{"id":1355,"date":"2014-05-31T17:10:16","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T23:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1355"},"modified":"2014-05-31T17:10:16","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T23:10:16","slug":"chevy-stevens-that-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/chevy-stevens-that-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Chevy Stevens: That Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"That-Night\"<\/a>We get a lot of uncorrected proofs and advanced reader copies \u2013 those large format paperbacks that are sent to bookstores in order to drum up interest in a forthcoming hardback.\u00a0 Much of the accompanying promotional literature is guilty of hyperbole to say the least, but in rare cases it\u2019s spot on. As printed on the cover, with any justice the summer of 2014\u00a0will\u00a0belong to Chevy Stevens\u2019s fantastic, suspenseful novel\u00a0That Night<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year I lined up four or five proofs and read the first pages of all of them and\u00a0That Night<\/em>\u00a0was the only one that grabbed me from the get go. After I quickly finished it, I gave it to Robin who also tore through it and then we subjected it to the most rigorous test of all, our son, who demands Harlan Coben quality readability and suspense in any book he picks up. When he loved it as well, I knew we were on to something.<\/p>\n

Part of it is that intriguing opening, a first person, richly detailed and believable account of a woman, Toni Murphy, being released from prison, having spent half her life for a crime she claims she\u00a0didn’t\u00a0commit.\u00a0Immediately the reader is drawn in, and the narrative flows to both the scandalous past \u2013 what was the sensational crime? \u2013 and to the fraught present, where she must survive the predictably rocky post prison world, which sanctimoniously savors inflicting every possible indignity on a convicted murderer, while she also, this being a mystery, attempts to clear her name and find the real killer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s soon revealed that the victim was her sister which, as you can imagine, complicates things with her family and her return to society. Stevens nimbly cuts between the High School acting out that ends in tragedy, Toni\u2019s painful descent into prison routine and a \u201cfreedom\u201d that is almost as perilous and constricting, especially when her alleged co-conspirator, high school boyfriend Ryan, reestablishes contact against court orders, urging her to help him find justice and rekindling their old attraction.<\/p>\n

The suspense increases with every sentence, the reader furiously wondering what really happened that night \u2013 everyone seems like a suspect, including Toni, who may just be an extremely unreliable narrator. I highly recommend picking\u00a0That Night<\/em>\u00a0up, but I also recommend clearing some time before doing so, because you\u2019re not going to want to put it down. (Jamie)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We get a lot of uncorrected proofs and advanced reader copies \u2013 those large format paperbacks that are sent to bookstores in order to drum up interest in a forthcoming hardback.\u00a0 Much of the accompanying promotional literature is guilty of hyperbole to say the least, but in rare cases it\u2019s spot on. As printed on … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-1355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-suspensethriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1357,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions\/1357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}