The Trap by Melanie Raabe

Psychological Thriller/Mystery
Available for Purchase: July 5, 2016

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

In The Trap, Raabe spins a tension-filled thriller that examines the fine line between fact and fiction, truth and lies, and reality and fantasy.

The narrator, Linda Conrads, is a bestselling writer who has not left her home in over a decade, ever since she discovered her murdered sister's body. While she caught a glimpse of her sister's killer, she has never been able to identify him. Until now.

One day, she sees the face of her sister's killer on TV. Shocked, shaken, but determined, she sets out to lure him to her home to get a confession, and finally find out just why her sister had to die.

But is this man truly the murderer? And how much can readers trust Linda, whose newest book is purportedly the thinly-veiled fictionalized version of her sister's murder?

Linda is a fascinating unreliable narrator, one who frequently questions her own sanity. She purposefully imagines dramatic scenes that never actually happen, but doesn't reveal to the readers that these moments are false until after the fact. This leaves readers with no choice but to be unable to trust her completely, and thus unable to trust her identification of the murderer completely.

This is a brilliant choice by Raabe that constantly amps up the tension until readers are left unsure who to trust, sure only that they must finish the book and find out the truth.