This novel, you guys. THIS. FREAKING. NOVEL. Gonna need you all to read it IMMEDIATELY so I can flail around and discuss.

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When I say Never Look Back is brilliant, I'm being a little less descriptive than I'd like to be. As someone who likes thrillers, mysteries and true crime, this novel was an incredible combination of the three. Of course, the events in Never Look Back are fictional, the feelings that Alison Gaylin evokes from her audience are similar to that of reality.

Needless to say, given my own process in writing a true crime novel on the murder of my aunt in the early 90s, I was intrigued by this. Never Look Back had the voices that I find crucial to enjoying a thriller. Not only are the voices strong throughout the course of the central mysteries, the entire plot and investigation is so intricately plotted it's impossible to look away from. Every page is coated in a specific type of tension--at times, it's so tense you can feel it trickling from the pages into your veins.

I found the way the story was told, and unraveled, to be so riveting. Each section, each split in the narration or format, leads us into the plotline. Gaylin's writing is quick and cutting, the perfect prose for thrillers. You get into the story and soon, it gets under your skin, too. I loved feeling like I had no idea about what was going to happen in Never Look Back because it made me feel like I wasn't in control and that's one of the best feelings in the genre.

There's a lot of good to be said about the entire premise of Never Look Back: the idea that we don't ever truly know anyone, not even our families, what it means to look back or to not look back and so on. If you're looking for a mystery with so many twists and turns, you'll likely have literary whiplash, Never Look Back is a total must-read for you.

The writing is on point, the storytelling is completely captivating and the mystery will keep the wheels of your mind turning. I can't recommend it enough!

About Alison Gaylin

Alison Gaylin is the award-winning author of Hide Your Eyes and its sequel, You Kill Me; the standalones Trashed and Heartless; and the Brenna Spector series: And She Was, Into the Dark, and Stay with Me. A graduate of Northwestern University and of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she lives with her husband and daughter in Woodstock, New York. Find out more about Alison at her website, and connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.