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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lies, lies and more lies, July 11, 2008
This review is from: Don't Ever Tell (Mass Market Paperback)
DON'T EVER TELL by Brandon Massey brings us into the marriage of Rachel and Joshua Moore. They have been married six months and are very happy, even though Joshua's mother does not approve of Rachel at all. After hosting a party, Joshua is awakened by Rachel screaming and fighting in her sleep, and using language he's never heard from her before. He holds her until she awakens and then he asks her about her dreams, but she claims to not remember. Joshua is suspicious, it's the one thing he can't and won't tolerate; lying. Rachel seems to change in the next few days; she seems tense and frightened, and Joshua wants to know why. Will he find out before their marriage is completely ruined?
Rachel is harboring deep, dark secrets that she can tell no one. She understands her past may catch up with her, and with anyone who knows anything at all about her. So it is best they don't know what she was involved with. She is worried about how can she keep Joshua safe?
Massey has written a page-turner that I read in one sitting because I couldn't bear to put it down. The tension began building from the first page and never stopped until the last. The characters were developed so it was understandable why they did the things they did, even when you found yourself begging them to take another path. It was a great thriller and I would highly recommend it.
Reviewed by Alice Holman
of The RAWSISTAZ(tm) Reviewers
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
strong psychological suspense thriller, July 3, 2008
This review is from: Don't Ever Tell (Mass Market Paperback)
Dexter Bates is free after spending four years at Centralia Correctional Facility. A prison guard Steele, and Dex's pals Javier and Javier's wife Christy liberated him as he was being transferred to another facility. They inform him his woman vanished. He is unconcerned as he will find her for betraying him and payback is hell when he makes the remittance.
Happily married Rachel Moore has changed her identity so that she can move past her relationship with incarcerated abusive Dexter; plus just in case he somehow gets out he will not easily find her; she knows he will look. She has relocated so he cannot find her. However, although she feels free of him, she still at times looks over her shoulder into the shadows. Rachel knows if he is freed, he will search for her; if he searches for her, he will not quit until he finds her; if he finds her, he will killer her beloved husband and torture her until he kills her. She prays every night, but so does he in his way. Only one can have their prayer answered.
Dexter is a chilling villain who seems so calm even when he is killing someone. As he begins his quest, Rachel is very happy in her new life. That contrast between them enhances a strong psychological suspense thriller that never slows down from the moment the correctional guards escorting Bates stop to help a pretty blonde with car trouble and never decelerates as he is coming for her. Fans know high noon is coming as Brandon Massey provides a gripping suspenseful tale.
Harriet Klausner
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brandon Massey gets everything just right in DON'T EVER TELL, July 28, 2008
This review is from: Don't Ever Tell (Mass Market Paperback)
Brandon Massey has been laboring quietly for the past decade or so in the supernatural and horror literary genres --- working in what author Marcus Wynne so aptly describes as the grammar mine --- without gaining the recognition that is arguably his due.
DON'T EVER TELL --- touted as his breakout novel --- has everything you could reasonably expect in a thriller. It begins with a particularly brutal prison breakout involving Dexter Bates, a former police officer serving a 10-year sentence for attempted murder. Massey drops rotten and unforgettable little breadcrumbs about Bates's character and emotional state throughout the book. The one thing that is clear from the beginning is that prison, as might be expected, has not mellowed him.
Rachel Moore, the object of Bates's attempt at murder, is living happily in Atlanta, Georgia. She is recently married to a first-class if somewhat self-consciously clumsy guy named Joshua who loves her dearly, is newly and happily pregnant, and has a successful hairstyling business. Her life is a dream; the only problem is those lousy nightmares, inspired by her prior marriage to the aforementioned Dexter when she was living in Chicago and her name was Joy Bates. Dexter's escape from business is motivated primarily by revenge against Joy, who pressed charges against him for trying to kill her and divorced him while he was languishing behind bars. These feelings turn to rage, however, when he finds out that his considerable money stash, which was supposed to see him through his post-incarceration, is missing.
Dexter goes on a killing spree, determined to obliterate anyone who has ever meant anything to Joy and to discover where (and who) she is. When Joy --- now Rachel --- learns of Dexter's escape and rampage, she abruptly abandons Joshua and goes into hiding, leaving him devastated and blindsided. Joshua's passivity is about to come to an end, though, as he's willing to do whatever is necessary to save not only his family but also himself. As the final drama is played out in the quietly exotic locale of one of Georgia's barrier islands, a mortally dangerous, seemingly unstoppable force collides with two people whose greatest strengths are their love for and faith in each other.
Brandon Massey gets everything just right in DON'T EVER TELL --- from Joshua's true-to-type friends to Dexter's psychotic reactions. While it's not a horror novel, his prior experience in the genre holds him in good stead here; he hits notes of terror that he has never hit before. Anyone who has ever been involved with a woman who had a crazy boyfriend in her past and had to face the guy down will recognize Dexter from the jump and will be all the more chilled by doing so. The real star in Massey's universe, however, is his pacing, which is first rate from opening sentence to final paragraph. Breakout novel? You bet. And then some.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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