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James Street: A Novel
After four years of hard work, deputy district attorney Tim McAndrews claims the title of his office’s top prosecutor. He’s young, handsome, and smart, and his life is ticking along at a satisfying pace until he sees a woman dancing down the last few steps of the James Street parking garage. Tim realizes his perfect life is actually missing love. He’s surprised by his sudden and overwhelming attraction to the beautiful Daniela St. Clair—wealthy heiress and philanthropist. Love on the brain, he returns to his office to find his best friends from the old neighborhood, Kathy and Scott. They have grim two young women have died as a result of a toxic mix of antidepressants and alcohol. Kathy, with the Medical Examiner’s Office, and Scott, a Seattle detective, suspect foul play, and they need Tim’s help to prove it. With thoughts of Daniela still whirling around his head, Tim works with his old friends, but the case leads them all down a dark path. They follow the evidence where it leads, methodically putting together a jigsaw puzzle of pure evil, as Tim pursues new love and soon realizes he’s not the only one interested in Daniela.
405 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 16, 2017
4 people are currently reading
8 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 13, 2018
What an Awesome Book! Thank you Netgalley! I now have my eight out of twenty five top books of the year! This is an absolute page Turner, I could not put it down! I am in love with the hero, the Heroine is extremely likeable, the friends are great! This is truly well written, well developed characters! I cannot believe that two weeks ago I had lost interest in picking up a book, my tablet, still, all of my life I have had a book in my hand to read, this has the excitement back. I don't really like stories of serial killers, this was so good, good mystery, good who did it? Good why is he doing it? Many twist and turns, I was excited by them all! This should absolutely be made into a movie! I am going to write an in-depth Review on my blog.
I highly recommend! Thank you!
Carolintallahassee.com
I highly recommend! Thank you!
Carolintallahassee.com
December 27, 2022
— 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 —
𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: James Street
𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬: N/A
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫(𝐬): Sarah Vail
𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: Crime/Mystery/Thriller
𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝: 20th August 2017
𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: 4.5/5
Tim McAndrews, the deputy district attorney, and top prosecutor, is a well-sought after bachelor. However, he dedicates his life to his career; sentencing criminal after criminal to jail. He's satisfied with his life until he notices a beautiful woman dancing down the last few steps of the James Street parking garage. He makes the effort to see her everyday after that, but it takes him seven months to pluck up the courage to speak to her. When he does, they hit it off, and Tim finds himself falling head over heels for Daniela St. Clair almost immediately. However his honeymoon-mood is soon quelled when his best friends Scott and Kathy - respectively Detective Renton and Dr. Hope - approach him; there are two girls that have shown up dead; both single; both wealthy; both poisoned. Tim immediately notices these girls are the exact double of Dani. It's a race against time to find the serial killer before Dani becomes the next victim.
WOW. Really, wow! I am so impressed with Sarah Vail's debut novel. This book is actually inspired by true events - ones that Vail experienced herself - in an interview she stated:
"Several life experiences inspired writing James Street. When I was a young woman, I was stalked. It was a very frightening ordeal. I can still remember the night that he was finally arrested. I was eight months pregnant and my husband was working. Home alone, I was doing some domestic chores. I don’t remember why I looked up, but when I did, I found my stalker standing on my back deck looking through the sliding glass door at me."
Not only was this experience used for the greater good in shedding light on how quickly harassment can escalate, and how scary it is to be the victim of relentless stalking, but Vail also took classes in Criminology and Forensics, and you can really see the benefits of that in James Street, I can't really say much more without giving things away but every avenue in this book is thoroughly explored, from what I could read; there were no mistakes, just cold, hard, slightly entertaining murders. Ones that I could not pick plot holes in. Which is a bit of a pastime of mine. I have to congratulate the author on integrating her life experiences into a novel that will not only entertain readers, but teach them, too.
I thoroughly enjoyed 95% of this novel, it is so impeccably well written, the choices the author orchestrates in not only her plot twists but her writing style makes for a seriously riveting piece of work. Throughout the novel, the readers are treated to alternate perspectivse; Tim's, and the killers. Now, sometimes I find that the killers perspective is a bit... universal, for lack of a better word, everyone writes the same thing sometimes; I am killer, I kill things, I enjoy killing, I see my next victim, I kill them blah blah blah, but Vail's killer isn't like that. I mean, it does start off like that, but around the half-way mark, my doubts were assuaged as her killer evolves from creepy creepo to actual real-life stuff-of-nightmares could-happen-to-anyone killer.
Not only that, but Vail unvails (see what I did there?) whodunnit just past half-way, giving the novel a chance to give the readers what they want and the story what it deserves; both mystery and thriller, without the overlaps, which can sometimes get a little confusing as an author tries to keep both atmospherical genres up throughout an entire story. All of this is interspersed with fluffy romance, which would seem a little out of place ordinarily, but for this debut, it works. I can't explain why, I don't have that kind of vocabulary or thought process: It. Just. Works. It gave me a break when the tension was a little too teeth-clenching, and it allowed not only the main plot but a few of the sides stories to really connect without going all out into the mysterious-creepy-thrilling dark side.
The side characters in this novel are truly great. They are the kind of characters that I would genuinely read a side novel about. Vail relays their personalities to the readers really well and I was never fed up of them popping in and out of the story.
I think the only thing that I didn't like about this novel is.... dun dun dun, the sex scenes. Okay, sure, there are only two, but they felt generic and tacky. I was not a fan, it was a whole new depth to the characters that I could have gone without knowing, if you know what I mean.
This novel genuinely feels like picking petals off a daisy; do they get a happy ending? Do they not? Do they? Do they not? With each turn of the page, it felt like it could go either way. The finale was pretty epic, I didn't see it coming until I was almost on top of it! I find that with thrillers/mysteries, the ending can sometimes spoil an otherwise exceedingly entertaining read, but this one did not disappoint, thankfully, which means I'm happy to highly recommend this book.
