Catherine Ryan Howard

No one even knew they were together. Now one of them is dead. 56 DAYS AGO Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores. 35 DAYS AGO When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who--and what--he really is. TODAY Detectives arrive at Oliver's apartment to discover a decomposing body inside. Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime?

A Thriller

56 Days

it stopped making sense to me at certain points

3/5 wouldn’t read again but it was cool

vyn 

😟 - literally me reading this book

it stopped making sense to me at certain points

3/5 wouldn’t read again but it was cool



CATHERINE RYAN. HOWARD

56 DAYS.

Cheri Fuller

At this point, I can definitely say that I'm a fan of Catherine Ryan Howard. I think this is the third book I've read by her (yes, I'm too lazy to check...) and I've enjoyed them all. 

I had mixed feelings about reading a book set during a lock-down period due to COVID-19 because, well, at this point it seems as though we're never going to be rid of this virus and I'm fairly tired of hearing about it. But the fact that I've read the author before and been happy with the results, I bit the bullet and requested the ARC for the ebook.

I went along pretty well for the first 20-30% of the book but started to lose the desire to keep going so I put it down for a bit. Picked it up a few times, read some lines, and put it back down. Then I saw the audiobook was available for request on NetGalley and thought that would be just the thing to get me back into the groove. And it did. I listened to the last 70% in about 24 hours and can happily report that I ended up liking the book quite a bit. 

The thing with 56 Days is that absolutely nothing is quite what it seems. I can't give a lot of detail - read the blurb for basic stuff - because anything I would say is a potential spoiler and it's really best if you experience it for yourself. If you're an audiobook person, definitely go with that. The narrator does a good job. 

There were a few points where my BS meter really started to ping but, overall, those bits didn't take too much away from the book as a whole. If you've enjoyed any of the author's other works, I think you'll like this one. Or if you haven't but enjoy imaginative mysteries, give it a shot!

Thanks to the publisher for letting me try both versions of the book. It made a big different! And NetGalley - thank you too.

Solid thriller. Didn’t guess the twist. Novel pandemic setting.

Amelia Hruby

Kristen Claiborn

I did almost a daily search on my library’s elibrary site to find this book. The synopsis was intriguing, it was a Book of the Month Club add-on option, and Catherine Ryan Howard is fun to read. However, week after week my library only had the audiobook, which irritated me so much! Sure, I could use my BOTM credit to grab it, but I get super excited about the new books each month so I couldn’t see myself wasting a credit on a months’ old add-on (we’re only allowed three books a month, trying to narrow it down is excruciating). I got so frustrated with my library not having it…I actually bought it. I don’t do that very often. I’m not unhappy with this decision. 
	This darn book was seriously twisty!!! While I’ve complained before about alternating timelines and how miserably overdone they have become, this book wouldn’t work without it. Following along while Oliver and Clara begin their relationship and the detectives investigate the end of that same relationship builds the tension. At the beginning of Clara and Oliver’s relationship, I knew something was squirrely, and because Howard had focused so heavily on Oliver’s secrets, the assumption is that Clara is in some pretty grave danger. Then Howard threw me down the stairs and the entire story was up in the air. It was fantastic. And honestly, toward the end, I felt kinda bad for both of them, despite their shortcomings. It’s a decent thriller, if you’re into those kinds of things.

Molly Morgan

This book fell a little flat for me. It being set in 2020 corona times felt too.. real life and drew me out of it several times. More a fault of the times and not the book. The mystery was lackluster and uninteresting to me.

Maybe if I had read this a few years in the future it would have been a little better, but alas I read it in "covid is still happening" times.

sophia n

this was a lot of fun and i feel like the covid lockdown angle actually really added to the enjoyment of this premise and story. unfortunately i totally called the twist like 10% in and while that's not always a detriment to the story, normally for pure enjoyment i'd still be around a 4 stars for that, i felt like the day/timeline jumping was a little messy. also the ending was alright but lost a little tension for me. overall though super engaging and entertaining, the setting was great, and i feel like the author pulled off an interesting covid-related story without making it feel weird, which i super appreciate.

Cassandra Martin

I really liked the synopsis on this book and it made me so excited to read it, the book ended up going in a pretty different direction than I was thinking it would, which I didn’t mind. There was a bit too much repetitiveness with the chapters for me, I love multiple POV, but I think with theirs it was a bit too repetitive with the conversations without adding enough substance to it. I didn’t like the characters that much, they seemed to be lacking a bit of personality, but that’s probably on purpose. The story did give a few twists I wasn’t expecting and unraveled in an interesting manner, it kept it vague enough to keep you wanting to know more.

