Still life ( 2007) by Joy Fielding

 

Still Life by Joy Fielding is her newest book in a long line of bestsellers. I’ve been reading her novels for years and always enjoy them. This one started out slowly for me but then got going and I couldn’t put it down last night until I finished it.

Casey is a woman who has the world by the tail. She’s beautiful, rich, has her dream job and her dream man. So, her day starts as normally as always and she’s out having a nice lunch with her two best friends. She’s talking about wanting to start a family and she’s excited. She leaves to get on with her day and whammo! ~she gets hit in the parkade and worse the driver leaves her there for dead.

Sometime later Casey wakes up. She’s in the dark but she can hear things all around her-doctors, nurses, her friends, Warren-her husband. She’s talking to them but nobody is hearing her or answering her. What is going on? Listening in she learns she’s in a coma! So her days unfold with her wavering between hearing tv programs and thinking it’s real life to actually listening in on her family and friends when they visit. Eventually the hospital can do no more for her and her husband takes her home along with a nurse and a therapist. The doctors say that she could recover fully in time~they just don’t know.

The story takes off when Casey comes home. The police detective for her case visits. He’s not convinced that this wasn’t a deliberate act against Casey. Inside her mind, Casey is screaming~someone tried to kill me!!! But who? Ultimately that’s what it boils down too~who hates Casey enough to kill her? Listening in on the conversations around her Casey is caught in a terrifying ordeal of learning who wants her dead and not being able to do a thing about it.

I enjoyed this book although not as much as some of her other titles. Still it was a good read. As I said the beginning was slow for me but it did finally take off and I was hooked. It’s an interesting concept though. Just imagine yourself in a coma not being able to communicate yet hearing everything around you. Kind of scary if you ask me. This isn’t really one of those fast-paced thriller type books, but one that keeps you wondering just how it’s going to come to a conclusion. Something kind of light yet satisfying.

 

Thanks to blog, Peeking Between the Pages., April 2007 write-up.

Tell me no ssecrets (1993) by Joy Fielding

The author's  prose is description , almost smooth for such a genre, however, her plot with this novel was weak.  She relied heavily on the "predator male" with an unrealistic resolution to her protagonist's personal situation.  Not sure how such an intelligent woman would not deal with her panic attacks and how they conveniently did not interfere with her courtroom presentations.  But, hey, pulp fiction is what it is, and I kept reading to find out what would happen.

Heartstopper by Joy Fielding

Welcome to Torrance, Florida. Population: 4,160. As Sheriff John Weber would attest, the deadliest predators to date in his tiny hamlet were the alligators lurking in the nearby swamps. But that was before someone abducted and murdered a runaway teenage girl...and before the disappearance of popular and pretty Liana Martin. The pattern is chilling to Sandy Crosbie, the town's new high school English teacher. With a marriage on the rocks, thanks to her husband's online affairs, and a beautiful teenage daughter to protect, Sandy wishes she'd never come to the seemingly quiet town with shocking depths of scandal, sex, and brutality roiling beneath its surface. And as Sheriff Weber digs up more questions than answers in a dead-end investigation, one truth emerges: the prettiest ones are being targeted, the heartstoppers. And this killer intends to give them their due....
Alternating between the chilling journal entries of a cold-blooded murderer and the sizzling scandals of small-town life, "Heartstopper" is Joy Fielding's most exciting novel of suspense yet. (Goodreads, Mar 24, 2012)

Whispers and Lies by Joy Fielding

"A suspenseful tale of a woman who rents out the small cottage behind her house to a mysterious young stranger, Joy Fielding’s latest novel is about trusting and not trusting one’s instincts. A New York Times best-selling author, Fielding has a well-deserved reputation as a writer who knows how to get the reader hooked. From the first page, you can’t put it down. In the same way, Terry Painter is hooked from the very first meeting with her prospective new tenant. Forty and single, Terry has a quiet and ordered life in picturesque Delray, Florida. A nurse at Mission Care private hospital for the elderly and disabled, loved by her patients for her kindness and thoughtfulness, she lives alone in the comfortable house she inherited from her mother five years ago, and rents out the cottage behind it. Alison Simms spots the rental notice posted in the hospital, and blows into Terry’s life like a tropical storm. In her twenties, tall and slim, full of open charm and infectiously enthusiastic, Alison is impossible not to like. “It would be nice having someone around who made me laugh,” thinks Terry.  Alison loves the cottage, right down to the colour combination, and moves in immediately. Terry, usually responsible and pragmatic, surprises herself for failing even to ask for references, but she is drawn instinctively to Alison, and realises she wants her to stay. Alison fills a gap in her life, bringing friendship and warmth. With her sweet tooth and ravenous appetite, the young woman gratefully devours Terry’s home cooking and buys her generous gifts. She even gives her a makeover and a flattering new haircut, helping Terry charm the handsome son of one of her dear, ailing patients. Alison, full of life, brightens the days that are usually spent caring for the old and the sick. Despite the difference in their ages, the two women are comfortable together; it feels like they’ve been friends forever.Yet almost simultaneously, Terry begins to have suspicions about Alison. How much does she know about her, really? Alison has some strange habits and stranger friends. She has a limitless supply of cash in her purse, and knows the house so well it’s as if she’s been in it before. Her reasons for coming to Delray don’t quite add up, and she won’t talk about her parents: “We weren’t on the best of terms.” Moreover, Terry notices a shadowy figure lurking around her house, and starts to receive disturbing phone calls. Snippets of overheard conversation, surreptitious glances in Alison’s diary, and her mother’s nagging voice in her head make Terry paranoid that her tenant may want to do her harm. Should Terry have been more suspicious, or at least wary, especially after the experience with her last tenant? And yet, as Alison says of the neighbour’s pet dogs, “How could anything that sweet be destructive?” And who is hiding more, Alison -- or Terry?Diving deeply into the psyches of her most captivating characters to date, Joy Fielding has created a riveting tale that challenges our most basic assumptions regarding love, friendship, and obsession. It leaves the reader guessing at where the truth really lies until the final shocking twist that Publishers Weekly has called “an ending worthy of Hitchcock”. Fielding delivers an intelligent, tight plot full of psychological complexity, without sacrificing the simple prose and page-turning suspense she is known for around the world."




Review by Randon House Canada

Don't Cry Now by Joy Fielding

The prolific Joy Fieding has added another mystery to her credit.  A young mother and local school teacher has been accused of the murder of her husband's ex-wife.  At the same time, she is trying to care for his two teenage children, as well as her own daughter. Twists and turns keep the reader guessing until the end.  A real who-dunit!