The Breakdown

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Her mind feels like it's going to break....everything is spiraling out of control. She's in a constant state of anxiety. The phone calls are amplifying all of her fears. Plus all of the things she's forgetting makes things worse. With everything going on Cass is desperate to know.... Thank you so much to NetGalley, B.A. Paris, and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book for a fair and honest review.

Maybe I’m jaded, suspicious by nature or too cynical because it didn’t take much guesswork for me to figure out what was going on; I'm talking within the first few chapters. It's not even worth getting into the nitty-gritty of the plot here, in the off chance I might spoil it for someone else. What it all boils down to is preference and subjectively what makes a story great in your eyes; unfortunately for me, this wasn’t my cup of tea. Naturally this sequence of events does not help Cass’ mental state. Why didn’t she help? What if the murderer is after her next? And why does she keep getting these silent phone calls, only when her husband isn’t home? The next morning, Cass discovers that this woman was murdered that evening, on that dark wooded road. For fear of being judged, Cass told no one that she saw this young woman, not even her husband Matthew. This woman’s name was Jane, and it turns out that Cass knew her. And that triggers a chain of events, leading Cass to fear for her own life. She becomes scared, forgetful, paranoid and begins to show signs of early onset dementia, which what her mother passed away from.It bothered me that Cass didn't take any responsibility for her own health or wellbeing. She seems content to turn over too many decisions to Matthew. I was really excited to read this one. I had loved Paris’s first book, Behind Closed Doors. How does it work that I loved one of her books but basically hated the other? I hear of reviewers loving both or hating both, but I don’t seem to have many others in my one-love, one-hate club.

Stressed and depressed, feeling so guilty with each and every day, Cass’s mental state worsens considerably. She starts experiencing episodes of memory loss, forgetting even the most simple and obvious things. The fact that her mother suffered from dementia before she died doesn’t help Cass’s mental state since she didn’t tell her husband anything about it. Everything changes for Cass when she starts getting “strange” calls from someone, which she suspects to be from the one who killed the woman in the woods.The other major theme is dementia. What a horrible realization it must be to discover you are, for all intents and purposes, losing your mind. If this insidious disease runs in your family, any tiny misplaced item or forgotten appointment could trigger alarm bells.

Cass is about to make the worst decision of her life when she decides to take a shortcut home on a dark and stormy night. The drive home takes her on a rural road through the woods during a torrential rainstorm. She passes a car parked near the woods with a woman inside, and she stops the car momentarily, thinking the woman will approach her if she needs help. The woman doesn't get out so Cass drives off. The next morning she discovers that the woman was later found dead in the car - and had been brutally murdered! This one has everything you look for in a great psychological thriller! Though I had this one figured out early on, it didn’t take away from my enjoyment at all! Highly recommend! Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

Cass starts to think someone is watching the house, that someone has been in the house. When she goes shopping and is leaving for home she can't find her car. She KNOWS where she parked, so it must have been stolen. Cass and the parking attendant look everywhere, on all the different floors only to eventually find her car.....

Cass is beside herself with guilt, could she have saved this woman? or would she herself have been murdered if she'd stopped to help? Matthew becomes impatient with her memory loss, sleepiness, and possible addiction to sleeping pills, and they begin to fight. After a particularly rough patch, Cass wakes up feeling ill. She calls an ambulance. At the hospital, she is diagnosed as having taken an overdose. She denies it, but testing finds that she has taken a large number of her spare pills, and she wonders if she might have taken an overdose and forgotten about it. It’s hard to believe that the old appliances and the murder weapon would be hidden in the shed. Hello. Everyone knows you don’t leave incriminating evidence around.

Cass is literally having a mental breakdown after the murder of a local woman is discovered…a woman she could possibly have helped. She starts struggling to remember things. Knowing her mother had been diagnosed with early onset dementia made all of her forgetfulness convince her that she too had the disease. Mysterious parcels arrive, silent phone calls, she is doubting her own sanity. Her husband Matthew is worried about her, and when the doctor says she may have early onset dementia, a disease which took her mother, Cass is naturally terrified.