All the Dangerous Things: The gripping new psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark

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Isabella hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in a year, she stumbles through one day after another, hoping that some clue will be found to lead her to Mason’s abductor. She has been giving speeches, begging for anyone who attends to come forward with some information. It isn’t the money that she makes that she cares about, it’s the names of the people who attend. Isabella is spending all of her waking time making lists and charts of people who attend, known criminals in the area, trying to find a link somewhere to her missing son. My only minor critique of her first book was that I thought she had written one twist TOO many and should have stopped after the first one. Can I also just say how unbelievable it is to me that in both the past and the present the detectives knowingly turn a blind eye to the truth with a "You've been through a lot so I don't want to make things worse" type of attitudes?!?! I'm sorry to say but that doesn't happen in the real world. Told in two timelines--in the present and in the past. Present day, Isabelle and Ben's young son Mason disappeared from his crib in the middle of the night one year ago. Their marriage has split up and Ben has moved out. Isabelle is obsessed with figuring out what happened to her son. She isn't sleeping at all and she goes to different true crime conventions in the hope that she can get the word out about her son. The past timeline is when Isabelle was growing up, she was a very deep sleepwalker and one night something happened that Isabelle thinks might have been her fault. Was Mason's disappearance her fault as well?

This book is slow and laborious. Willingham has a tendency to use more words than are necessary to say the most basic of things so it takes forever for her to just get to the point. A lot of people like that style of writing, and sometimes I do too, but for whatever reason it just didn't work for me here. I like my thrillers a little more thrilling. I wish I could always have tunnel vision: the ability to selectively focus on one single thing at a time. Turn everything else into static. White noise. After some thought, Isabelle agrees and Waylon comes to stay in Savannah, to be near her and make the interview process easier on them both. Thus, it begins. This was a solid thriller with quite a few twists I wasn’t expecting. I loved the last 20 percent of the book, even though the pacing was a little slow in the beginning.Thank you so much to the publisher, Minotaur Books and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review.

Isabelle has not slept, thus making her an unreliable narrator. She is tired and it affects her memory and recollections. Will talking to a true crime podcaster help her? What does he know about her past? The book looks at both Isabelle in the past and present. I’m beginning to hate the use of first person in this genre. All we get is “I think”, “I wonder”, “I imagine”, “I feel”,… after every few lines. It kills the momentum of the plot. I understand that first person povs will always have some inner monologues, but there should be a limit to them, especially in genres that function on pace. Willingham also manages to get her characters JUST right...flawed, complex, interesting, and yet accessible. Unlike another thriller I read about insomnia earlier this year that shall remain nameless, Isabelle's insomnia and how she dealt with it were handled in a REALISTIC way, which only added fuel to the fire. On the surface, this could be characterized as a 'Is she an unreliable narrator or not?' type of story, and on some level it is...but I promise, this read is SO much more than that. Isabelle's entire existence now revolves around finding him, but she knows she can’t go on this way forever. In hopes of jarring loose a new witness or buried clue, she agrees to be interviewed by a true-crime podcaster—but his interest in Isabelle's past makes her nervous. His incessant questioning paired with her severe insomnia has brought up uncomfortable memories from her own childhood, making Isabelle start to doubt her recollection of the night of Mason’s disappearance, as well as second-guess who she can trust... including herself. But she is determined to figure out the truth no matter where it leads. The only sign of an intruder was an open window in Mason's room. With zero other leads, or evidence though, the police had nothing to go on. The case goes cold.The identity of the kidnapper and the resolution of the mystery were easily the best parts of the book. It is this section that caused me to push up my rating to 2.5. Until then, I was sitting firmly on the 2 star mark. Between her extreme sleep deprivation, the strange, glassy-eyed old man she encounters during night-time neighborhood walks, some unexpected discoveries on a laptop, Ben’s new relationship and a dogged detective who seems to treat everything she says with suspicion, Isabelle begins to wonder if she really IS the villain in this story. ONE WHOLE YEAR, since her eighteen month old toddler, was taken from his room, in the middle of the night-the window by his crib open-but neither she, nor her husband Ben, awakened by any noise. I remember his lips feeling salty and soft... This is where I threw in the towel for good. You cannot FEEL salty. His lips can TASTE salty. Unless you meant his lips felt grainy, which seems unpleasant, and doesn't fit the context of this ~~romantic~~ scene. Feeling salty... foh!!!

Motherhood meant sleep deprivation but since Isabel's baby was taken, she's had no real sleep in a year. She's at a new level of sleep disfunction and it's hard to think straight. She doesn't even trust herself now or her memories of the past. Are there more reasons to feel guilty than she already knows? Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press/Minotaur, and Stacy Willingham for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 1.10!** But alongside this, Isabelle is also turning her attention inwards, asking long-ignored questions about herself, her past, and what really happened all those years ago. I step into the light, walking with purpose toward the host as he signals me onstage. The crowd continues to yell, some of them standing, clapping, the beady little eyes of their iPhones pointed in my direction, taking me in, unblinking. I turn toward the audience, squinting at their silhouettes. My eyes adjust a bit, and I wave, smiling weakly before coming to a halt in the center.

One of my most anticipated 2023 releases, this slow-burn mystery thriller with an unreliable narrator by Stacy Willingham does not disappoint. This is where Isabelle finds herself when her son goes missing in the middle of the night. "I was asleep the whole night" she says when the police ask, and it's true-- she was. Twelve months ago, Mason the 18-month-old son of Isabelle and Ben goes missing from his cot while the family slept in another room.