Title: Mister Tender’s Girl
Author: Carter Wilson
Published: February 2018, Sourcebooks Landmark
Format: ARC Paperback, 400 pages
Source: Publisher
Summary:
How far are you willing to go for Mister Tender?
At
fourteen, Alice Hill was viciously attacked by two of her classmates
and left to die. The teens claim she was a sacrifice for a man called
Mister Tender, but that could never be true: Mister Tender doesn’t
exist. His sinister character is pop-culture fiction, created by Alice’s
own father in a series of popular graphic novels.
Over a decade
later, Alice has changed her name and is trying to heal. But someone is
watching her. They know more about Alice than any stranger could: her
scars, her fears, and the secrets she keeps locked away. She can try to
escape her past, but Mister Tender is never far behind. He will come
with a smile that seduces, and a dark whisper in her ear…
Inspired
by a true story, this gripping thriller plunges you into a world of
haunting memories and unseen threats, leaving you guessing until the
harrowing end.
My thoughts: This is another book I picked up at BookExpo last Spring that I have been so excited to read…and let me just tell you – it was so worth the wait!!! This book was everything I had hoped it would be and more…but – word of caution…read with the lights on! It’s definitely a dark, creepy book that had me not wanting to read it before bedtime and I don’t usually find that with all the thrillers I read.
As soon as I started reading this, I felt the dark undertones coming through – and I loved it! I became totally immersed in the book and found myself addicted to it. Short of not being able to read it at night, I basically binge read this book. I don’t remember the case that this book is actually based on – the Slender Man Case, though I do want to now go watch the documentary made about it because I am so curious about it.
This is the type of book that while I was so desperate to know who was behind the taunting of Alice as an adult, years after she had been attacked as a young girl, I also didn’t want the book to end. I was completely engaged in this book, so invested in the characters, despite the fact that it was creepy as heck and I had to read it in the daylight hours. I loved that I questioned every character that Alice came in contact with – even her own family member…that’s how good this story is crafted. The suspense is woven into the story from the very beginning and just gets more intense as the story goes on. And with that, there were quite a few times I was actually holding my breath to see what would happen next, especially towards the end.
I loved that as the pieces start to come together – who is really stalking Alice and why, we get the full story of how Mister Tender came to exist in the first place. This really is such a clever and well executed thriller that just pulls you in from the beginning and never really lets up. It’s twisted, dark and intense. You don’t want to miss this one!
