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    Ruin Falls: A Novel
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    Ruin Falls: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Ruin Falls: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Ruin Falls: A Novel

    Written by Jenny Milchman

    Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In a suspenseful follow-up to her critically acclaimed Cover of Snow, Jenny Milchman ratchets up the tension with this edge-of-your-seat story of a mother determined to find her missing children.

    Liz Daniels has every reason to be happy about setting off on a rare family vacation, leaving behind her remote home in the Adirondack Mountains for a while. Instead, she feels uneasy. Her children, eight-year-old Reid and six-year-old Ally, have met their paternal grandparents only a handful of times. But Liz's husband, Paul, has decided that, despite a strained relationship with his mother and father, they should visit the farm in western New York where he spent his childhood.

    On their way to the farm, the family stops at a hotel for the night. In the morning, when Liz goes to check on her sleeping children, all her anxiety comes roaring back: Ally and Reed are nowhere to be found. Blind panic slides into ice-cold terror as the hours tick by without anyone finding a trace of the kids. Soon, Paul and Liz are being interviewed by police, an Amber Alert is issued, and detectives are called in.

    Frantic worry and helplessness threaten to overtake Liz's mind-but in a sudden, gut-wrenching instant she realizes that it was no stranger who slipped into the hotel room that night. Someone she trusted completely has betrayed her. Though she knows that Ally and Reid are safe, Liz will stop at nothing to find them and get them back. From her guarded in-laws' unwelcoming farmhouse to the deep woods of her own hometown, Liz follows the threads of a terrible secret to uncover a hidden world created from dreams and haunted by nightmares.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 22, 2014
    ISBN9780553398359
    Unavailable
    Ruin Falls: A Novel
    Author

    Jenny Milchman

    Jenny Milchman is a USA Today bestselling author. She has won the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Silver Falchion Award. A member of the board of directors for International Thriller Writers, she lives in the Hudson River Valley with her family.

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    Reviews for Ruin Falls

    3.5/5

    41 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Liz Daniels has every reason to be happy about setting off on a rare family vacation, leaving behind her remote home in the Adirondack Mountains. Instead she feels uneasy. Her children, 8-yr-old Reid and 6-yr-old Ally, have met their paternal grandparents only a handful of times. But Liz's husband Paul has decided that, despite a strained relationship with his mother and father, they should visit the farm in western New York where he spent his childhood. On their way to the farm, the family stops at a hotel for the night. In the morning, when Liz goes to check on her sleeping children, all of her anxiety comes roaring back: Ally and Reid are nowhere to be found. Blind panic slides into ice-cold terror as the hours tick by without anyone finding a trace of the kids. Soon, Paul and Liz are being interviewed by police, an Amber Alert is issued and detectives are called in.
    • 3/5
      Interesting mystery. The start of the book is the strongest. I was totally lost as to who and why the children are kidnapped. It seemed that the further I got into it, though, it was a little improbable. Especially thought the romance that was thrown in was out of place.
    • 4/5
      This book was a first reads.

      The beginning of Ruin Falls was very annoying, I just wanted to slap the main character Liz for being so weak and dependent. I almost stopped reading.

