Thursday, July 7, 2022

Creep by Jennifer Hillier

 

Jennifer Hillier might be one of my new favorite thriller authors. I think this is the third book I've read of hers at this point, and they've all been SO GOOD. I've been wanting to read CREEP for a while because I like the Radiohead song and it would be the perfect soundtrack for some creepy erotic thriller like this one. I'm happy to say that Ms. Hillier totally does it justice.

Sheila Tao is a distinguished professor of psychology. She's engaged to be married to a rich banker who's an ex-football player and she's well respected in her career. She's also got a sex addiction and she's been having an affair with her teaching assistant, Ethan Wolfe. But not anymore. She's decided to break things off. But Ethan doesn't take kindly to that. In fact, he's decided that if he can't have Sheila, nobody can.

This was just so good. The pacing was excellent and the author kept up the tension for the whole book. I found myself gripping my computer, desperately clicking to the next page, wanting to find out what happened next. I usually read romances, so with those, 99% of the time, you know you're going to get a happy ending. But with thrillers, it could go either way. There are stakes. I desperately wanted to find out what was going to happen next, and I'm happy to report that things didn't always go the way I thought they would. There were more than a few moments that made me gasp.

At first, I didn't really dig Morris as a love interest, but as we learned more about him, we could see why Sheila decided to marry an older guy who was kind of a drawling teddy bear. His devotion to her, and the way that he overcame his own personal struggles, ended up making him really endearing. In a way, this almost feels like a critique against women who date the hot, noble young studs, where the villain is always a tubby older guy who lusts after the hero. Ethan has the arrogance of youth with the guile of a sociopath, which ends up making him a really terrifying villain.

If you enjoy erotic thrillers, I think you'd enjoy this one. It's smart and snappy and absolutely chock-full of suspense. My only critique is that some of the multi POVs started to feel like thriller towards the end and the author totally sequel-baited the heck out of that ending. Luckily, I own the sequel or I'd be mad. ;)

4 to 4.5 out of 5 stars

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