Ruin Falls

I can't read Jenny Milchum at night when I'm about to go to sleep. Her scenarios are far too creepy. Her books are scary but not so creepy and scary that I can't believe every bit of what is happening. Her first book, Cover of Snow, drew me right in, even with its alarming premise, and kept me reading far into the night. This newest one, Ruin Falls is even better.

Milchum gives us the primary victims of domestic abuse (more mental and pyschological than physical but every bit as real) and sprinkles in some secondary ones whose stories weave in and out. For a while, I couldn't quite see how they all fit together, but Milchum does an excellent job of lacing the story lines. Once again, she uses the wooded Adirondacks as her setting. It is show more obviously an area where she is comfortable exploring and describing.

Drawing on all the publicity today about the back to the earth movement, environmental protection, conservation of resources, sustainable agriculture, and retreat from worldly contamination, this one combines these issues with twisted personalities in a scenario that is so well written it's more than believable--it can scare the living bejeebies out of any one who is a parent.  Just published this week, this one should be headed for your must read list.

Note : I also had the chance to sample this in audio. Cassandra Campbell does a fantastic job of delivering the variety of emotions the author portrays in her writing.  If you're an audio fan, be sure to check this one out. show less

Interesting mystery. The start of the book is the strongest. I was totally lost as to who and why the children are kidnapped. It seemed that the further I got into it, though, it was a little improbable. Especially thought the romance that was thrown in was out of place.

I swear I had a knot in my stomach the whole time I was reading this book. So suspenseful!! While on a family vacation, Liz Daniels wakes up to find her children are missing. Many layers to this mystery, and Liz is reluctant to trust anyone. Milchman’s first book was okay, while this one was great.

Ruin Falls by Jenny Milchman is a recommended novel of suspense that explores one woman's nightmare.

In Ruin Falls Liz Daniels is heading off on a rare vacation with her family to visit her in-laws farm in western New York. Liz, her husband, Paul, and their two children, Reid and Ally, live in a remote area of the Adirondack Mountains. Paul keeps a tight rein on his family as far as where they go and what they eat so a trip away is almost an unheard of experience. The trip turns into a nightmare after they decide to stop and spend the night in a motel. When Liz wakes up the next morning her children are gone - vanished. It soon becomes clear when Paul later vanishes that rather than a stranger abduction this is a domestic custody show more situation and Paul is the abductor.

She returns to her home to try and find the cues that Paul must have left that will indicate where he took the children - and why he took them. Liz is racing against time. Not only must she use all her wits to try to uncover the reasons for Paul's behavior and hopefully the answers to where he has taken her children, she also needs to muster up her own strength and belief in herself in order to find the answers.

The tension created at the beginning of Ruin Falls was so thick it had me biting my nails. Having your children abducted, or bothered in any way, is right up there near the top of the list of a mother's worst fears. I could totally understand Liz Daniels fears and how having a nightmare occur in real life would shake you up. To then have your husband be the likely culprit is unthinkable. Then, unknown to Liz, there are several other stories playing out that will all connect together.

While Ruin Falls is a novel of psychological suspense and it does create an atmosphere of tension and dread, I must also admit that after all the tension in the first part of the book, it then seemed to slow down for me and the ending was anticlimactic. I was totally in and engrossed at the beginning but once the reason was sort of revealed it seemed nonsensical and wasn't as well developed or explained as it could have been. Or perhaps I just wasn't buying the explanation which lessened the element of suspense for me. I think better development of the character of Paul could have helped.

Milchman is a good writer, however, so I expect she'll have plenty of opportunities to totally impress all of us even more in the future.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Random House for review purposes. show less

If you liked Jenny Milchman's first book, COVER OF SNOW, and even if you didn't, you should like this, her second book, RUIN FALLS. I didn't read other reviews, though. If you read reviews before you read the book, you're taking the chance that something written may spoil the suspense you might have enjoyed discovering on your own.

So, to make a long story short in order not to give away what isn't mine to give, another resident of Wedeskyll finds herself in another predicament. This is a standalone story, though. In this one, a woman's children have been kidnapped, and she looks for them herself rather than passively wait for others to do it for her.

That's all you need to know. You'll thank me later.

I recently read Ruin Falls by Jenny Milchman, a suspense author. This is her second novel and I found it to be quite a good read. Typically, the suspense genre is not one of my favorites, but the description on the jacket caught my attention right away and what I found between the pages lived up to the description on the jacket.

A synopsis from Goodreads is as follows:

Liz Daniels has every reason to be happy about setting off on a rare family vacation, leaving behind her remote home in the Adirondack Mountains for a while. Instead, she feels uneasy. Her children, eight-year-old Reid and six-year-old Ally, have met their paternal grandparents only a handful of times. But Liz’s husband, Paul, has decided that, despite a strained show more relationship with his mother and father, they should visit the farm in western New York where he spent his childhood.

On their way to the farm, the family stops at a hotel for the night. In the morning, when Liz goes to check on her sleeping children, all her anxiety comes roaring back: Ally and Reed are nowhere to be found. Blind panic slides into ice-cold terror as the hours tick by without anyone finding a trace of the kids. Soon, Paul and Liz are being interviewed by police, an Amber Alert is issued, and detectives are called in.

Frantic worry and helplessness threaten to overtake Liz’s mind—but in a sudden, gut-wrenching instant she realizes that it was no stranger who slipped into the hotel room that night. Someone she trusted completely has betrayed her. Though she knows that Ally and Reid are safe, Liz will stop at nothing to find them and get them back. From her guarded in-laws’ unwelcoming farmhouse to the deep woods of her own hometown, Liz follows the threads of a terrible secret to uncover a hidden world created from dreams and haunted by nightmares.

This book kept my interest the whole time I read it. It was an interesting concept, that the fact that it is not a stranger who “kidnaps” her kids but someone she knows and loves. The idea of kidnapping is not an original concept; however, the reason the person takes the kids is a somewhat original idea. Some parts of the book reminded me of the idea behind the show Doomsday Preppers and that made it interesting. For her second novel, Milchman provides a truly suspenseful story where you suspect everyone because the cast of characters are all shady and seem to have secrets to hide. I would recommend this book to anyone who is also a fan of Laura Lippman, Liane Moriarty, or even James Patterson. show less

This book was a first reads.

The beginning of Ruin Falls was very annoying, I just wanted to slap the main character Liz for being so weak and dependent. I almost stopped reading.

After Liz takes back the reins of her life, Ruin Falls is actually a good book. The second half of the book was hard to put down. It is full of surprises that I did not see coming (a rare treat)! Ruin Falls is definitely worth the read!