Review of All the Dangerous Things

Did you read A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham and have been looking forward to her new book? Or are you looking for a new psychological thriller? Check out my Review of All the Dangerous Things!

All The Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham

To be published on January 10, 2023 by St Martins Press

I received an ARC from publisher for review. I read this book in 2022.

What Else Has Stacy Willingham written?

I liked A Flicker in the Dark, Stacy Willingham’s debut thriller. You can also check out our Spoiler Discussion of Flicker in the Dark.

Review of All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham

A Flicker in the Dark was a serial killer book set in the Louisiana with a past/present storyline, an atmospheric feel, and a lot of family drama.

At first, I thought All the Dangerous Things felt pretty similar to A Flicker in the Dark, as a psychological thriller set in Savannah with a past/present storyline, an atmospheric feel, and a lot of family drama.

But on finishing All the Dangerous Things, I think the two have a lot of differences as well.

I feel like All The Dangerous Things is definitely a psychological thriller, less gory and more twisty. The abduction of a small child is a major part of the plot, which may be an issue for some readers.

In my list of Most Anticipated Mysteries and Thrillers of 2023 (which this book is on) I compare it to a classic domestic suspense novel by Mary Higgins Clark, the queen of writing books about gaslit housewives in the 1970s and 1980s.

Isabelle hasn’t slept since the disappearance of Mason, her toddler son, a year ago. She and her husband have split. He’s trying to move on, while she desperately tries to keep her son’s case in the news. To do this, she attends a true crime conference where she meets podcaster Waylon.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the past/present narrative in All the Dangerous Things, though it was necessary for the self-gaslighting of the main character and the setting up of the twists that come toward the end of the book.

There are two backward-looking strands of the story, one from the 1990s that looks at Isabelle’s history of sleepwalking as a child and the other that looks back at Isabelle’s relationship with her husband, Ben.

By making Isabelle both a physical and psychological wreck, the reader constantly wonders how reliable a narrator she is. And Isabelle starts wondering, too.

By the last third of the book, the plot takes some interesting twists and turns. The ending leaves us with a lot to discuss, so if you read this one, please come over to my Spoiler Discussion Post for All the Dangerous Things!