Choose Me is a gripping thriller with a shocking twist

When you read a lot of books you start to see the same old patterns and tropes over and over again. And if you read book reviews you’ll hear “you’ll never see the ending coming” a lot, too. But when it comes to Tess Gerritsen and Gary Braver’s new novel Choose Me, you really won’t know what hits you.

In just 320 pages, Gerritsen and Braver manage to weave a tale so sordid, so shocking, that you can’t stop reading. (I’m not exaggerating…I stayed up until 3am because I had to finish it!)

Choose Me moves effortlessly back and forth between the “before”, when Taryn Moore was an obsessive college student whose delusions impact everyone in her inner circle, to the “after” when Detective Frankie Loomis is trying to figure out why Taryn is found dead on the sidewalk outside her home. It looks like a suicide, but is it really?

Choose Me is a bit Gone Girl, with a hint of Gabriel’s Inferno gone horribly wrong

Taryn is one of those young women you see in Lifetime movies who lives so deep in her delusions that she’s a liability for the people in her life. She’s a college student out to get what she wants, and heaven help anyone who gets in her way. For her ex-boyfriend she’s a thorn in the side, for her faithful friend she’s untouchable, and for her professor, well, she’s everything.

Dr. Jack Dorian is an English professor who loves his job. He teaches a seminar called “Star Crossed Lovers” so you’d think he knows that flirting with temptation is dangerous. When Taryn shows up in his class he has a decision to make, but with a strained marriage and the stressors of mid-life bearing down on him he’s hard-pressed to do the right thing.

The interplay between the past and present work to establish how truly devious Taryn is and how she’ll stop at nothing to get exactly what she wants, when she wants it, and on her terms. But what the past can’t explain is why she’s dead. That’s where the shocking ending comes in.

Gerritsen and Braver waste no time in establishing Frankie as the veteran detective whose Mom-radar allows her to see things no one else in the force notices at the crime scene. Jack Dorian is a fly caught in a web. You can’t help but feel sorry for the guy through his ordeal because he’s not a bad person.

If you know me you know I love Sylvain Reynard’s Gabriel’s Inferno, which is a story of a student and professor who find each other after meeting earlier in life. You root for the couple because they have so many obstacles to overcome but you want them to win. With Choose Me, it’s like watching a train heading for a bridge with no tracks ahead. You see what’s coming and you want it to stop, but can’t help but keep reading because you know what’s going to happen…or as in Gone Girl you think you know what’s going to happen.

The temptation of a college student and her much-older professor plays throughout the book, but again there are lots of twists in this story that make it unlike any other teacher-student trope I’ve seen. It’s twisted and insidious, and gripping until the end.

Whether you need a solid beach read this summer or you need something for a long flight or road trip, Choose Me is the perfect choice. You won’t know what hit you.