Thank you to Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.
🧚🏻♀️
♡ my bookstagram • my twitter ♡
↑ follow my socials for more bookish content. ↑
𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: James Street
𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬: N/A
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫(𝐬): Sarah Vail
𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: Crime/Mystery/Thriller
𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝: 20th August 2017
𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: 4.5/5
Tim McAndrews, the deputy district attorney, and top prosecutor, is a well-sought after bachelor. However, he dedicates his life to his career; sentencing criminal after criminal to jail. He's satisfied with his life until he notices a beautiful woman dancing down the last few steps of the James Street parking garage. He makes the effort to see her everyday after that, but it takes him seven months to pluck up the courage to speak to her. When he does, they hit it off, and Tim finds himself falling head over heels for Daniela St. Clair almost immediately. However his honeymoon-mood is soon quelled when his best friends Scott and Kathy - respectively Detective Renton and Dr. Hope - approach him; there are two girls that have shown up dead; both single; both wealthy; both poisoned. Tim immediately notices these girls are the exact double of Dani. It's a race against time to find the serial killer before Dani becomes the next victim.
WOW. Really, wow! I am so impressed with Sarah Vail's debut novel. This book is actually inspired by true events - ones that Vail experienced herself - in an interview she stated:
"Several life experiences inspired writing James Street. When I was a young woman, I was stalked. It was a very frightening ordeal. I can still remember the night that he was finally arrested. I was eight months pregnant and my husband was working. Home alone, I was doing some domestic chores. I don’t remember why I looked up, but when I did, I found my stalker standing on my back deck looking through the sliding glass door at me."
Not only was this experience used for the greater good in shedding light on how quickly harassment can escalate, and how scary it is to be the victim of relentless stalking, but Vail also took classes in Criminology and Forensics, and you can really see the benefits of that in James Street, I can't really say much more without giving things away but every avenue in this book is thoroughly explored, from what I could read; there were no mistakes, just cold, hard, slightly entertaining murders. Ones that I could not pick plot holes in. Which is a bit of a pastime of mine. I have to congratulate the author on integrating her life experiences into a novel that will not only entertain readers, but teach them, too.
I thoroughly enjoyed 95% of this novel, it is so impeccably well written, the choices the author orchestrates in not only her plot twists but her writing style makes for a seriously riveting piece of work. Throughout the novel, the readers are treated to alternate perspectivse; Tim's, and the killers. Now, sometimes I find that the killers perspective is a bit... universal, for lack of a better word, everyone writes the same thing sometimes; I am killer, I kill things, I enjoy killing, I see my next victim, I kill them blah blah blah, but Vail's killer isn't like that. I mean, it does start off like that, but around the half-way mark, my doubts were assuaged as her killer evolves from creepy creepo to actual real-life stuff-of-nightmares could-happen-to-anyone killer.
Not only that, but Vail unvails (see what I did there?) whodunnit just past half-way, giving the novel a chance to give the readers what they want and the story what it deserves; both mystery and thriller, without the overlaps, which can sometimes get a little confusing as an author tries to keep both atmospherical genres up throughout an entire story. All of this is interspersed with fluffy romance, which would seem a little out of place ordinarily, but for this debut, it works. I can't explain why, I don't have that kind of vocabulary or thought process: It. Just. Works. It gave me a break when the tension was a little too teeth-clenching, and it allowed not only the main plot but a few of the sides stories to really connect without going all out into the mysterious-creepy-thrilling dark side.
The side characters in this novel are truly great. They are the kind of characters that I would genuinely read a side novel about. Vail relays their personalities to the readers really well and I was never fed up of them popping in and out of the story.
I think the only thing that I didn't like about this novel is.... dun dun dun, the sex scenes. Okay, sure, there are only two, but they felt generic and tacky. I was not a fan, it was a whole new depth to the characters that I could have gone without knowing, if you know what I mean.
This novel genuinely feels like picking petals off a daisy; do they get a happy ending? Do they not? Do they? Do they not? With each turn of the page, it felt like it could go either way. The finale was pretty epic, I didn't see it coming until I was almost on top of it! I find that with thrillers/mysteries, the ending can sometimes spoil an otherwise exceedingly entertaining read, but this one did not disappoint, thankfully, which means I'm happy to highly recommend this book.
Thank you to Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.
🧚🏻♀️
♡ my bookstagram • my twitter ♡
↑ follow my socials for more bookish content. ↑
July 19, 2020
Red herrings and plot twists, oh my!
Vail is a master at crafting a story so rich in subplots and character development that the reader will find himself turning, page after page, wondering who’s doing the crime and how will that person get caught. If you’re a fan of a story rich in romance, murder, and good old fashioned detective work, this is your kind of story! Each character, good and bad, have defining moments in their lives that motivate them throughout the story . Plus, when it comes to crime drama, this one truly sets the bar high
Vail is a master at crafting a story so rich in subplots and character development that the reader will find himself turning, page after page, wondering who’s doing the crime and how will that person get caught. If you’re a fan of a story rich in romance, murder, and good old fashioned detective work, this is your kind of story! Each character, good and bad, have defining moments in their lives that motivate them throughout the story . Plus, when it comes to crime drama, this one truly sets the bar high
July 17, 2018
Romance while a serial killer is on the loose? Amazingly, it works. I found this to be a good story with well-written characters and good twists and turns. I received a copy from NetGalley and the publisher and this is my honest review.
July 28, 2018
The detective story is absolutely understandable even though its something special. Same goes for the many strange characters which are as confusing as they are believable. This weekend was something special for me and I would like to thank you for that special time. :)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews