All The Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham | Thriller Book Review

Spoilers ahead!

Content warning: child abduction, post partum depression, child loss and suicide.

Synopsis:

Today is day 364. 364 days since my last night of sleep. 3-64 days since my son, Mason, was ta ken from his bed. The police have stopped looking. My husband wants me to move on. But I need to keep his story alive. Someone knows what happened to my son. And I’m going to find them. 

It’s been a year since Isabelle Drake’s son, Mason, disappeared from his bedroom. Since then, she hasn’t had a full night of sleep. Everyone else has moved on – the detectives, the press, her husband – but she can’t rest until she knows the truth. 

Teaming up with true crime podcaster Waylon Spencer, Isabelle investigates her son’s case. But Waylon has motives of his own and as long-forgotten memories of Isabelle’s past resurface, doubt begins to cloud her sleepless nights. 

What happened to Mason Drake? What if the past is better left buried? 

Review:

This is Willingham’s’ second novel after debuting ‘A Flicker In The Dark’ a few months prior. Which shortly became Waterstones thriller Book of the Month in September of 2022. Going into this novel I had no idea what to expect – I enjoy podcasts, I find thrillers that centre around children heart-breaking and if we throw in some sleep walking and Paranormal Activity ‘standing over the bed while someone is asleep’ then we have created a great novel and… my worst nightmare.

Anyway, let’s stop rambling! The start of this novel explores Isabelle ‘Izzy’ Drake and her traumatic childhood. We go through a series of days back when Izzy was only a little girl and believed she murdered her younger sister while she was sleep-walking.  Her parents never explained to her what happened that night, so she has filled in the pieces herself and lived a life of guilt. I found this plot heart-breaking to know that nobody ever explained anything to this little girl who truly believes she killed her best friend and her sister. The police suspect it wasn’t a horrible accident, her parents seem to suspect it wasn’t an accident but yet that’s all she is ever told, that her sister simply drowned one night while playing by the marsh in their back garden. It isn’t until way later in this story that we learn this was not true and their mother was mentally ill and decided she wanted to keep the girls ‘little’ forever by drowning them together (yikes). Before Izzy had a chance to get into the water their father comes outside and puts a stop to the situation. We learn that Izzys’ mother has postpartum psychosis which was never paid attention to and led to this heart-wrenching destruction. I find this whole plot extremely saddening to see how her mother was never given the treatment she deserved, even though she knew something was wrong. Her emotions were downplayed and ignored until she finally broke. Unfortunately, this happens quite regularly in real life too. Mental illnesses are never taken as seriously as they should be. I mean… we live in our heads – we know when something is wrong! This illness not being treated led to this family’s downfall and also traumatised their remaining daughter forever. 

Let’s move along to Ben, the husband. Before Ben and Isabelle became an item there was Ben and Allison. High school sweethearts, match made in heaven… or hell in this case. Soon after Ben and Isabelle meet, they start dating behind Allisons back. Unfortunately, Ben comes home one day to find Allison has overdosed on their bathroom floor. Straight away my first thought was ‘well that’s convenient’ and at no point did I buy that she actually overdosed. Not to mention we find out later how she was pregnant when she did this. Soon after the funeral is over Isabelle and Ben decide to get married, which… is kind of odd seeing as his high school sweetheart had literally just died. Can’t you at least pretend to mourn?! After a few years of marriage that we don’t see in the novel we cut to Isabelle flushing her birth control and getting pregnant in a desperate attempt to keep Ben around. MAJOR red flag from both sides of this marriage at this point. (Don’t bring a baby into this world in hopes it’ll fix your marriage and don’t do it when you know your husband doesn’t want children). Soon after Mason is born it is apparent Ben does not enjoy fatherhood which is when I started to suspect where this was going. His ex-wife disappeared conveniently and then his son? Hmmm.  

Isabelle is the only one who is still trying to find answers and comes across Waylon, a podcaster. They decide to team up to find out the truth and in the coming weeks we uncover that Waylon was Allisons’ brother and he suspected Ben had something to do with the overdose. Things start to heat up pretty intensely until we get to the all thrilling finale that Ben and his new girlfriend stole Mason and gave him to a friend who couldn’t have children. I think they thought they were doing the right thing, but I get a headache when I think about how they assumed they were doing good by this decision. Firstly, Waylon seemed too convenient, and I suspected something was up with him from the start. He just randomly finds her? Definitely not. I do enjoy the podcast side of this story since podcasts have become a huge way of spreading unsolved cases around the world and it makes the plot feel so much more realistic.  

My overall thoughts on this novel would be that it is super thrilling, fast paced, action packed, and the plot twists wouldn’t stop coming. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I can’t wait for what Willingham produces next. When I think about a solid phenomenal thriller this book is what will come to mind from now on. The beginning seemed a little slow for me but once I was 40% through the book, I realised all of the slow information we were given was so insightful and needed for the story. Every paragraph truly counted for this one and to have guessed what would happen you’d really have to be paying attention to the small things.