Choose Me by Tess Gerritsen & Gary Braver {Book Review}

Choose Me was a thrilling mystery that had me guessing the entire book and had me reading as fast as I could to help solve the mystery!

Disclosure: I purchased this book from Kindle Unlimited. All opinions are 100% my own.

Choose Me by Tess Gerritsen & Gary Braver {Book Review}

From New York Times bestseller Tess Gerritsen and acclaimed thriller writer Gary Braver comes a sexy murder mystery about a reckless affair and dangerous secrets.

Taryn Moore is young, beautiful and brilliant…so why would she kill herself? When Detective Frankie Loomis arrives on the scene to investigate the girl’s fatal plunge from her apartment balcony, she knows in her gut there’s more to the story, especially after the autopsy reveals that the college senior was pregnant. It could be reason enough for suicide-or a motive for murder.

To English professor Jack Dorian, Taryn was the ultimate fantasy: intelligent, adoring, and completely off limits. But there was also a dark side to Taryn, a dangerous streak that threatened those she turned her affections to–including Jack. And now that she’s dead, his problems are just beginning.

After Frankie uncovers a trove of sordid secrets, it becomes clear that Jack may know the truth. He is guilty of deception, but is he capable of cold-blooded murder?

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First and foremost, I have to share my excitement when upon finishing the book and reading the “about the author” section; that Tess Gerritsen is the auto behind Rizzoli & Isles. I loved that television series and had zero clue it was based on a book series. I also had zero clue that the author was the author I was currently reading! Needless to say, I will be seeking out more of Tess’ books!

Second, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more books by both authors.

Choose Me bounces between three main characters – Taryn, Jack, and Frankie, and two timelines – before and after Taryn’s death.

I loved getting different viewpoints from the characters and being able to see what occurred while Taryn was still alive, thus getting to know her; and seeing what was occurring after her death. It was like reading Taryn’s story, but being a part of Frankie’s investigation at the same time.

In my mind, there were definitely plenty of suspects that had the “three aspects of a crime” – means, motive, and opportunity, yet when it came down to who really did it; I was taken by surprise.

The story flowed wonderfully and I enjoyed the final chapter that gave us closure to the entire story – not just the mystery. It wrapped up everything that had happened which is something I find a lot of books, regardless of genre, fail to do which leaves us left to guess what occurred later.

I enjoyed Choose Me and recommend for those who enjoy a thrilling mystery!

About the Authors

Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D.

While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. In 1987, her first novel was published. Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, was followed by eight more romantic suspense novels. She also wrote a screenplay, “Adrift”, which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.

Tess’s first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her suspense novels since then have been: Life Support (1997), Bloodstream (1998), Gravity (1999), The Surgeon (2001), The Apprentice (2002), The Sinner (2003), Body Double (2004), Vanish (2005), The Mephisto Club (2006), The Bone Garden (2007), The Keepsake (2008; UK title: Keeping the Dead), Ice Cold (2010; UK title: The Killing Place), The Silent Girl (2011), Last To Die (2012), Die Again ( 2015), Playing With Fire ( 2015), I Know A Secret (2017) and The Shape Of Night (2019). Her books have been published in forty countries, and more than 40 million copies have been sold around the world.

Her books have been top-3 bestsellers in the United States and number one bestsellers abroad. She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics around the world have praised her novels as “Pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “Scary and brilliant” (Toronto Globe and Mail), and “Polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publisher Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen”.

Her series of novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the TNT television series “Rizzoli & Isles” starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.

She is also a filmmaker. She and her son Josh have just completed production of a feature-length documentary, “Magnificent Beast,” about the ancient origins of the pig taboo.

Now retired from medicine, she writes full time. She lives in Maine.

I was born and raised in Hartford, CT and educated in its public schools. I received a B.S. in physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an M.A. in English from the University of Connecticut, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin. Before settling in a teaching position at Northeastern University, I worked as a soda jerk, newspaper reporter, tech writer, foundry laborer, and project physicist, which taught me that lab work wasn’t for me but teaching and writing were.

After a year of teaching at Western Michigan University, I took a position at Northeastern in Boston where I still teach. Originally hired to teach linguistics, a subject which was turning my blood into ink, I introduced a course in Science Fiction which I had read by the pound as a kid. With the success of that, I then introduced two other popular- culture courses—Horror Fiction and Modern Bestsellers as well as Fiction Writing. They’re all still going strong after 25 years.

Some years ago I took up scuba diving and joined an Earthwatch team looking for Phoenician and Roman shipwrecks off the Spanish island of Mallorca. We discovered two Roman wrecks as well as modern-day pirates who attacked us underwater with anchors dragged behind fast speedboats. Unbeknownst to us, our little expedition had trespassed into the middle of an antiquities black-market involving dealers who were stealing booty from Mediterranean shipwrecks and selling it to museums around the world. I vowed that if I got out of that alive, I’d write a book about it. I did and moved the locale to the majestic island of Santorini, the ancient outpost of the Minoan empire. That book is called Atlantis Fire, which Stephen King called “a fine thriller seasoned with wit and sensibility…it blew me away.”

That was followed by another archaeological thriller, The Stone Circle, which got good reviews. Two years later I wrote Rough Beast, a biomedical thriller which defined my future novels. Because of its reception, the publisher asked that I do more of the same—high concept bio-medical thrillers centered on the family. That led to Elixir, which got optioned for a movie by director Ridley Scott. Because of that option and the publisher’s perception that the book was going to take off, I was asked to adopt a pen name to fool the bookstore chains which base their prepublication purchases on the sales figures of an author’s previous title. Because my publisher (Tor/Forge, Macmillan) wanted to print up ten times the hardback copies of Rough Beast, they didn’t want bookstores to under order. Thus, Gary Braver was born. Scott, alas, did not make the movie, even after a second option, but Elixir did well.

Since then, I’ve published three more thrillers—Gray Matter and Flashback, winner of the 2006 Massachusetts Honor Book Award, Skin Deep, and Tunnel Vision.

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