Book Review: The Cottage by Daniel Judson | Jo Linsdell

Book Review: The Cottage by Daniel Judson

     

Book Review The Cottage by Daniel Judson


My thoughts about The Cottage by Daniel Judson

Book Review


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Disclosure: I got sent a free copy of this book by the publisher via Net Galley.




  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08SBPBQ3S
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thomas & Mercer 
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 2, 2021
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 442 pages

The book synopsis for The Cottage by Daniel Judson

The Cottage by Daniel Judson

A widowed mother is terrorized by a stalker with unfathomable intent in a novel of cold-blooded suspense by the Shamus Award–winning author of The Temporary Agent.

When Kate Burke is awakened one night by a sound outside her window, her PTSD is triggered. Was it simply a deer crossing her secluded backyard? Or was it intruders? Because Kate still lives with the dreadful memories of her husband’s murder during a seemingly random home invasion two years before, she knows the answer can mean the difference between life and death.

But when she discovers the unsettling ways her property has been vandalized the next day, Kate is forced to conclude the worst: someone is watching her.

Kate decides to rent out her estranged sister’s onetime cottage, which sits on her property, for the summer. Another set of eyes around the place won’t hurt. And with additional support from friends and family, Kate should be feeling safe.

Instead, the vandalism is escalating. So are the anonymous late-night calls and texts, each one more disturbing and violating than the last. Whoever is targeting Kate, whatever their motive or terrifying endgame, the footsteps in the dark are getting closer.



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2 Stars

Discussing The Cottage by Daniel Judson




Quotes from The Cottage by Daniel Judson


Taking a boy into the cottage was a clear violation of the rules the two sisters had agreed to, rules that were in place—they were assured often by their stern but beloved grandfather—for their own good.

Rebecca was fourteen, and Kate, a year younger, was scared of her, though she hadn’t always been. The sisters had held hands during their parents’ wake, and again while standing at their gravesides. During the car ride from the cemetery, sitting together in the back seat, they had all but clung to each other, a seven-year-old and an eight-year-old whose world, while not perfect, had been turned upside down.

Nothing was broken, though; Kate told herself that often. If her sister could change, seemingly overnight, couldn’t she just change back? And then the chaos Rebecca caused would end and be forgotten. Kate and she would once again be what they had always been, ever since Kate could remember: sisters and best friends.

The backyard has always been a safe haven—for her own children now, but also for Kate and her older sister back when their grandparents lived in this home and she and Rebecca would spend their summers with them before finally moving in year-round during junior high school.

She is exhausted—it’s only after the second cup that her grogginess begins to wane—but after two years as a working single mother, she is used to performing on very little sleep.

But the Kate who emerged from those weeks of grief relieved occasionally by numbness—that Kate was a different Kate, a broken Kate that in no way resembled the one she’d always been.

Standing alone in her darkened living room, she does not trust the silence that surrounds her now. Something will shatter it, if not in this very moment, then in the next. Or an hour from now. Or tomorrow. Or the day after that . . .

“Please, Katie,” Sabrowsky says. “People change. And doing one good thing a long time ago doesn’t necessarily make someone a good person.”

Never in all the years that she and Leif had rented the cottage did either of them interact in anything more than a passing way with their tenants. And it is her intention to maintain that tradition, if only because her life is complicated enough right now and there really isn’t any room for even one more acquaintance.

“We all make enemies, whether we know it or not."

“Grown men and women can get together and just be friends.” “Then why do you freak out whenever I talk to a boy?” “I said ‘grown men and women.’ Teenagers are another story.”

“Apparently there is an entire subculture on the internet devoted to idiots who do this kind of thing. Guys who swap photos they’ve taken of unsuspecting women and make derogatory comments about them to each other. In some cases it all stays online, but in others it spills over into the real world, like with our guy. I guess what’s the point of violating someone’s privacy if that person doesn’t know about it, right?”

“It was something stupid that happened years ago. Sometimes it’s better to keep things like that in the past, don’t you think? Sometimes we have to bury things for the sake of others. And then learn to live with that secret as best we can.”



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Book Review The Cottage by Daniel Judson






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