The characters kept me reading

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This novel moved very slowly, and wasn't a thriller in the sense that I was expecting.

Despite that, I did enjoy it. I liked the characters, and the red herrings were nicely developed.

I enjoyed the resolution however, I find the reason behind what happened to Billy to not be completely believable. I can understand the initial part of what happened completely, but not the following decisions that were made. There's a spoiler below that explains this a bit more.

If Sager is hit or miss with you, and if you are content with a slower moving novel, this one might just meet your 3 star reading needs. There were aspects that made it a 4 for me: the characters and the setting were compelling. The mistakes various people made were believable, and explained well (except for what I mentioned above, which is of course key to the mystery).

I gave it a 3 because it either could have been paced a bit differently, or perhaps it could have been a bit shorter. And, because the decisions made by one character weren't totally believable.

(view spoiler)[ There are far too many books where someone buries or hides the victim of pedestrian car accidents. Obviously it would be horrendous to accidentally hit someone, but to go through with hiding the body and covering up the accident has never worked for me in any novel that has used that trope. And, it ultimately didn't work here for me. But, that just brought it down to a 3(view spoiler)[ (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]

Beverage Pairing: Probably a strong cup of coffee for morning reading, but if reading at night it pairs nicely with a merlot.