Review – Tear Me Apart by J.T. Ellison

Tear Me Apart by J.T. Ellison
Format: Paperback
Source: Library
Amazon
Apple Books
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The follow-up to her critically acclaimed Lie to Me, J.T. Ellison’s Tear Me Apart is the powerful story of a mother willing to do anything to protect her daughter even as their carefully constructed world unravels around them.

One moment will change their lives forever…

Competitive skier Mindy Wright is a superstar in the making until a spectacular downhill crash threatens not just her racing career but her life. During surgery, doctors discover she’s suffering from a severe form of leukemia, and a stem cell transplant is her only hope. But when her parents are tested, a frightening truth emerges. Mindy is not their daughter.

Who knows the answers?

The race to save Mindy’s life means unraveling years of lies. Was she accidentally switched at birth or is there something more sinister at play? The search for the truth will tear a family apart…and someone is going to deadly extremes to protect the family’s deepest secrets.

With vivid movement through time, Tear Me Apart examines the impact layer after layer of lies and betrayal has on two families, the secrets they guard, and the desperate fight to hide the darkness within.

This standalone thriller was my first book by J.T. Ellison, but it won’t be my last. This was a really clever, well-done mystery, and even though I thought I had it figured out pretty early on, I was only partially right. And, wow, do I really appreciate that. I read enough mysteries that I usually figure them out pretty quickly, so being kept guessing for as long as possible is more than I can hope for.

Mindy is a world-class skier at only 17. She’s ready to make it to the Olympics when a fluke accident ends her run. While repairing her leg, the doctors realize she also has cancer, and that discovery leads to another, which leads to the end of the world as Mindy knows it.

There were so many twists and turns in this book, I had hardly decided one of the characters was shady before something else popped up to make me think I was completely wrong. The mystery was really well done, managing to keep me guessing on the details until the very end.

There were a few pieces that I didn’t think really added to the story and, in fact, just confused everything, and not in a way that furthered the mystery. Things that just didn’t make sense to me, character actions that seemed out of character from what we’d learned so far. But those were only temporary blips that in what was otherwise and enjoyable read that zipped along at a good pace, despite the book coming in at nearly 500 pages. If you’re looking for a mystery that has a good number of twisty revelations without that annoying “HUGE TWIST” that so many mysteries today seem to rely on, this is a great way to spend a cold winter weekend.