole year after the incident. So basically, nothing much happened for a year, and then every secret started unravelling within a couple of weeks and the mystery is resolved too neatly, tied together with a ribbon on top.

Finally, I must mention the characterisation. These are without doubt, flawed, complex people who are all portrayed well so they feel authentic and they are what makes this such a powerful and thought provoking psychological thriller. I highly recommend this and I can’t wait to read what the author comes up with next. Isabelle has barely slept in the last year, meaning extreme sleep deprivation makes it hard for her to function, to trust her own thoughts - did she do something wrong on that dreadful night that Mason went missing, she knows that the detective investigating the case looks on her as a suspect. As if she doesn’t have enough to worry about, her husband Ben has ended their marriage - it’s difficult to maintain a relationship when you’re both grieving and are unable to communicate, but whilst Isabelle is unable to move forward in her life, Ben appears to want to do exactly that. Gripping and tense, All the Dangerous Things was hard to put down. Once I started listening to the audiobook, I did not want to put it down, as this one seeped in and piqued my interest. Motherhood, a missing child, insomnia, and an unreliable narrator pulled me in. Can I also just say how unbelievable it is to me that in both the past and the present the detectives knowingly turn a blind eye to the truth with a "You've been through a lot so I don't want to make things worse" type of attitudes?!?! I'm sorry to say but that doesn't happen in the real world.

Customer reviews

Terrific... Willingham’s strong affinity for characters and her superior plotting elevate All the Dangerous Things. . . seals her place as a talented novelist." – South Florida Sun Sentinel My only minor critique of her first book was that I thought she had written one twist TOO many and should have stopped after the first one. After some thought, Isabelle agrees and Waylon comes to stay in Savannah, to be near her and make the interview process easier on them both. Thus, it begins. This is a novel of a mother’s worst nightmare, almost unimaginable!! Isabelle Drake put her toddler son to bed one evening and upon awakening she found that Mason was GONE!! No signs of forced entry but a window was open in the nursery.

I thought I had the plot figured out several times but I was wrong. You will need to be an amazing detective to figure this one out!!

I’ll start with the negatives first since there are only two - and they don’t warrant taking off any stars. Despite working out the plot far too early, I was still gripped with the unpredictability of the sub plots, unsure of how the story would come together, and then of course the unveiling of peoples secrets and characters, was a great feature of the book. Dangerously entertaining.

We are nothing but what we choose to believe, but it’s all a mirage, bending and warping and shimmering in the distance, changing its form at any given second. —Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things It's after speaking at an event dedicated to True crime that she meets True Crime Podcaster, Waylon Spencer. Waylon takes an interest in Mason's case and proposes to Isabelle that they work together. If he can interview her for his series, it will bring even more exposure to her case. Willingham also manages to get her characters JUST right...flawed, complex, interesting, and yet accessible. Unlike another thriller I read about insomnia earlier this year that shall remain nameless, Isabelle's insomnia and how she dealt with it were handled in a REALISTIC way, which only added fuel to the fire. On the surface, this could be characterized as a 'Is she an unreliable narrator or not?' type of story, and on some level it is...but I promise, this read is SO much more than that. I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher Minotaur, through Edelweiss. It was my pleasure to read and review this terrific thriller. I'm a firm believer in "less is more" when it comes to writing. Think of Iain Reid: he can bring all the spooky vibes without winding similes and melodramatic run-on sentences. If you can elicit emotion from the reader with sparse prose, that's talent. Moaning on and on and on about "me sad, me depressed, me wounded like a baby bird who dropped 30000 feet from the sky during a stage 5 hurricane" in hopes the reader might be like... maybe I should be sad here?? is not talent.With no leads or momentum after a year of this missing person’s report, Isabelle becomes obsessed with finding answers. Now things are even worse. It’s been a year since her toddler was taken from his crib in the night, and six months since her husband Ben left her. He thinks she needs to move on, but Isabelle can’t and won’t rest until she finds their son Mason. After she speaks at a true crime con, podcaster Waylon Spencer offers to let her tell her story. After all, there are still some who think SHE’S behind Mason’s disappearance, and a tragic event from her past isn’t helping. The writing style was punchy and flowed well. Perfect along with the short chapters for creating the tension and suspense that kept me hooked to the end despite working out the plot too early. Told in two timelines--in the present and in the past. Present day, Isabelle and Ben's young son Mason disappeared from his crib in the middle of the night one year ago. Their marriage has split up and Ben has moved out. Isabelle is obsessed with figuring out what happened to her son. She isn't sleeping at all and she goes to different true crime conventions in the hope that she can get the word out about her son. The past timeline is when Isabelle was growing up, she was a very deep sleepwalker and one night something happened that Isabelle thinks might have been her fault. Was Mason's disappearance her fault as well? Although the analogies are really good, there are too many of them, they become distracting and pull you out of the storyline.