Kaitlyn Cortez

I did not like this. The different timelines and different POVs forced you to read the same events over and over, which bored me, and the twist at the end didn’t make any sense. I’ll give it props for writing the COVID-19 pandemic into a thriller, but it was lacking for me.

Gretchen Sartele

This book was ok. 

I had a bit of difficulty getting into it and I found the plot itself to be hampered by the all over the place timeline and the repetition of particular scenes, especially since some were repeated 3+ times with no real added detail to enhance them. 

I'm also not sure I love this whole new "COVID-19 thriller" genre that has emerged from the pandemic. Not sure if it's in good taste, but I digress. 

(view spoiler)[I did appreciate the misdirection that Ciara was the victim's sister, not Boy A's sister. That one got me pretty good. 

And I want to add that the idea that the police can close a case in <12 hours is hilarious to me. Like the guy is a famous child murderer and you don't want to look harder for a killer? Ok. (hide spoiler)]

This started as an average read. However, 100 pages in and I was hooked. Few of the plot twists were really good but the ending was underwhelming, to put it nicely. 

The writing style is a little repeatitve with dual povs of the same chapter.  

Akansha

Tw: Child death, murder

This started as an average read. However, 100 pages in and I was hooked. Few of the plot twists were really good but the ending was underwhelming, to put it nicely. 

The writing style is a little repeatitve with dual povs of the same chapter.  

Julie Viravaux

Oh My God.... it's literally 3am right now and I just finished 56 days. I was supposed to just read a few minutes before a late bed time but here i am a hour later absolutely out of my mind about this book.
I love thrillers, I read so many of them and I love to guess the ending, the big who done it. 
Sometimes I get close, sometimes there is a twist and i absolutely love that. 
56 days is different. There's not a twist . THERE'S 5 ! And every time I went "omg thats why! That changes everything" 
I thought reading about dublin during the lockdown was going to be boring since I'm myself in Dublin right now and self isolating during the holidays. But 56 days was everything but boring. It blew my mind completely and now I can't sleep because I'm still shocked by what a genius Catherine Ryan Howard is.

Caitlyn Hagen

I think that if you like Crime Thrillers you will love this book. I don't generally read this genre but I decided to give this one a try since it was getting some hype but it really wasn't for me. 

I liked the characters, I lived the twist at the end but all in all this one wasn't for me.

Amanda Autumn Berrey

Three stars

A brief synopsis: A couple who met shortly before lockdown began decide to quarantine together so that they can continue to see each other. 56 days after the couple meets one of them is dead and the police must piece together what happened 

My review: This was a pretty good thriller. I saw one of the twists coming but there were like 3 other twists that I missed. The storyline was interesting and kept me interested. I just felt like the situation of deciding to lockdown with a complete stranger was not very realistic

Jamie Trenholm

Kathryn 

This book was fine. Very weird reading about early Covid days going into the third year. Besides that the twists and turns just felt flat to me. It was interesting but I was never that invested.

Lauren Attaway

After I read The Nothing Man in a few hours last year, I was more than slightly looking forward to Catherine Ryan Howard’s next book 56 Days. And I was not disappointed! 56 Days is a thriller that surprised me with a misdirect and still gave a satisfying payoff. Howard is such a talented writer. I had talked about how I didn’t want to read anything set during the pandemic, and maybe I need to be more specific and say I don’t want to read anything subpar about the pandemic. This book had two characters that I could not figure out and a premise I couldn’t look away from. There is essentially a meet cute between Ciara and Oliver, where the moments of strangeness could really just be the awkwardness of those first interactions. When they decide to quarantine together, the opener of the book tells us things will go awry, but we still don’t know how. 56 Days teases out the secrets between the two really well by using the time jumps and shifting viewpoints. Easily one of my favorite thrillers of the year.

Aubrey Erskine

56 Days blew my freaking mind. I went into this book thinking I already knew exactly how it would go down just from reading the synopsis. I didn’t and the ending truly shocked me. Even when I again thought I knew what was going on, I truly didn’t.

No one wants to read about COVID 19 in a book, or so I thought. The pandemic was the perfect backdrop for these two characters who needed to be isolated from the rest of the world. It even added to the sense of paranoia and chills of this thriller.

