The Bullet

In full compliance with FTC Guidelines,
I received this ebook for free in exchange
for a fair and honest review.
I was in no way compensated for this post
as a reviewer,
and the thoughts are my own.

The Bullet
by Mary Louise Kelly

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Pub. Date:
March 17, 2015

ISBN: 9781476769813

Pages: 368
Genre: Mystery
Source: Received
from the publisher via
Netgalley

This book counts for the following Reading Challenges:

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

The synopsis of this book grabbed me –though incidentally I think it reveals too much. I’m glad I requested The Bullet. This was an amazing thriller that I had hard time putting down.

Caroline, 37, teaches French literature. Bothered for several months by some weird pains in a wrist, she finally goes for an MRI. There, they discover she actually has a bullet in her neck. She is totally shocked, as she has no memory of having been shot. When she tells her parents, they act weird. Little by little she learns more about her past, how the bullet got there. But who really shot that bullet? Not too much helped by the police, she decides to uncover the whole story and track the killer herself. But if he learns she is still alive, wouldn’t he want to track her himself? Be ready for a great ride.

I enjoyed how the author treated the theme of the unknown: unknown about others, about your own close family, your own past, and your own personality even. This gave great unusual depth to this thriller.

You think you know what you are capable of. Then one day you discover that, quite literally, you are not the person you thought you were.

I also liked how the plot went from mystery to mystery. Meeting each new character, I tried to guess which one could have been the killer, and why. Of course I failed, which is always a proof that this is a well-built mystery! The suspense is increased by the story going in between Washington and Atlanta, and even Europe.

There is of course the theme of family: who is your real family? Your biological parents? Strangers who took care of you?
And in the background is suffering: inner suffering as you discover where you are coming from, but also physical pain and all the possible threats to the body: if you keep a bullet in your neck, you can suffer from lead poisoning, but the surgery can also leave you handicapped. What are you going to do, especially when you know that the bullet may help identify the killer even if it happened 30 years before.

There’s even an element of romance, if that’s your thing.

VERDICT: With an original plot and irresistible suspense, The Bullet pulls you into in-depth mystery territory: where do you come from? Who are you? Who can be trusted? Can you really know others to take revenge yourself? Great thriller inviting you to look at life differently.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

(I’m not giving you the full official synopsis. Trust me, the less you know the more you wil lenjoy it!)

Two words: The bullet.
That’s all it takes to shatter her life.
Caroline Cashion is beautiful, intelligent, a professor of French literature. But in a split second, everything she’s known is proved to be a lie.
A single bullet, gracefully tapered at one end, is found lodged at the base of her skull. Caroline is stunned. It makes no sense: she has never been shot. She has no entry wound. No scar. Then, over the course of one awful evening, she learns the truth…

That was thirty-four years ago.
Now, Caroline has to find the truth of her past…
The bullet in her neck could finger a murderer. A frantic race is set in motion: Can Caroline unravel the clues to her past, before the killer tracks her down?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Louise Kelly spent two decades traveling the world as a reporter for NPR and the BBC. Her assignments have taken her from grimy Belfast bars to the glittering ports of the Persian Gulf, and from mosques in Hamburg to the ruined deserts of Iraq. As an NPR correspondent covering the spy beat and the Pentagon, she reported on wars, terrorism, and rising nuclear powers. A Georgia native, her first job was working as a staff writer at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Kelly was educated at Harvard University and at Cambridge University in England. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and their two children. [from Goodreads]