      After Liz takes back the reins of her life, Ruin Falls is actually a good book. The second half of the book was hard to put down. It is full of surprises that I did not see coming (a rare treat)! Ruin Falls is definitely worth the read!
    • 4/5
      While this was a very intriguing mystery, there were so many characters that just sort of jumped into the story without much transition. This made the page-turner little hard to follow. I'm glad I read this book but it definitely was not Ms. Milchman's best.
    • 4/5
      I almost never read mystery or thrillers. The only one I can remember reading is Hound of the Baskervilles when I was in middle school. I enjoyed this book more than I thought it would.The premise is horrifying for those with children, the thought that your children vanish suddenly. The protagonist, Liz, whose children disappear is well developed. The interaction between the main character, her husband, and her children felt realistic ie complaints about snacks, children wandering off, differences on how to raise kids . The story begins with the disappearance of the kids, but takes an expected left turn from there. While the reader is wondering what happened the the children, the author touches on environmental issues without being preachy one way or the other. The book was enjoyable and I'd read other books by the author in the future.
    • 4/5
      Ruin Falls is the second thriller novel by Jenny Milchman. Both novels involve characters who live in the remote Adirondack village of Wydeskyull, New York. In her first novel, Cover of Snow: A Novel, old-home restorer Nora is faced with an unexpected deadly mystery that causes her to rethink her decision to marry a resident of the small town where everyone knows each other and she is an outsider. Milchman's second thriller is faster paced, better structured, and less detailed in its focus on psychological character development than her first. A village woman, organic farmer Liz, is faced with a mystery involving the disappearance of her husband and children while they are on a vacation away from Wyderskyull. Readers of both novels will see that Milchman has learned the formula for writing thrillers that will allow her the opportunity to write many more. If she follows the lead of other thriller writers, all she needs now to develop a large reader following is to develop a series with a recurring woman character who is a sleuth of some type in addition to her other occupational and social roles in Wyderskyull.Readers who enjoy thrillers will like this novel because of its intelligent main character, interesting descriptions of conservation of food and the environment, survivalist groups, sociopaths, murder, mayhem, and resourceful children. A comparison of Milchman's two novels is a very interesting view into the business of contemporary publishing. The editors at Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, have provided Jenny Milchman with a career path that she gratefully acknowledges after the end of her novel. It will be interesting to see if she continues on the formulaic path. Whether she does or not, I will read any subsequent novels.
    • 4/5
      I can't read Jenny Milchum at night when I'm about to go to sleep. Her scenarios are far too creepy. Her books are scary but not so creepy and scary that I can't believe every bit of what is happening. Her first book, Cover of Snow, drew me right in, even with its alarming premise, and kept me reading far into the night. This newest one, Ruin Falls is even better.Milchum gives us the primary victims of domestic abuse (more mental and pyschological than physical but every bit as real) and sprinkles in some secondary ones whose stories weave in and out. For a while, I couldn't quite see how they all fit together, but Milchum does an excellent job of lacing the story lines. Once again, she uses the wooded Adirondacks as her setting. It is obviously an area where she is comfortable exploring and describing.Drawing on all the publicity today about the back to the earth movement, environmental protection, conservation of resources, sustainable agriculture, and retreat from worldly contamination, this one combines these issues with twisted personalities in a scenario that is so well written it's more than believable--it can scare the living bejeebies out of any one who is a parent. Just published this week, this one should be headed for your must read list.Note : I also had the chance to sample this in audio. Cassandra Campbell does a fantastic job of delivering the variety of emotions the author portrays in her writing. If you're an audio fan, be sure to check this one out.
    • 3/5
      Ruin Falls by Jenny Milchman is a recommended novel of suspense that explores one woman's nightmare.

      In Ruin Falls Liz Daniels is heading off on a rare vacation with her family to visit her in-laws farm in western New York. Liz, her husband, Paul, and their two children, Reid and Ally, live in a remote area of the Adirondack Mountains. Paul keeps a tight rein on his family as far as where they go and what they eat so a trip away is almost an unheard of experience. The trip turns into a nightmare after they decide to stop and spend the night in a motel. When Liz wakes up the next morning her children are gone - vanished. It soon becomes clear when Paul later vanishes that rather than a stranger abduction this is a domestic custody situation and Paul is the abductor.

      She returns to her home to try and find the cues that Paul must have left that will indicate where he took the children - and why he took them. Liz is racing against time. Not only must she use all her wits to try to uncover the reasons for Paul's behavior and hopefully the answers to where he has taken her children, she also needs to muster up her own strength and belief in herself in order to find the answers.

      The tension created at the beginning of Ruin Falls was so thick it had me biting my nails. Having your children abducted, or bothered in any way, is right up there near the top of the list of a mother's worst fears. I could totally understand Liz Daniels fears and how having a nightmare occur in real life would shake you up. To then have your husband be the likely culprit is unthinkable. Then, unknown to Liz, there are several other stories playing out that will all connect together.