This book kept me on my toes. We get three perspectives; Ciara, Oliver and a detective (gardia?). The timelines for each were staggered which was interesting. We had present day where a body was discovered and the other two would take turns by giving their perspective on events. Sometimes we had Ciara’s first while other times we’d see it from Oliver’s first. I really enjoyed how it was set up and thought it just added to the story.

So what were my theories? Well obviously the synopsis wants to trick you into believing that after going into lockdown together, the man killed the woman. That’s too easy though so in all probability the woman killed the man, case closed. Even that seemed too simple of an answer though. I was constantly searching for more in the narratives of each character and was fully invested their stories. What were they hiding? Was one secretly a serial killer? Heck were they both serial killers and that body was someone else entirely? I had theories and the truth didn’t disappoint. The truth was incredibly complex, and Howard masterly wove a tale more thrilling than I could have anticipated.

Tatyana

I wasn't sure about this book at first especially because Covid was mentioned and I'm over this virus. But it wasn't bad and while talks of lockdowns were mentioned it didn't take over the story.
Ciara and Oliver meeting when covid first hits Ireland and barely knowing each other decide to live together during the lockdown for about 2 weeks. Crazy to me. Smh...I'm not staying with a guy I literally just met a week or so ago. 
The multiple viewpoints were great but it did sometimes get a little repetitive and I didn't care for that. The ending was great. Perfect twist to end this Thriller.

Kristina Masone

I'm conflicted with this book. I enjoyed the idea of the book a lot, and at first, the book started off almost as if it were a romance blooming at the beginning of the global pandemic. 

From the very beginning, I knew how the story ended, which was a let down. I didn't like the repetitiveness of the POVs, and how almost half of them seemed (view spoiler)[to be completely irrelevant (hide spoiler)]. 

Living in the USA, it was interesting to see how the lockdown was portrayed in Ireland. I'm not sure it was an accurate representation, however it was definitely much more of a lockdown than was experienced over here. I just wish it was more prevalent to the story, rather than the plot device to get the two characters together.

Melissa Deitrick

I just love a new idea - COVID as a plot was a fun way to enable a “trapped together” trope without another freaking road-trip novel. 

Scattered debut-novel gripes but overall a refreshing ride and keeps you guessing until the end. 3 stars overall but a 4th for being brave enough to launch a book surrounding a difficult topic and capturing how it truly felt back then.

Anna Wilson

Thank you NetGalley for this advanced audiobook copy of 56 Days! A thriller about Covid? Is it too soon? I’m not sure but this is was a wild ride! 

56 days ago Oliver and Ciara meet. It’s February 2020, right before lock down. The couple wants to keep seeing each other so they decide to move in together. Today, a body has been found.

What I thought was the best part of this book was the structure. I have a feeling this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. We flip back and forth between different days, between Oliver, Ciara & the detectives solving the case but we also play around with what day. Often too we’ll hear about the same day from both perspectives.

Now what I didn’t enjoy was the whole reveals ag the end. I felt unsatisfied and questioning why we were even following the detective point of view. One other thing is the ending felt unfinished like I was missing a couple more chapters. 

Overall, the writing and the playing with perspectives and time was fun but fell a little flat for me!

** spoiler alert **
           Thank you NetGalley for this advanced audiobook copy of 56 Days! A thriller about Covid? Is it too soon? I’m not sure but this is was a wild ride! 

56 days ago Oliver and Ciara meet. It’s February 2020, right before lock down. The couple wants to keep seeing each other so they decide to move in together. Today, a body has been found.

What I thought was the best part of this book was the structure. I have a feeling this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. We flip back and forth between different days, between Oliver, Ciara & the detectives solving the case but we also play around with what day. Often too we’ll hear about the same day from both perspectives.

Now what I didn’t enjoy was the whole reveals ag the end. I felt unsatisfied and questioning why we were even following the detective point of view. One other thing is the ending felt unfinished like I was missing a couple more chapters. 

Overall, the writing and the playing with perspectives and time was fun but fell a little flat for me!

Samantha King

First of all I cant believe I've just read a 424 page book in two days. The last two hundred or so pages had me literally hooked, I physically could not put this book down..I needed to know the outcome and find out what happened.
The twists had to me on the edge of my seat in shock and the ending was gripping.
This book was done so well, Iy had me interested from the start till the very end. 
I didnt know how I'd feel after I heard about the time jumps but honestly I really liked that part of the book, it wasn't confusing and it was easy to follow.
I'd highly reccend this to anyone who likes a mystery.
This really was thrilling a brilliant read.

56 Days A Thriller

Reviews