Book Review: Good Samaritans

GOOD SAMARITANS | Will Carver
11.15.2018 | Orenda Books
Rating: 5/5 stars

Seth Beauman suffers from insomnia. Awake late into the night, he has taken to calling strangers from an odd little phonebook he keeps tucked away, while his wife, Maeve, peacefully sleeps upstairs. Seth desperately wants to make a connection. He just needs one person who wants to talk. Hadley Serf will fill that role thanks to a crossed wire. She is suicidal and seeking help by calling The Samaritans, however, at the same time Seth is calling her. Hadley believes she has found someone at the call center that can help her and Seth believes he has found a new friend. This is where their story begins.

Soon Hadley and Seth’s conversations are becoming a recurring event. They have found something in each other to fill the emptiness they both feel. Their late night talks become in-person meet ups, which become the basis for a strange love story. Things aren’t exactly how they appear and they aren’t exactly who they say they are. Someone is watching Hadley and Seth’s every move and what they see is unspeakable.

One crossed wire opens the door to death and bleach.

He was watching her. Checking in on her. Maybe even protecting her. He was a Good Samaritan. And he wouldn’t lose her. Not this one.

GOOD SAMARITANS just blew my mind! Let’s start at the beginning…

The book opens with the reader getting to know a handful of main characters, including Hadley and Seth. I think it’s important to meet everyone blindly, so I’m going to leave out the details on who these people are. Carver uses short chapters that alternate between character’s storylines to create a mood of unease and general confusion over who the reader should trust. It seems every character Carver writes about has something they’re hiding, which quickly put all of them on my untrustworthy list. At about the halfway point I wickedly giggled when a certain revelation was made, which solidified this book as fantastic. For me, whenever an author can make me second guess myself, no matter how correct my hunch ends up being, that’s the sign of a brilliant book.

And he told himself that she didn’t need to die. But, of course, deep down, he knew that she would. Everybody did.

So often these days the genre of crime fiction/mystery/thrillers becomes predictable in the plot devices that authors tend to use, which can make books seem stale or cheesy to avid readers of the genre. I assure you that is not the case with GOOD SAMARITANS. I was hooked within the first few pages and binge read large chunks of the books wanting to know more about what would happen. Not only does GOOD SAMARITANS have an engrossing mystery plot at its core, but it also has this sense of darkness among the characters that leaves the reader unable to put the book down. Carver’s writing is bold, intense, and certain scenes are definitely not for the faint of heart. Think you can handle it? Then my advice to you is to clear a space in your immediate TBR for this twisty tale!

A special thank you to Orenda Books for sending me a free review copy!