      While Ruin Falls is a novel of psychological suspense and it does create an atmosphere of tension and dread, I must also admit that after all the tension in the first part of the book, it then seemed to slow down for me and the ending was anticlimactic. I was totally in and engrossed at the beginning but once the reason was sort of revealed it seemed nonsensical and wasn't as well developed or explained as it could have been. Or perhaps I just wasn't buying the explanation which lessened the element of suspense for me. I think better development of the character of Paul could have helped.

      Milchman is a good writer, however, so I expect she'll have plenty of opportunities to totally impress all of us even more in the future.


      Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Random House for review purposes.




    • 4/5
      A family vacation turns into a nightmare for Liz Daniels. Her two children have wandered off and are missing. And now her husband is missing too. It soon becomes apparent that he has taken them. But where, and why? At first Liz is puzzled and confused, but determined to get her children back.For the first half of the book we are like Liz, unsure of what is going on and don’t know who to trust. There are a lot of layers, many secondary characters and the plot tends to wander at times as Liz searches for answers. I didn’t feel a lot of suspense, but did get caught up in the mystery and Liz’s evolution from ‘dazed and confused’ to ‘tiger mom’. Readers who have small children will probably feel a little more of the fear that enveloped Liz than I did.The loose ends do come together in the end, but the explanation for her husband’s actions was a little unbelievable – or perhaps needed a little more explanation. Apparently Liz didn’t know her husband very well.Audio production:I chose the audio because it was narrated by Cassandra Campbell, a favorite of mine. She does a nice job conveying the emotion and suspense. The multiple viewpoints and complex plot require a little extra attention from the listener, but overall an enjoyable production.
    • 4/5
      I recently read Ruin Falls by Jenny Milchman, a suspense author. This is her second novel and I found it to be quite a good read. Typically, the suspense genre is not one of my favorites, but the description on the jacket caught my attention right away and what I found between the pages lived up to the description on the jacket.A synopsis from Goodreads is as follows:Liz Daniels has every reason to be happy about setting off on a rare family vacation, leaving behind her remote home in the Adirondack Mountains for a while. Instead, she feels uneasy. Her children, eight-year-old Reid and six-year-old Ally, have met their paternal grandparents only a handful of times. But Liz’s husband, Paul, has decided that, despite a strained relationship with his mother and father, they should visit the farm in western New York where he spent his childhood.On their way to the farm, the family stops at a hotel for the night. In the morning, when Liz goes to check on her sleeping children, all her anxiety comes roaring back: Ally and Reed are nowhere to be found. Blind panic slides into ice-cold terror as the hours tick by without anyone finding a trace of the kids. Soon, Paul and Liz are being interviewed by police, an Amber Alert is issued, and detectives are called in.Frantic worry and helplessness threaten to overtake Liz’s mind—but in a sudden, gut-wrenching instant she realizes that it was no stranger who slipped into the hotel room that night. Someone she trusted completely has betrayed her. Though she knows that Ally and Reid are safe, Liz will stop at nothing to find them and get them back. From her guarded in-laws’ unwelcoming farmhouse to the deep woods of her own hometown, Liz follows the threads of a terrible secret to uncover a hidden world created from dreams and haunted by nightmares.This book kept my interest the whole time I read it. It was an interesting concept, that the fact that it is not a stranger who “kidnaps” her kids but someone she knows and loves. The idea of kidnapping is not an original concept; however, the reason the person takes the kids is a somewhat original idea. Some parts of the book reminded me of the idea behind the show Doomsday Preppers and that made it interesting. For her second novel, Milchman provides a truly suspenseful story where you suspect everyone because the cast of characters are all shady and seem to have secrets to hide. I would recommend this book to anyone who is also a fan of Laura Lippman, Liane Moriarty, or even James Patterson.