The Hiding Place

I received this book through a GR Giveaway. Thank you to GoodReads / Crown and C J Tudor for this ARC, in exchange for my honest review! The minute I started reading this book, I was furious at myself for not reading it sooner!

Short summary
An exceptional thriller laced with nail-biting tension and pure evil! One of my absolute favorite reads of ‘19!

My thoughts
I was pulled in immediately...it was brilliant, creepy, terrifying and gruesome! There were so many twists...I couldn’t even begin to guess what was going to happen next. And that ending!!

My first book by Tudor and she has been added to the top of my favorite author list. Love her wicked and imaginative storytelling! Her writing is intense, with a touch of humor and gore, show more what a combo plate! This novel reminds me of Stephen King’s early work—those were my favorites. I will be reading “The Chalk Man” as soon as I get my hands on it!

My Rating: 5 ⭐️’s
Published: February 5th 2019 by Crown Pages: 345

Recommend: Absolutely...if you like a little horror mixed in with your thrillers! Stephen King fans will love this one.

Book Blurb
Joe never wanted to come back to Arnhill. After the way things ended with his old gang--the betrayal, the suicide, the murder--and after what happened when his sister went missing, the last thing he wanted to do was return to his hometown. But Joe doesn't have a choice. Because judging by what was done to that poor Morton kid, what happened all those years ago to Joe's sister is happening again. And only Joe knows who is really at fault.

Lying his way into a teaching job at his former high school is the easy part. Facing off with former friends who are none too happy to have him back in town--while avoiding the enemies he's made in the years since--is tougher. But the hardest part of all will be returning to that abandoned mine where it all went wrong and his life changed forever, and finally confronting the shocking, horrifying truth about Arnhill, his sister, and himself. Because for Joe, the worst moment of his life wasn't the day his sister went missing. It was the day she came back. show less

Towards the end of "The Taking Of Annie Thorne", Joe Thorne says:

The past isn't real.
It's just a story we tell ourselves.
And sometimes, we lie.

I think that quote sets the tone for this grim, dark, violent, oppressive book about a man who, lost in his addictions and his guilt, has learnt to despise himself. A man who no longer seeks redemption, just revenge and, if possible, survival.

Joe Thorne is the heart of the book. He is the narrator and his world view stains the whole story like sweat on dirty sheets.

Joe is a teacher, but don't let that fool you. He's also a drunk, a gambler, and an habitual liar. His past has, quite literally crippled him. He's a man filled with guilt, anger and self-loathing.

I didn't find him an easy man to be show more with but I did find him very believable. In him I could see my worse self: the man who holds grudges, nurtures anger, knows what he should do and the doesn't do it. The man who reacts to confrontations with aggression, even when he knows it will earn him a good kicking.

Fortunately, I don't share his addictions, his tragic history or his isolation but he resonated with me more than I would have liked him to, especially when his reflections on life mirrored my thoughts. Here' an example:

There's a line people spout, usually people who want to sound sage and wise, about wherever you travel, you can never escape yourself.
That's bullshit.
Get far enough away from the relationships that bind you, the people who define you, the familiar landscapes and routines that tether you to an identity and you can easily escape yourself. For a while at least. Self is only a construct. You can dismantle it, reconstruct it, pimp up a new you.
As long as you never go back.
Then, that new you falls away like the Emperor's new clothes, leaving you naked and exposed with all your ugly flaws and mistakes revealed for the world to see.

Or

"If newspapers are the place where facts become stories, the internet is the place where stories become conspiracy theories."

Tom Thorne's world is unrelentingly grim. Here's his reflection on the real meaning of the phrase "Time Heals All"

"Time doesn't mend a broken heart, it just grinds the pieces into dust."

There's more to "The Taking Of Annie Thorne" than a grim narrator with a flair for spitting out sharp-edged truisms. It has two other things that make it into an above-average thriller: a clever structure and a core idea that doesn't disappoint.

The book got my full attention by opening with an atrocity and then flipping, with no immediately obvious link, to Joe Thorne's first-person, narrative about journeying back to his childhood home.

For a while, the focus is on understanding who Joe is and why he holds himself and everyone else in such contempt. Then we get the first suggestions that this is a narrative that is going to go beyond the ordinary. Dark hints get added to the self-hate. A second timeline, twenty-five years earlier is opened up. The sense of foreboding rises.

At this point, some thrillers/horror stories fall apart. The big bad turns out not to be particularly big of bad and we slip slowly into an anti-climatic happy ending. "The Taking Of Annie Thorne" doesn't do that. The big bad doesn't disappoint. And when you finally know for certain where all the dark hints were taking you, the book moves into a dramatic end-game that is full of twists that surprised me but never left me feeling cheated.

I recommend the audiobook. Richard Armitage's narration is first-rate. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.
https://soundcloud.com/penguin-books/the-taking-of-annie-thorne-by-c-j-tudor show less

'Britain's female Stephen King' is an appropriate title for C J Tudor, because both of her novels to date have reminded me of King classics. The Chalk Man, which I loved and gave five stars, was similar to The Body/Stand By Me, and now we have The Taking of Annie Thorne, which is like a mash-up of It and Pet Sematary and not in an imaginative way. I was hopeful about this second novel, even though I waited until the price dropped to 99p on Kindle before downloading, but whatever charm carried her debut story for me quickly decomposed into a rotting corpse of cliches and bad dialogue. (She's even got me writing like King now!)

