Never Coming Home

by Hannah Mary McKinnon

• ISBN10: 0778386104
• ISBN13: 9780778386100
• Publish Date: 24 May 2022
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Mira Books
• Edition: Original ed.
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[Quirky Cat]

Time to dive into another thriller novel! Never Coming Home, written by Hannah Mary McKinnon, immediately caught my attention. I love the cover, especially the colors. The description further pulled me in.

Lucas Forester is what some may call a black widower – though they don't know that yet. He married his wife, Michelle, intending to get access to her fortune. Now he's biding his time for it to all be his.

For a moment there, he thought his plan had succeeded. Then a note changed the name of the game, turning him into the target. An ironic twist, given what he'd just done.

Man, I do love it when thriller novels start in media res. There's something so dramatic about an introduction like that, don't you think? Never Coming Home starts with Lucas having spent quite a lot of time planning his wife's death, forcing readers to get up to speed quickly, or else they risk missing what happens next.

In truth, this novel starts a little further along than that, but I don't want to spoil it all for you. You'll have to check out that introduction (and the whole story) yourself. I enjoyed it, even while I was immediately rooting for Lucas to fail (who wouldn't?).

I was a little surprised to find myself almost like Lucas at times. Almost. He's still a jerk, but he's got a sense of humor; I'll give him that. Hannah Mary McKinnon did a good job portraying two sides of his character here.

Unfortunately, those moments didn't make up for everything Lucas did and planned. It made it easier to be a neutral party to the tension he was dealing with, though I'm not sure if that was the intention.

Thanks to MIRA and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Read more reviews over at Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

[Jeff Sexton]

Was It Really The Perfect Murder? This is an interesting tale in that we get the villain's perspective - and virtually no one else's. Throughout this tale, it is clear that our narrator has killed his wife and believes he has gotten away scott-free - and is about to achieve everything he ever set out for in life because of it. Not because he had any ill-will, you see, simply that he is a problem-solver and a survivor, and he'll do whatever it takes to solve his problems so that he can live the life he has always deserved. Along the way we get the stories of the tragedies he has endured and the opportunistic ways he has taken advantage of situations regardless of any pesky words on paper about how wrong his actions may be. And we also see his unravelling when it becomes clear that *someone* seems to know what he did... Truly one of McKinnon's better books.

So why did I drop it a star despite rating every other book I've read from her as 5*? Because this one does in fact mention COVID - a fair amount, actually - and I'm waging a one-man war to stop authors from doing that. At *least* for now, and *possibly* for ever. The single star deduction is really my only tool in this one-man war, so I employ it any time a book mentions COVID at all, no matter how strong the book was regardless of this fact.

And again, this really was one of McKinnon's stronger tales outside of the COVID references. Very much recommended.