With a Vengeance Review

I fear I’m going to start sounding like a crotchety old lady if I keep posting negative reviews. Seriously, I still consider Riley Sager one of my favorites, but With a Vengeance was not his best work.

Also, there are going to be some slight spoilers. I try not to do that most of the time, but these are an important part of my review. Proceed with caution.

Synopsis

In 1942, six people destroyed Anna Matheson’s family. Twelve years later, she’s ready for retribution.

Under false pretenses, Anna has lured those responsible for her family’s downfall onto a luxury train from Philadelphia to Chicago, an overnight journey of thirteen hours. Her goal? Confront the people who’ve wronged her, get them to confess their crimes, and deliver them into the hands of authorities waiting at the end of the line. Justice will at last be served.

But Anna’s plan is quickly derailed by the murder of one of the passengers. As the train barrels through the night, it becomes clear that someone else on board is enacting their own form of revenge—and that they won’t stop until everyone else is dead.

With time running out before the train reaches its destination, Anna is forced to hunt the killer in their midst while protecting the people she hates the most. In order to destroy her enemies, she must first save them—even though it means putting her own life at risk.

My Thoughts on With a Vengeance

With a Vengeance started well. The motive was interesting, it was fast paced and seemed to head in the right direction. I was hooked until about halfway through and then the whole thing went off the rails (pun intended).

To start there was not one character that I liked. They were all awful people. However, that in itself isn’t a deal breaker for me. The thing that drove me crazy was all the plot holes. Some of the things that happened just didn’t make sense. Normally, Sager is decent at tying them up but he didn’t this time.

Another thing that I usually love about Sager are his plot twists. However, this had a plot twist on every page and some of them just felt like they were pulled out of the air. After three fake heart attacks, one fake poisoning, one fake stabbing, and one fake gunshot (and a partridge in a pear tree) I was over the whole thing.

And I couldn’t build a case against one person because they were all sketchy from the get-go. But the main character would change who she suspected every other sentence. It was just too much. In effort to build tension he ruined the whole thing. I tried to love this. I’ve loved his work so much in the past, but there were too many issues to overlook.

My Rating: 2/5