Teacher Joe Thorne returns home to the mining village of Arnhill, haunted by ghosts of the past and chased by show more hoodlums from the present. He wants to find out whether a school friend jumped or was pushed from the roof of the school 25 years ago, and also if what happened to his little sister Annie might be happening again. Remind you of another book yet? How about something unspeakable lurking underground which has the power to bring the dead back to life - with a vengeance. I'd forgotten all about the King connection in Tudor's previous book, but when the flashbacks started, I thought, 'Is she really going to turn this into some Pet Sematary knock off?' But yes, if you've read King's novels, then nothing about the plot or the characters will surprise you. There's even a 'amateur local historian tells the hero about all the mysterious events dating back to the 1600s' subplot, including witch hunts and mine cave-ins.

What The Chalk Man held onto, and why I liked Tudor's first novel so much, was the 'Britishness' of the storytelling. Tudor is obviously so keen to emulate her 'constant inspiration', Mr King, that she's turned American, like a bad episode of CSI. Joe the drinking and gambling loner who moves into the murder house, Gloria the hitwoman and the laughable twist in the tale, Beth the manic pixie dream girl - go back to your roots, CJ! And all the twee philosophising made my teeth ache - 'But that's all life ever is. A promise. Not a guarantee', 'Time is simply a great eraser', 'Grief is personal. It isn't something you can share like a box of chocolates', 'Happiness is overrated'.

If I give book three the benefit of the doubt, I'll have to borrow it from the library! show less

Ted Lewis meets Stephen King, and it all reads a bit like a Micheal Marshall Smith story, which is as heady a brew as you could hope for in this fast, slick, sinister, creepy tale. A teacher takes up a position in his old school in an isolated mining town, but he's not planning on staying for long. The distant past and the uncomfortable present are both closing in on him as he revisits the disappearance of his young sister. Staying in a cottage that was the scene of a recent ugly murder-suicide and chased by nasty people for gambling debts, he is not in for a comfortable time. Twisty, turny, well-written and somwhow succeeds in keeping the protagonist mostly sympathetic without letting him off the hook.

This book proves without a shadow of a doubt that The Chalk Man wasn’t a fluke, C.J. Tudor is the real deal.

If you enjoyed The Chalk Man then you are going to love this one, and in my humble opinion this one blows her first book right out of the water!

This book is quite hard to review without spoilers. There are defiantly touches of Stephen King’s IT as well as another of his classics in the plot lines but I don’t want to say which other of King’s books for fear of giving the game away so to speak!

This is proper old school horror, the right amount of mystery, suspense and creepiness crawling off the pages to get your senses tingling with anticipation and the obligatory plot twist that sends your head spinning.

There is a dry show more sense of humour speckled within and our household has now got a new favourite expression – “Bum Bogie” I can safely say I had never heard that before!

The characters are all well written as is the sense of a place which sucks you up and dumps you out in Arnhill, then holds you hostage until the last page has been turned.

Be prepared to lose some sleep!

Fans of Stephen King, Steve Cavanagh and Dean Koontz or even just fans of horror and thrillers this is a book not to be missed, this one is going to be on a lot of ‘Best Books of 2019’ lists already!

The Taking of Annie Thorne will be published in the UK on 21 February 2019

https://debbiesbookreviews.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/the-taking-of-annie-thorne-b... show less

"Happiness is overrated; it’s far too short-lived, for a start. If you bought it on Amazon, you’d demand a refund. Broke after a month and impossible to fix. Next time will try misery—apparently that shit lasts forever."
Joe Thorne left his hometown under a cloud of grief and guilt. Never to return, or so he thought. Part time teacher, full time heavy drinker and gambler, he tries to block out what happened all those years ago, and some days he even succeeds. When he gets a strange message that reminds him of his tragic past, and with nowhere to escape his mounting gambling debts he heads home to Arnhill to hide from the thugs who want to collect, and to uncover what really happened all those years ago.
Most of the people who show more remember Joe are not happy to see him, and slowly we learn why the feeling is mutual. I loved the flashbacks to Joe's childhood and the supernatural overtones.
C.J. Tudor has officially cemented her place on my list of must read authors.

I received an advance copy for review. show less

DNF. I don't normally review my DNFs but as I got to 68% on this one I think I'll allow it. Obvs so disappointed. I adored The Burning Girls, then I liked The Chalk Man, and then...this mistake. Two thirds through it and it still doesn't know what story it wants to tell. Is it about children who disappear and come back wrong? Is it about addiction and attempted recovery? Is it about bullying, trauma, and becoming the bully? Is it about a supposedly creepy deserted mine that somehow manages to not be creepy or scary in the slightest? Is it about over the top townies who circle the wagons when a prodigal son returns? Is it about a violent, vengeful gambling debt collector/enforcer who may be a figment of the MC's imagination because he show more seems to picture her as some Dom woman he's DTF?

I don't care about Joe's damage or his childhood or even his poor sister. Not even the cottage he rents, in which a woman murdered her son and then died by suicide, manages to successfully convey a creepiness factor - even with constant sounds of scuttling beetles that may or may not be real!

Look, I get it. Banal evil is still evil. The evil of playground politics and adults who aren't there for you and shit like that, and the lingering trauma into adulthood, yeah go ahead make that part of your evil. But it doesn't work here. It's all rendered so dully. And I am one hundred percent certain that the supernatural evil, which I know is coming, isn't going to be any better. One star. show less