I’m a big fan of relaxing my brain through literature, but my love of genre means that you can’t really fool me much. I recently enjoyed two thrillers–Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica and The Hand that Feeds You by AJ Rich–and while both were well written with fabulous characters and lots of suspense, I couldn’t help but wish that I could read a thriller that didn’t basically end up in the basement with Jame Gumb. In the case of Hand, the very fact of a cat-and-mouse story means there has to be a thrilling climax, which by default makes it not thrilling. Pretty Baby was more of a psychological thriller, so it doesn’t end with a chase scene but with a spectacular unraveling that I could see coming. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy both books–on the contrary, I’d recommend both of them. But I’m just waiting for something totally new from the thriller genre and I’m not sure I’m going to get it. At least until Tana French gets her new book out.

The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs wasn’t a thriller, but a revenge story nonetheless, in the vein of Diary of a Mad Housewife only nowhere near as satisfying. I really wanted to see Caroline return home after confronting her high school bully, instead of having it end so abruptly.