One year ago, Isabelle Drake’s life changed forever: her toddler son, Mason, was taken out of his crib in the middle of the night while she and her husband were asleep in the next room. With little evidence and few leads for the police to chase, the case quickly went cold. However, Isabelle cannot rest until Mason is returned to her—literally.
Except for the occasional catnap or small blackout where she loses track of time, she hasn’t slept in a year.
Isabelle’s entire existence now revolves around finding him, but she knows she can’t go on this way forever. In hopes of jarring loose a new witness or buried clue, she agrees to be interviewed by a true-crime podcaster—but his interest in Isabelle’s past makes her nervous. His incessant questioning paired with her severe insomnia has brought up uncomfortable memories from her own childhood, making Isabelle start to doubt her recollection of the night of Mason’s disappearance, as well as second-guess who she can trust… including herself. But she is determined to figure out the truth no matter where it leads.
- Title: All the Dangerous Things
- Author: Stacy Willingham
- Publisher: Minotaur Books
- Publication Date: January 10th, 2023
- Genre: Mystery/Thriller
- Source: Digital ARC via Netgalley / Publishers
- Targeted Age Range: Adult.
- Content Warnings: kidnapping, grief, trauma, mentions of a fire (chapter 4), mentions of blood, vague mention of stillbirth (chapter 12, chapter 48), mentioned animal death and injury (chapter 11, chapter 18), murder, death, past emotional affair, mentions of suicide and overdose, physical violence, police, attempted murder, postpartum psychosis
- Rating: ★★★★.5
After loving Stacy Willingham’s debut, A Flicker in the Dark —- you can read my thoughts here —- I had high hopes for her follow up, All the Dangerous Things, and they were definitely met. All the Dangerous Things follows Isabelle Drake in the year after her eighteen month old son, Mason, was kidnapped in the middle of the night while she and her husband Ben were asleep in the next room. For the last year, all Isabelle has done is search for her son — much to the worry of the police force who are tired of her interfering in their investigation, and her husband who no longer could handle her obsessive tendencies, causing him to end their marriage. When a True Crime podcaster approaches her after her keynote speech at a True Crime convention and offers to feature her and her story on his podcast she initially balks at the offer. However, when the police once again tell her that they have no leads and that she just needs to be patient, she agrees. In agreeing to the podcast she hopes to find the answers to what happened to her son, but along the way she finds out secrets about herself, her family, and her husband that have her doubting everything she thought she knew.
At first glance, All the Dangerous Things seems like a story about a mother’s desperate need to find her child, which is, of course, true but it is also so much more than that. All the Dangerous Things is a story about the complexities of motherhood, the lengths we’re willing to go to protect the ones we love, the way we’re affected by childhood grief and trauma, and the dangers of secrecy.
This story is told in two separate timelines — “then” 1999 in Beaux Bridge, Louisiana and “now” in Savannah, Georgia. I love alternating timelines, especially when the past is so tightly woven with the present. My favorite thing about alternating timelines within mystery stories especially, is being able to see how one event can influence another, which I think Willingham did a great job of conveying. It was easy to see how situations from Isabelle’s past would make her react a certain way, or why she would suspect one thing based on prior experiences. I felt that the alternating timelines really added to the mysterious atmosphere and the unreliability of our main character, Isabelle.
I love an unreliable narrator in a mystery novel, and really, I had strong doubts about Isabelle throughout the entire book. Obviously, I could fully sympathize with the fact that Isabelle was a mother grieving over the loss of her child, and that she was desperate to get answers. I can’t even imagine the grief and fear that she was going through, so I really felt for her. However, there was never one moment where I was one hundred percent positive that she didn’t somehow have something to do with his disappearance, especially as more information was revealed throughout the story. Between the secrets of her past, her sleepwalking and general sleep issues, there was a lot of doubt cast on her. Willingham really hit the nail on the head when it comes to unreliable narrators.
Obviously, with a mystery/thriller, as a reader the thing you’re most looking forward to is the big reveal. All the Dangerous Things had quite a few big reveals, and each one made sense. Sometimes, authors tend to go overboard with plot twists simply for the sake of adding in more shock value — that was not the case here. Willingham seamlessly wove together a deeply detailed plot so each reveal made sense. It was easy to track how we got from point a to point b. I will say that there was one part of the reveal that fell a little flat to me — one part that I thought could’ve gone differently, however, grief often makes us act in ways that we can’t explain and in ways that others can’t understand so it didn’t bother me too much.
Although this wasn’t a huge part of the book, I am glad that Willingham touched a bit on the positives and negatives of true crime media. Personally, I do follow a lot of true crime stories, whether through books, podcasts, or documentaries, but I do believe that there is a fine line between researching and wanting to be aware of things going on in the world versus dehumanizing and fictionalizing. There was a lot of great commentary on this at the start of the book, and while I wish it was touched on a bit more, I understand why it wasn’t as that wasn’t a huge part of the storyline, even with Isabelle agreeing to be on a true crime podcast.
In my opinion, Willingham once again created a well thought out and interesting novel that kept me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. She’s definitely become one of my go-to authors for the adult mystery/thriller genre and I’m looking forward to whatever it is that she writes next.
Links for All the Dangerous Things: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
Stacy Willingham is the New York Times, USA Today and internationally bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark and All The Dangerous Things.
She earned her BA in magazine journalism from the University of Georgia and MFA in writing from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Before turning to fiction, she was a copywriter and brand strategist for various marketing agencies. Her books are being translated in over 30 languages.
She lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband, Britt, and Labradoodle, Mako, where she is always working on her next book.
