Isabelle is the typical contemporary thriller protagonist: a woman obsessed with an idea and who assumes herself to be correct while everyone around her has to be wrong. Stacy Willingham’s masterful use of dual timelines adds intrigue and atmosphere to this compelling mystery, while her immersive writing draws readers into our protagonist’s increasingly unstable state of mind. this involving, thought-provoking page-turner raises disturbing questions about the nature of the stories people tell themselves to make sense of the world.

ALL THE DANGEROUS THINGS isn’t exactly what I would consider a “fast-paced” suspense story, but its tension and readability don’t suffer in the least for its measured pacing. Isabella Drake: a struggling and grieving mother, suffering from insomnia after her son Mason has been kidnapped a year ago! A year has passed since Isabelle lost her son Mason, who was taken from his crib under mysterious circumstances; something happened between Isabelle and her family before this event occurred, but it's been kept hidden like an unsolved puzzle waiting to be put together. I pretty much figured out what happened in the past before it was all revealed, but I was wrong with my guesses about Mason's disappearance and who was responsible.

But I could only make it to 14% (after SEVERAL attempts including a failed buddy read) before I gave up. BLOOD SISTERS is a gripping mystery about a Cherokee archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who is summoned to rural Oklahoma to investigate the disappearance of two women…one of them her sister. She moves about in a semiconscious dream state, opening her eyes to find herself in another place with no recollection of WHEN or HOW she got there.

But as they proceed with this, Isabelle starts questioning her own memories of what happened that night. I lift my arm and take a sip of my Styrofoam cup of coffee—strong, black, squeaky when my chapped lips stick to the rim. Despite her initial reluctance she also agrees to participate in a true-crime podcast hosted by Waylon Spencer, who has been successful in solving a cold case in the past and who was one of the attendees at a conference in which Isabelle speaks about her son’s disappearance.

It’s a harrowing and dark story you would never want to imagine could possibly be real and you would hope never would be but it’s so well written that it could be factual. The past is mixing with the present as the complexity of human nature and motherhood is carefully interwoven into a tragic story. A riveting “past” timeline adds a layer of complexity, intrigue, and atmosphere to this immersive mystery. Highly recommended for fans of Lisa Jewell’s THEN SHE WAS GONE and Jennifer Hillier’s LITTLE SECRETS, this is a 2023 mystery not to be missed. It's a tangled web of mystery and intrigue in All the Dangerous Things - a psychological thriller that will make you question everything.