Since We Fell: A Novel

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Published
HarperCollins , 2017.
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Checked Out

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Barnes and Noble Best Book of the Year

Bookpage Best of 2017

Booklist Best Crime Novel

PopSugar Best Book of 2017

The new novel from New York Times bestseller Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River and Shutter Island

“Lehane is the master of complex human characters thrust into suspenseful, page-turning situations.” —Gillian Flynn

Since We Fell follows Rachel Childs, a former journalist who, after an on-air mental breakdown, now lives as a virtual shut-in. In all other respects, however, she enjoys an ideal life with an ideal husband. Until a chance encounter on a rainy afternoon causes that ideal life to fray. As does Rachel’s marriage. As does Rachel herself. Sucked into a conspiracy thick with deception, violence, and possibly madness, Rachel must find the strength within herself to conquer unimaginable fears and mind-altering truths. By turns heart- breaking, suspenseful, romantic, and sophisticated, Since We Fell is a novel of profound psychological insight and tension. It is Dennis Lehane at his very best.

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Format
Street Date
05/09/2017
Language
English
ISBN
9780062129406

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Similar Titles From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for titles you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
These books have the appeal factors menacing, intensifying, and intricately plotted, and they have the theme "too good to be true"; the genres "thrillers and suspense" and "psychological suspense"; the subjects "married women," "deception," and "betrayal"; and characters that are "complex characters."
These books have the appeal factors menacing and intensifying, and they have the theme "too good to be true"; the genres "thrillers and suspense" and "psychological suspense"; and the subjects "deception," "betrayal," and "former lovers."
Complex backstories reveal the past traumas of damaged female protagonists in both compelling, character-driven literary fiction novels that begin with gun violence. A wife shoots her husband in Since we Fell and a woman witnesses her boss committing suicide in Animal. -- Alicia Cavitt
Idyllic marriages fall apart when a wife discovers the truth about her beloved husband. These psychologically astute novels follow the disillusionment, grief, and pain experienced by their complex female protagonists, though Since We Fell includes a large helping of menace. -- Mike Nilsson
These books have the appeal factors menacing, intensifying, and intricately plotted, and they have the genres "literary fiction" and "psychological fiction"; the subjects "deception," "betrayal," and "former lovers"; and characters that are "complex characters" and "flawed characters."
Shifting dynamics between husbands and wives cause high stakes in both menacing thrillers that begin with violence and then use flashbacks to reveal the motive behind the crime. Both books center on women in relationships that seem too good to be true. -- Alicia Cavitt
Boasting intricate plots and an intensifying sense of menace, these character-driven thrillers begin with women living seemingly perfect lives. But it isn't long until the facade crumbles and the secrets, lies, and violence rush in. -- Mike Nilsson
In these intricately plotted thrillers, protagonists with impaired perception following trauamatic incidents (a nervous breakdown in Since We Fell, a severe beating in Witch Elm) confront self-doubt alongside evidence that their nearest and dearest are keeping dark, deadly secrets. -- Kim Burton
These books have the appeal factors menacing and intensifying, and they have the theme "too good to be true"; the genre "psychological suspense"; and the subjects "married women," "deception," and "betrayal."
Married women learn disturbing facts about their husbands in these suspenseful, modern thrillers. In Wife and Widow, a murderer's wife and a grieving widow examine their shared tragedy. In Since We Fell, an agoraphobic reporter's perfect marriage falls dramatically apart. -- Alicia Cavitt
These suspenseful literary fiction novels center on women whose seemingly happy marriages are cloaked in secrecy. Since We Fell is about a Boston journalist with a fragile psyche while Berta Isla features a Spanish woman who marries a British spy. -- Alicia Cavitt
Set in modern Boston (Since We Fell) and a small Wisconsin town in 1907 (A Reliable Wife), these nuanced psychological thrillers follow ill-advised marriages as they unravel through deception, unrelieved emotional trauma, and finally, murder. -- Mike Nilsson

Similar Authors From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for other authors you might want to read if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
James Lee Burke and Dennis Lehane both offer readers a similar bleak tone, character-centered stories featuring both private investigators and non-series characters, an urban setting, hard-edged moral stories, involved personal relationships, and cynical humor. -- Katherine Johnson
Readers who enjoy Dennis Lehane's world-weary humor should enjoy Bill James, a British crime writer who eschews simple solutions and tidy resolutions in his consistently captivating Mysteries. James's multi-dimensional characters spout inspired, dead-on, ironic dialogue, putting a droll spin on dark crimes. Neither cop nor robber is above reproach, partnered in an elaborately absurd waltz of iniquity. -- NoveList Contributor
Despite radically different locales (Roger Smith writes of post-apartheid Cape Town, South Africa while Dennis Lehane's neighborhood is Boston), both authors skillfully portray the humanity of men and women trapped by poverty and prejudice. Both authors offer graphic violence and suspenseful, intricate plots in well-captured settings. -- Shauna Griffin
Nele Neuhaus and Dennis Lehane write fast-paced crime fiction that pulls no punches. Their work is gritty, direct, and sometimes shocking, revealing the ugliness that can hide inside even the most innocuous people. Lehane's tales have a stronger sense of place and are more character-driven but both writers are equally compelling. -- Mike Nilsson
These authors write intricately-plotted and gritty suspense and mystery. Along with complex characters and a strong sense of place, both employ some graphic violence, Dennis Lehane more than Mick Herron, and a fast pace. Readers will enjoy plot twists and red herrings and finally, a satisfactory conclusion. -- Melissa Gray
Dennis Lehane and Pete Dexter write frank, menacing stories featuring broken characters who struggle to survive, against vividly evoked, gritty settings that explore the roots of violence and its aftermath. With scathing irony and haunting brutality, the authors examine how society creates and acquiesces to the deeds of monsters. -- NoveList Contributor
Both Marcus Sakey and Dennis Lehane write fast-paced and compelling hardboiled fiction and suspense stories featuring powerful evocations of place (Chicago for Sakey, Boston for Lehane), full-bodied characters, and twisting plots. -- Shauna Griffin
Chris Grabenstein and Dennis Lehane write character-driven mysteries that star compelling, wisecracking detectives with big hearts. The charm of their mysteries hinges on their complex protagonists and strong sense of place; Grabenstein spotlights the New Jersey shore, while Lehane sets his work in South Boston. -- Mike Nilsson
Although Dennis Lehane's books are contemporary and often Bostonian while Max Allan Collins's speculate about real historical events, both write intricately plotted hard-boiled mysteries with powerful evocations of place and well-drawn characters. Their books are fast-paced, gritty, and don't shy from violence. Collins's books are steamy; Lehane's books are darker. -- Melissa Gray
Like Dennis Lehane, Archer Mayor's work evokes a distinct and interesting locale, delving beneath the surface to get at the desperation that drives people over the edge and into conflict with the Law. While Mayor's protagonists are compassionate, they aren't always able to unravel underlying mysteries of the human heart and mind. -- NoveList Contributor
With multi-faceted characters, a strong sense of place, a bleak tone, and fact-paced yet literate writing, fans of Dennis Lehane might want to try Edward Conlon -- both his fiction and his memoir of his time as an NYPD detective. -- Shauna Griffin
Natsuo Kirino and Dennis Lehane write bleak noir that's steeped in a strong sense of place; for Kirino it's Tokyo, for Lehane it's Boston. Their gritty narratives feature troubled protagonists, a fast pace, and a compelling style. -- Mike Nilsson

Published Reviews

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Lehane is one of our most versatile crime writers: he's done series mysteries (the Kenzie-Gennaro novels), stand-alone thrillers (Mystic River, 2001), horror-thriller blends (Shutter Island, 2003), and large-scale historical novels (The Given Day, 2008), and he's done them all superbly. Now he adds psychological thrillers to his résumé. Rachel Childs, the protagonist in this slalom course of a tale, is a mess. She was once a rising television journalist, but an on-camera meltdown sent her career into free fall and left her a virtual shut-in, obsessed with finding her father, who vanished from her life as a child. Everything changes when she falls in love with her own Mr. McDreamy, Brian Delacroix, and he slowly pulls her out of her shell. Then the slalom course takes its most jarring turn: Is Brian hiding something? Well, yes, he's hiding plenty.A lot of thrillers boast twisty plots, but Lehane plies his corkscrew on more than the story line. The mood and pace of the novel change directions, too, jumping from thoughtful character study to full-on suspense thriller, like a car careening down San Francisco's Lombard Street, cautiously at one moment, hell-bent at another. But this narrative vehicle never veers out of control, and when Lehane hits the afterburners in the last 50 pages, he produces one of crime fiction's most exciting and well-orchestrated finales rife with dramatic tension and buttressed by rich psychological interplay between the characters. Don't be surprised if Since We Fell makes readers forget about that other psychological thriller featuring an unstable heroine named Rachel. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The buzz has already begun for this one and will soon reach ear-shattering levels, aided by the author's 15-city tour and a full component of bells and whistles.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Publisher's Weekly Review

Set in contemporary Boston, this expertly wrought character study masquerading as a thriller from Edgar-winner Lehane (World Gone By) features his first-ever female protagonist. Once a star journalist, until something snapped during her TV coverage of the devastation in Haiti following the 2009 earthquake, Rachel Childs now barely leaves her house. Lehane portrays the frantic hamster wheel of waxing and waning anxiety with unnerving clarity. A lifetime of tension, much of it spawning from her now-deceased mother's refusal to disclose the identity of Rachel's father, weighs on Rachel. The quest to put a name to half her DNA is what first sets Rachel on a collision course with Brian Delacroix, a PI (or so he claims) who advises her against the whole thing. Fast forward several years, and Rachel and Brian meet again. Their eventual marriage is romantic and life-affirming, as Brian coaxes Rachel through the swamp of her psyche, until it's suddenly not. The book's conspiracy plot doesn't cut the deepest; it's Lehane's intensely intimate portrayal of a woman tormented by her own mind. 15-city tour. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
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Library Journal Review

After covering tragic events in Haiti, reporter Rachel Childs suffers a mental breakdown on live TV and is fired. Her public trauma leads to divorce and severe agoraphobia. Almost two years later, she has remarried and is finally starting to recover-until the day she spots her husband, Brian, who is supposedly out of the country. When she confronts him, Brian convinces her otherwise, and facts seem to support his story and the existence of a doppelgänger. When a mysterious friend of Brian's reappears and divulges new information, she finally follows Brian and his true betrayal is revealed. Rachel's life careens into a nightmare and a fight for her life as she discovers the depth of his deception. The first third of this book details Rachel's background and reads like literary fiction. The latter portion ventures into thriller territory. Rachel's fully-developed character grounds the suspense to ease this shift, and Lehane (Shutter Island; Live by Night) writes with a smooth ease that makes the pages fly by. VERDICT Readers will enjoy going along for the ride in this engrossing story about love, deception, and marital commitment. [See Prepub Alert, 11/7/16.]-Emily Byers, Salem P.L., OR © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Kirkus Book Review

Don't zoom through this latest entry in Lehane's illustrious body of work. You'll miss plenty of intrigue, intricacies, and emotional subtleties.The clinical term for what ails journalist Rachel Childs is "agoraphobia." Even if the term didn't appear twice in the novel, it'd be easy enough for the reader to identifyand identify withher pain thanks to Lehane's delicate, incisive rendering of her various symptoms. They include panic, rage, depression, and, most of all, self-loathing. ("That's who I've become," she thinks to herself. "A creature below contempt.") The reasons behind Rachel's breakdown are likewise cataloged in short, vivid strokes: a childhood spent mostly with her brittle, brilliant mother who refused to tell her anything at all about her father, leading to a yearslong search for that father culminating in desolation and heartbreak. The coup de grce to Rebecca's self-esteem comes when her meteoric rise to prominence as a Boston TV reporter literally crashes from her on-camera nervous collapse while covering the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Through all these jolts and traumas, one person is always around, whether close or from a distance: Brian Delacroix, a witty, handsome Canadian-born businessman whom she first meets as a private investigator, later through his occasional "keep-your-chin-up" e-mails, and then, after she's all but locked herself away in her apartment, outside a South End bar. Brian gradually becomes the only one who can even begin to draw Rachel out of her deep blue funk, first as a confidant, then as a lover, and finally as her husband. Happily ever after? You know there's no such thing in a Lehane novel if you've dived into such rueful, knotty narratives as Mystic River (2001), Shutter Island (2003), and World Gone By (2015). It spoils nothing to disclose that Brian isn't quite who Rachel thinks he is. But as she discovers when she tentatively, gradually subdues her demons to seek the truth, Rachel isn't quite who she thinks she is either. What seems at the start to be an edgy psychological mystery seamlessly transforms into a crafty, ingenious tale of murder and deceptionand a deeply resonant account of one woman's effort to heal deep wounds that don't easily show. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Lehane is one of our most versatile crime writers: he's done series mysteries (the Kenzie-Gennaro novels), stand-alone thrillers (Mystic River, 2001), horror-thriller blends (Shutter Island, 2003), and large-scale historical novels (The Given Day, 2008), and he's done them all superbly. Now he adds psychological thrillers to his résumé. Rachel Childs, the protagonist in this slalom course of a tale, is a mess. She was once a rising television journalist, but an on-camera meltdown sent her career into free fall and left her a virtual shut-in, obsessed with finding her father, who vanished from her life as a child. Everything changes when she falls in love with her own Mr. McDreamy, Brian Delacroix, and he slowly pulls her out of her shell. Then the slalom course takes its most jarring turn: Is Brian hiding something? Well, yes, he's hiding plenty.A lot of thrillers boast twisty plots, but Lehane plies his corkscrew on more than the story line. The mood and pace of the novel change directions, too, jumping from thoughtful character study to full-on suspense thriller, like a car careening down San Francisco's Lombard Street, cautiously at one moment, hell-bent at another. But this narrative vehicle never veers out of control, and when Lehane hits the afterburners in the last 50 pages, he produces one of crime fiction's most exciting and well-orchestrated finales—rife with dramatic tension and buttressed by rich psychological interplay between the characters. Don't be surprised if Since We Fell makes readers forget about that other psychological thriller featuring an unstable heroine named Rachel.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The buzz has already begun for this one and will soon reach ear-shattering levels, aided by the author's 15-city tour and a full component of bells and whistles. Copyright 2017 Booklist Reviews.

Copyright 2017 Booklist Reviews.
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Library Journal Reviews

After a terrible public breakdown, reporter Rachel Childs retreats into herself until she has the good fortune to meet and marry charming businessman Brian. Then she sees something—or at least thinks she does—that puts her whole marriage in question. With a 500,000-copy first printing and a ten-city tour.. Copyright 2016 Library Journal.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal.
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Library Journal Reviews

After covering tragic events in Haiti, reporter Rachel Childs suffers a mental breakdown on live TV and is fired. Her public trauma leads to divorce and severe agoraphobia. Almost two years later, she has remarried and is finally starting to recover—until the day she spots her husband, Brian, who is supposedly out of the country. When she confronts him, Brian convinces her otherwise, and facts seem to support his story and the existence of a doppelgänger. When a mysterious friend of Brian's reappears and divulges new information, she finally follows Brian and his true betrayal is revealed. Rachel's life careens into a nightmare and a fight for her life as she discovers the depth of his deception. The first third of this book details Rachel's background and reads like literary fiction. The latter portion ventures into thriller territory. Rachel's fully-developed character grounds the suspense to ease this shift, and Lehane (Shutter Island; Live by Night) writes with a smooth ease that makes the pages fly by. VERDICT Readers will enjoy going along for the ride in this engrossing story about love, deception, and marital commitment. [See Prepub Alert, 11/7/16.]—Emily Byers, Salem P.L., OR

Copyright 2017 Library Journal.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal.
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Publishers Weekly Reviews

Set in contemporary Boston, this expertly wrought character study masquerading as a thriller from Edgar-winner Lehane (World Gone By) features his first-ever female protagonist. Once a star journalist, until something snapped during her TV coverage of the devastation in Haiti following the 2009 earthquake, Rachel Childs now barely leaves her house. Lehane portrays the frantic hamster wheel of waxing and waning anxiety with unnerving clarity. A lifetime of tension, much of it spawning from her now-deceased mother's refusal to disclose the identity of Rachel's father, weighs on Rachel. The quest to put a name to half her DNA is what first sets Rachel on a collision course with Brian Delacroix, a PI (or so he claims) who advises her against the whole thing. Fast forward several years, and Rachel and Brian meet again. Their eventual marriage is romantic and life-affirming, as Brian coaxes Rachel through the swamp of her psyche, until it's suddenly not. The book's conspiracy plot doesn't cut the deepest; it's Lehane's intensely intimate portrayal of a woman tormented by her own mind. 15-city tour. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary. (May)

Copyright 2017 Publisher Weekly.

Copyright 2017 Publisher Weekly.
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Citations

APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)

Lehane , D. (2017). Since We Fell: A Novel . HarperCollins.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Lehane , Dennis. 2017. Since We Fell: A Novel. HarperCollins.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Lehane , Dennis. Since We Fell: A Novel HarperCollins, 2017.

Harvard Citation (style guide)

Lehane , D. (2017). Since we fell: a novel. HarperCollins.

MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)

Lehane , Dennis. Since We Fell: A Novel HarperCollins, 2017.

Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.

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