Suspenseful story and great mystery

The Breakdown

By: B.A. Paris

Rating: 5 of 5

“The Breakdown” is the story of a young woman who feels she may be on the verge of a mental breakdown. It also incorporates the story of another woman who appears to have had her car breakdown on a horrible stormy night. The two stories converge early on in the book and each has an effect on the other.

Cassie returns home on the stormy evening after spending the night out with co-workers even though her husband made her promise to stay on the main road. She decides to take the short cut through the woods and comes across a car which seems to have broken down. She can’t quite convince herself to leave the safety of her own car to see if the other driver needs help (though she does stop to see if the other driver will get out of her car to seek help.) When she doesn’t, Cassie drives home. Because she broke her promise to her husband, Cassie can’t talk about the other driver or where she saw her.

In addition to her guilt for not helping the other driver, Cassie is suddenly forgetting all manner of things. From day to day items to promises and get-together dates, she is progressively forgetting more and more. As her mother suffered from (and passed away recently) from early-onset dementia with memory loss, Cassie is concerned that she, too, has the same issue.

The characters in the story were compelling and the plot even more so. I figured out quite a bit of the story line just ahead of the reveal in the book but must admit I did not see the whodunnit coming. It made sense but somehow I missed the clues. For me, that is the making of an excellent mystery – which the book is as well as a compelling suspense novel. I’ll be looking for more books by this author in the future.

I was provided a digital advance reader copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley.