Review: The Devil You Know by Trish Doller

The Devil You Know by Trish DollerPublication date: June 2, 2015
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children's
Category: Young Adult - Contemporary
Source: Received ARC from publisher (Thanks!)
Summary: Eighteen-year-old Arcadia wants adventure. Living in a tiny Florida town with her dad and four-year-old brother, Cadie spends most of her time working, going to school, and taking care of her family. So when she meets two handsome cousins at a campfire party, she finally has a chance for fun. They invite her and friend to join them on a road trip, and it's just the risk she's been craving-the opportunity to escape. But what starts out as a fun, sexy journey quickly becomes dangerous when she discovers that one of them is not at all who he claims to be. One of them has deadly intentions. (greads.com)

My Thoughts

Thrillers are hard to pull off. At least I think they are. I can think of one, potentially two, that felt genuinely suspenseful and most importantly of all, surprising. If you can see the ending coming a mile away, there’s no reason to sit on the edge of your seat. What Trish Doller manages to do extremely well in The Devil You Know is provide a setting that felt ominous and real. I could picture danger popping out of nowhere and affecting someone naive when she or he least expects it. And eighteen-year-old Arcadia definitely isn’t expecting it.

She lives in a small Florida town, mostly focused on school and work and taking care of her family, which consists of her single dad and four-year-old brother Cadie. It’s a lot of responsibility for one teenager and she decides she needs some adventure. She meets two hot cousins (naturally!) at a campfire party and when they invite her and a friend on a road trip, she says yes. It all seems like fun, sexy times (it probably helps that she has chemistry with both boys) but strange things start to happen around them. It becomes hard to ignore what’s right in front of her and Arcadia has to decide who she can trust and who’s been lying to her this whole time.

Like I said, the set up was great. Doller uses superstitions, scary stories and the environment to her advantage and it works. Plus, as always, her writing is just so engaging. But I didn’t feel any sort of mystery? I knew right away who the “bad guy” was and I had no doubts about it whatsoever. Then the situation Arcadia finds herself in was a bit frustrating to read. It’s like watching Scream and yelling at the TV because obviously this girl is going to get herself stabbed if she opens the door. That’s how I felt with Arcadia. If you get into a car with total strangers to camp out in the wilderness, where no one is around, you’re kind of asking for trouble. (Right?)

Do I recommend?

If you’re a fan of suspense type books, this might be right for you!

Collaborative feature with Alexa! 

Have you ever tried to see if a ghost story or myth was real?

I grew up surrounded by boy cousins who loved anything ghost and/or horror related and at the time, I loved it too even though I was (and still am) very, very easily scared. So one myth we were obsessed with was Bloody Mary. Through some book, we found out how you're supposed to "invoke" her and we decided to try it out. I remember the three of us getting a small mirror, huddling ourselves around it and each other in the basement bathroom and whispering "Bloody Mary" three times. Nothing happened but I'm pretty sure we still ran screaming upstairs anyway.