Book Review: "The Break Down" by B.A Paris

When I read a thriller, I like to see all of the key elements. There needs to be someone with a secret that they cannot tell anyone because it would ruin them. There needs to be someone having some sort of affair with someone else. There needs to be someone who is either injured or dying or on their last leg. There needs to be a person who is under a hell of a lot of pressure to do something and there needs to be, at the heart of it, something deeply unsettling and wrong. I personally love these kinds of books. I call them my ‘comfort books’ because you just know that you are going to feel a whole lot better after you come to a conclusion after reading the whole thing in one sitting. A coworker of mine used to think it was silly for someone ‘with a literature and film degree’ to be reading these kinds of books but I say read what you feel like. At the moment I have been reading more of these types of books because I just have not been feeling my usual classics lately, and that is okay. One day I will return to them again, just not now. For now, it is all about the thrillers, and the chick-flick thrillers at that.

Cass is a woman who recently lost her mother to dementia. She tries to move on with her life by settling into a new home with her boyfriend - who seems like a nice successful guy. One day whilst Cass is driving at night, she takes a shortcut through the woods, which she knows she should not have done. She comes across a woman in her car who looks like she’s in trouble but Cass drives off, afraid if someone else is there or if the woman is faking it. The next day, it has been reported that the woman in the car has died after being stabbed multiple times and having her throat slit. Cass immediately feels guilty. But her friends knew the woman and after a while, Cass starts to remember that she did too - if only briefly. But Cass, remembering this moment, starts to forget where things are: she forgets her keys, forgets the alarm in her house was one and ultimately, she can’t remember if there was any blood on that knife she saw. Cass wakes up in the mornings receiving strange withheld phone calls where nobody on the other end is talking. In this mixed up and confused horror/thriller novel, everything seems like it could potentially happen to you in real life, which makes it all the more frightening. As the story moves on, Cass begins to remember very small details - talking to her friends about them though, will prove almost useless. She needs someone to confide in. But who can she trust when she can’t trust herself?

Another brilliant novel by BA Paris, so far I have read “The Dilemma”, “The Therapist” and now, “The Break Down” and I have not read a bad novel by her yet. She has this eye for attention to very small details that, when you actually go back and look at all the hints you had, it makes you sigh and think how you missed it the first time. It is truly gripping and I was really angry when people were telling me to get up and do stuff instead of sitting down and reading my book. BA Paris is seriously one of the 21st century’s greatest thriller writers to date. She has it all when it comes to story, characters and themes.