Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (Confessions #1)

onyxdarkling
Jul 23, 2015
2 min read

The heads of the privileged Angel family were never great parents, and sure, they had their fair share of enemies. Regardless, Tandy Angel never expected to find her parents murdered. If that wasn't bad enough, Tandy and her siblings are the prime suspects. Tandy isn't sure that one of her brothers isn't the killer - they all had their own reasons to hate their parents. Tandy can't even trust herself. Determined to find the killer, no matter what the cost, Tandy is forced to dig into her family's, and her, dark secrets as the police breathe down her neck.

Tandy has a strong sense of justice and wants to protect her siblings, but she's also emotionally damaged. Her parents always taught her and her brothers to ignore their emotions, to be logical and perfect. Now that her parents are gone, Tandy's walls are starting to crumble. She wants to feel and maybe be more like a normal girl. On the other hand, she's also afraid of what she'll do if she allows her emotions to influence her. Taught to burry unwanted memories deep and forget them, Tandy is slowly bringing them back up to the surface. Tandy is a bit of an unreliable narrator, as I couldn't always tell when she was being honest with me, and I enjoyed the added mystery and uncertainty that came along with that.

After reading Maximum Ride and loving it, as well as hearing many good things about Patterson from my friends, I was eager to read another one of his series and maybe get a taste for Paetro's writing. There wasn't anything wrong with the characters, and the premise was interesting. There were also several of Patterson's trademark crazy plot twists. The ending was unexpected. However, I didn't feel like the plot was moving fast enough with enough action to work its way up to a good finale, and despite the surprising twist at the end, I wasn't particularly impressed. The story also left several loose ends I desperately want tied up, (call me OCD) and they were things that I would think were pretty important to the case. I can only hope that the sequel answers them for me. All and all, and to my dismay, the book fell a little flat. 3/5 stars.