Well I put this book off for far too long.... I'm not exactly sure why. I guess because I was worried it might be too brutal for me. If you are looking for a twisty suspenseful book I'm your girl, but if you are looking for brutal and disturbing you better ask someone else for a review. It wasn't near as disturbing as I thought it would be. For about 65% of the book I really liked it. It was a bit predictable and I somewhat knew the ending pretty earlier on. I didn't love the ending though. So for me 3 stars is as high as I could go because of a few reasons. The first is the I don't have a character to root for... I didn't love any of them. I have to find that connection to a character to fall in love with a book. The second reason was I didn't like the ending. Too Fu@#$%g weird. No way is that ever going to happen. The writing was good and kept my interest so if I see another book by Heard I definitely will give it a try.

I really just shouldn't read thrillers anymore. It was... fine!

I had a couple upcoming flights and grabbed this off the display at the library. I got really drawn into this initially, and I’m a sucker for a Gillian Flynn thriller ending. But it continued to get more and more ridiculous the last 20% of the book.

Do you know how messed up it is to find someone who understands you only to have them be taken right in front of you?

Sean does, while out with Annabelle she is snatched. Sean does everything he can to find her but what will he find?

Definitely a fast pasted read, and yes funny it at times.

A new-ish take on the psychological thriller genre. Instead of featuring an unreliable female narrator, our protagonist is an unreliable male.

Though the book adheres to many of the (overused) genre tropes, the author manages to keep the story interesting and the reader invested. While there are few surprises left in the genre at this point, it was pleasing that the twists, while they ended up being roughly what I expected, managed to happen in a less expected way.

So, I was expecting a story more seventies rampage/exploitation from the blurb, and wound up with a psychological thriller that I enjoyed more than I thought.

If you still enjoy this genre, and liked books like The Final Girls, you’ll probably like this book. Even if you’re (like me) tired of the same old twists and turns, this is still an enjoyable story, told by a debut author with some real potential.

Dark, exciting and gripping. This book was so good. The characters and writing style of this book gripped me right off the bat. Set in the 80s, Hunting Annabelle is the story of Sean, a young man who has a very troubled past. Despite the darkness of his past, I really liked Sean. I pulled for him immediately. He has been diagnosed as schizophrenic and experiences life in a haze until he meets Annabelle. She is beautiful....and interested in him! Then she disappears. Did Sean have something to do with it? He doesn't think so, but sometimes the medications make him lose time.

This I couldn't put this book down, I just had to find out what happened to Annabelle. If you don't mind some darkness in your reads, I highly recommend #huntingannabelle.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Gritty, intense, and full of multi-dimensional characters that will keep you guessing until the end, Hunting Annabelle is a must-read psychological thriller. Readers of Gillian Flynn and Caroline Kepnes will adore Wendy Heard!

Very YOU/HIDDEN BODIES with the weirdly lovable violent mentally ill narrator obsessed with a girl. I thoroughly enjoyed this while I was reading it, but when I started thinking about it more to write a quick review, I liked it less. The twisty revelation bits seemed exciting and fun at the time - I really wanted to know what happened to Annabelle - but the explanations ended up feeling forced and very 80s TV movie. I don’t know.

Obsession, murder-y violence-prone narrator, Texas in the 80s.

I will admit this was a bit of a cover buy but the synopsis held promise. The book was fairly good up until the big reveal, then it just didn't make any sense and made the whole first part of the book seem pointless? I don't know, it just kind of just leaves you to fill in the spaces about the characters at the end which I didn't like. I didn't hate it but I didn't really enjoy it either and felt like the story wasn't all that well thought out.