Elle Marr
Autor de The Missing Sister
Obras de Elle Marr
Your Dark Secrets 1 copia
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The Alone Time por Elle Marr
I'm really sorry to say that I just plain did NOT like this entire story...I wasn't sure where it was heading as we went back and forth in time but I never really liked any of the characters and the ending???? Ugh.....
Elle Marr's 'The Alone Time' is a riveting exploration of family trauma and secrets. Two sisters, Fiona and Violet, survived a wilderness ordeal as children, but the past comes back to haunt them when disturbing details surface. Marr's skillful storytelling and authentic characters keep readers hooked as they unravel the mysteries hidden in the wilderness and within their family. Gripping and emotionally resonant, 'The Alone Time' is a must-read for fans of suspense and family drama.
This well told psychological suspense story started off slow but picked up speed quickly. It's told in alternating chapters by the two sister and the parents. The two sisters chapters go between present day and the day of the plane crash but we only have chapters from the parents during and immediately after the crash.
Twenty five years before the beginning of the novel, Fiona and Violet Seng were in a plane crash with their parents in a small Cessna. The plane crashed in the middle of nowhere in the Washington State wilderness.
and the parents were killed. The two young girls fended for themselves for twelve weeks before they were rescued. This 12 week period is what they refer to in later years as the alone time. Now they are grown but the trauma of the crash still affects each of them. Fiona lives a very solitary life and is an artist who re-purposes leaves and feathers and other natural items into art work. Violet has led a life of addiction and bad boyfriends but is now back in college hoping to become a writer. They work very hard to keep the story of the crash quiet but when they find out that someone is planning a documentary about it, they realize that they need to find a way that their version of the truth of the accident stays the way it has been for all of those years...but it seems that there is new information that is causing their version of what happened to look like a lie. After being estranged from each other for several years, the two sister realize that they need to work together to keep the real truth from being exposed. They've never really talked to each other about their 'alone time' but now is the time to find out what really happened to them and their parents. The truth of what really happened comes out slowly as the two sisters begin to remember things about that time and there are several surprises along the way. What is the real truth??
This book was a roller coaster ride that got bogged down in the middle but in the last 25% picked up speed again to a satisfying ending. I plan to check out some of the author's previous book that are highly reviewed on goodreads.… (más)
Twenty five years before the beginning of the novel, Fiona and Violet Seng were in a plane crash with their parents in a small Cessna. The plane crashed in the middle of nowhere in the Washington State wilderness.
and the parents were killed. The two young girls fended for themselves for twelve weeks before they were rescued. This 12 week period is what they refer to in later years as the alone time. Now they are grown but the trauma of the crash still affects each of them. Fiona lives a very solitary life and is an artist who re-purposes leaves and feathers and other natural items into art work. Violet has led a life of addiction and bad boyfriends but is now back in college hoping to become a writer. They work very hard to keep the story of the crash quiet but when they find out that someone is planning a documentary about it, they realize that they need to find a way that their version of the truth of the accident stays the way it has been for all of those years...but it seems that there is new information that is causing their version of what happened to look like a lie. After being estranged from each other for several years, the two sister realize that they need to work together to keep the real truth from being exposed. They've never really talked to each other about their 'alone time' but now is the time to find out what really happened to them and their parents. The truth of what really happened comes out slowly as the two sisters begin to remember things about that time and there are several surprises along the way. What is the real truth??
This book was a roller coaster ride that got bogged down in the middle but in the last 25% picked up speed again to a satisfying ending. I plan to check out some of the author's previous book that are highly reviewed on goodreads.… (más)
Editor: How dumb do you want your intended audience?
Author Elle Marr: Yes.
Thus begins this magnificently boring saga of wannabe true crime. Complete with:
- An amateur sleuth who can't decide whether investigating her medical history > investigating her mother's death or vice versa;
- An FBI agent whose intellectual capacity rivals that of said amateur sleuth;
- A star reporter whose reporting skills consist of "disappearance = murder", with a dash of assault and battery;
- A seasoned serial killer who somehow gets taken out by an old woman;
- A small town plagued by said serial killer, which observes a curfew out of fear but doesn't need to lock their doors;
- A rich family that especially doesn't need to lock their mansion doors, except when kicking out unwanted relatives;
- A knockoff Manson Family cult taken straight from the Walmart shelves;
- Doctors who don't know how to diagnose lupus;
- And last but not least, a cop-out plot twist (a supposed murder which didn't happen!) that will test how long you can roll your eyes without stopping.
And that's all for the low low price of $2.98 on Kindle or $14.36 on paperback. What a steal.
As with most indie-authored crime novels (which I'm quickly starting to lose faith in), I really wanted to like this. I gave the first 1/3 of it a good and honest shot before I started skimming to save my life.
Our MC Ivy starts off as a relatively down-to-earth woman, growing up in an adoptive family with undiagnosed health problems that she suspects comes from her biological parents. She submits her DNA for analysis and comes up with a biological cousin, Lottie, who she seems to hit it off with. But she also gets approached by an FBI agent telling her she might be related to a serial killer (in public, where they discuss rather sensitive info, already kinda sketchy, but I thought that was the last of it). Then, Ivy goes out of state to visit her biological family, who helped build the same small town where the killer is known to operate. Here's where things get funky:
- She immediately agrees to stay with her biological cousin despite only having talked to her over the phone.
- THEY DON'T LOCK THEIR DOORS IN THIS TOWN! EVEN WITH A SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE! CAN I SAY THIS ENOUGH!?
- And day 1, a man angrily comes into their house late at night and tries to get into Ivy's bedroom. But no matter. Just an angry relative. No big deal. Let me continue to stick around and ask my relatives very obvious and sometimes incriminating questions about their past, expecting straight answers every time.
- The next third of the book proceeds in this manner. Ivy is slow to gather answers and the whole "investigation" reads like a sleep-deprived high-schooler's attempt to finish a research project, complete with cringy interviews. Also, if you suspect your supposed relative Mr. Serial Killer might be after you, why would you go around telling even complete strangers who you were?
- Ivy's interactions with the killer had me rolling. She meets him at a bar, believes his mega-fake story about why he's there, and proceeds to tell him HER. WHOLE. LIFE. STORY. Then, when he tries to strangle her and she manages to escape with her life (because her elderly grandmother took out this full-grown man without suffering a single scratch) she's STILL left wondering who the killer is. His MO is strangling, so hello?
- But oh yeah, we're expected to believe it's not him, because our aforementioned star reporter claimed that his MO was strangling AND poison. So in what order might that have happened? Strangling the victim after they had died of poisoning? Or poisoning the victim after they had died from strangulation? I have no other words there.
- Finally, the ending. It turns out that Ivy's mother Tatum never died, but was threatened by a fellow family member (a cult member) and went into hiding with her husband. Somehow, the two never tried to reach out to their daughter more than once over the next twenty-eight years, which astonishes me.
- And given the above, the whole suspense buildup of switching between Tatum's and Samson's (the killer's) POV seems pointless after the fact, given that they never even ran into each other! If we were expected to see the family as an additional threat along with the killer, why not give some of their points of view to balance things out? Oh well. Apparently this wasn't necessary from an editor's standpoint. I'm just a dumb reader, right? Right.
I'm glad to say that I only got this book for free from the Amazon Prime monthly list. Can't get back the time I spent on it, but at least I'm learning more about how NOT to write a crime novel.… (más)
Author Elle Marr: Yes.
Thus begins this magnificently boring saga of wannabe true crime. Complete with:
- An amateur sleuth who can't decide whether investigating her medical history > investigating her mother's death or vice versa;
- An FBI agent whose intellectual capacity rivals that of said amateur sleuth;
- A star reporter whose reporting skills consist of "disappearance = murder", with a dash of assault and battery;
- A seasoned serial killer who somehow gets taken out by an old woman;
- A small town plagued by said serial killer, which observes a curfew out of fear but doesn't need to lock their doors;
- A rich family that especially doesn't need to lock their mansion doors, except when kicking out unwanted relatives;
- A knockoff Manson Family cult taken straight from the Walmart shelves;
- Doctors who don't know how to diagnose lupus;
- And last but not least, a cop-out plot twist (a supposed murder which didn't happen!) that will test how long you can roll your eyes without stopping.
And that's all for the low low price of $2.98 on Kindle or $14.36 on paperback. What a steal.
As with most indie-authored crime novels (which I'm quickly starting to lose faith in), I really wanted to like this. I gave the first 1/3 of it a good and honest shot before I started skimming to save my life.
Our MC Ivy starts off as a relatively down-to-earth woman, growing up in an adoptive family with undiagnosed health problems that she suspects comes from her biological parents. She submits her DNA for analysis and comes up with a biological cousin, Lottie, who she seems to hit it off with. But she also gets approached by an FBI agent telling her she might be related to a serial killer (in public, where they discuss rather sensitive info, already kinda sketchy, but I thought that was the last of it). Then, Ivy goes out of state to visit her biological family, who helped build the same small town where the killer is known to operate. Here's where things get funky:
- She immediately agrees to stay with her biological cousin despite only having talked to her over the phone.
- THEY DON'T LOCK THEIR DOORS IN THIS TOWN! EVEN WITH A SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE! CAN I SAY THIS ENOUGH!?
- And day 1, a man angrily comes into their house late at night and tries to get into Ivy's bedroom. But no matter. Just an angry relative. No big deal. Let me continue to stick around and ask my relatives very obvious and sometimes incriminating questions about their past, expecting straight answers every time.
- The next third of the book proceeds in this manner. Ivy is slow to gather answers and the whole "investigation" reads like a sleep-deprived high-schooler's attempt to finish a research project, complete with cringy interviews. Also, if you suspect your supposed relative Mr. Serial Killer might be after you, why would you go around telling even complete strangers who you were?
- Ivy's interactions with the killer had me rolling. She meets him at a bar, believes his mega-fake story about why he's there, and proceeds to tell him HER. WHOLE. LIFE. STORY. Then, when he tries to strangle her and she manages to escape with her life (because her elderly grandmother took out this full-grown man without suffering a single scratch) she's STILL left wondering who the killer is. His MO is strangling, so hello?
- But oh yeah, we're expected to believe it's not him, because our aforementioned star reporter claimed that his MO was strangling AND poison. So in what order might that have happened? Strangling the victim after they had died of poisoning? Or poisoning the victim after they had died from strangulation? I have no other words there.
- Finally, the ending. It turns out that Ivy's mother Tatum never died, but was threatened by a fellow family member (a cult member) and went into hiding with her husband. Somehow, the two never tried to reach out to their daughter more than once over the next twenty-eight years, which astonishes me.
- And given the above, the whole suspense buildup of switching between Tatum's and Samson's (the killer's) POV seems pointless after the fact, given that they never even ran into each other! If we were expected to see the family as an additional threat along with the killer, why not give some of their points of view to balance things out? Oh well. Apparently this wasn't necessary from an editor's standpoint. I'm just a dumb reader, right? Right.
I'm glad to say that I only got this book for free from the Amazon Prime monthly list. Can't get back the time I spent on it, but at least I'm learning more about how NOT to write a crime novel.… (más)
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