Nine Lives

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Nine people receive a list of nine names, including theirs, in the mail. No other information, just the list. The temptation is to ignore it as a prank or junk mail. Then, one person on the list is murdered. Coincidence or by design? When the second murder occurs, it’s clear there’s a diabolical plot in play. Who is next? One by one, they go down.

Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. Nothing else, just a list of names on a single sheet of paper. None of the nine people know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke—until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list. And *sighs* Both the reveal of the killer (just not enough clues) and the why were such an underwhelming let down! I didn't like the reasoning, the how, the why, the justification. Just urgh! From the New York Times bestselling author of Eight Perfect Murders ��comes the heart-pounding story of nine strangers who receive a cryptic list with their names on it—and then begin to die in highly unusual circumstances. Although Peter Swanson has written a book which I mostly enjoyed, unfortunately the ending was an unsatisfying anticlimax for me.DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Faber and Faber Limited via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Nine Lives by Peter Swanson for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Nine names. Nine random people receive a sheet of paper - a list with just nine names on it - nothing else, no clue as to what the list signifies. None of the nine know the other names on the list, some throw it in the trash, others just dismiss it as some kind of joke. A frightening pattern is emerging, but what do these nine people have in common? Could there be some dark secret that binds them all together? Or is this the work of a murderous madman? As the mysterious sender stalks these nine strangers, they find themselves constantly looking over their shoulders, wondering who will be crossed off next….In Peter Swanson’s latest mystery/thriller, nine people each receive a list of names in the mail. It’s their names. None of them know each other. They all assume it’s junk mail…that is, until the people on the list start dying in various fashions.

Told from multiple points of view, ensuring that we got a great insight into each character, Nine Lives is a crazy murder mystery that kept me guessing the whole way through. A great whodunnit with a totally unexpected ending!One of the named people who received the list is FBI agent Jessica Winslow, who has a distinctly bad feeling about it, and she begins a search trying to identify the others, trying to find some connection, some common thread, no matter how tenuous, but she comes up with nothing. However, when one of the names meets an untimely death, Jessica realises that the bad feeling she had, has been confirmed. As a couple more deaths follow, the hunt is on to find a killer, but with nothing to go on, no connection, no motive, it’s looking increasingly impossible! P.S. I love idioms and hardly a review escapes me without using one. So just for fun, an alternate title with a nod to the chapter numerations and familiar sayings: It must not be easy to write a book that riffs off of such a famous work. You have to appeal to two different audiences, those who have already read the original work and those who haven't. I think Swanson does a good job balancing the two and appealing to both. This is a wholly self-contained story if you haven't read the original (although, what are you waiting for?) but it's still surprising and fun if you have. The author doesn't scatter many clues about - we are kept largely in the dark, garnering information only as Sam or the