Dude,Don’t mess with Jordan Rivera. Who is she? You ignorant piece of shit, she’s the one that left me with a broken arm and spitting up teeth like I was a water fountain in the middle of Central Park. She went psycho on me after I tried to take her wallet, and you, you unconscious bastard, left me behind. I don’t care if you were flattened within an inch of your life. This was your goddamned idea in the first place. Of course you didn’t know she had a three-foot chain, and that she knew karate

I've been wanting to try a novel by Max Allan Collins for several years now and when I won this in a Goodreads giveaway, I finally had my chance. The author has quite a prolific and varied output of private eye novels, thrillers, graphic novels, comics, TV and movie tie-ins, film criticism, song-writing, and even cozy mystery novels that he writes with his wife, Barbara Collins. He is also famously completing a number of Mike Hammer novels begun by the late Mickey Spillane.This particular novel

I received this book as an ARC from netgalley.com and I am happy to have had the opportunity.This book was just okay for me. The building of suspense and the unveiling of the killer were very exciting. I had absolutely no idea who the killer would be and was shocked with the discovery. I did, however, have a few issues with the novel. First, although the idea of the support group members gathering together to catch a serial killer was interesting, I don't think it was very realistic. Keep in min...

Collins just keep getting better and better!Collins, along with collaborator Matthew Clemens, always delivers a well written tale with a few twists and turns. What Doesn't kill Her is among their best. Smoothly written, fast-paced, with a few kinks here and there -- what more could I ask?Jordan is a victim of a violent crime determined to be anything but a victim. She has an interesting version of closure in mind, and pursues it relentlessly. She collects an interesting group of minions to help

Not Max Allan Collins at his best - this standalone novel is very slow moving until the final third, contrasting with his tightly written hard-boiled books like the Quarry series. The final third does pick up the pace, but I did guess the end from quite a long way out.

I think what disappointed me so much about this novel is the disparity between the strength of its first chapter and the steep decline over the following twenty chapters. The first chapter with its sheer terror, gritty violence and nail-biting tension sets the stage for a page-turning title. Unfortunately, no where else does the book live up to this amazing potential displayed. Like its cliched title, the book feels a bit like an immature idea of a serial killer book with trite and overplayed li...

I do not remember the last time I read a mystery/thriller, so I was pleasantly surprised by Max Allan Collins' What Doesn't Kill Her. The book starts off with a gruesome crime that kept me riveted until the end. I highly recommend that you do not read this book late at night like I did. It not only kept me from sleep as I tried to solve the mystery, but it also caused nightmares. Collins' writing is vivid and realistic, so I often felt like I was with Jordan Rivera and her friends. I was part of...

Quick read.Modern.I guessed the killer but not until close to the end.The kind of book you want to finish instead of sleeping or watching TV.Thrilling enough to give me chills!

She goes goes from the agony of wondering if the boy she likes might be interested in her to the hell of having her entire family murdered by a lunatic who then rapes her. He leaves her alive telling her that she's to tell everyone his story. No she won't.Jordan Rivera is a pretty normal girl until her world is shattered.This isn't a bad read. I went 4 stars on it. While it might not reach the top echelons of "my" 4 star reads it's still a story that will hold the interest as you follow Jordan t...

A group of victims in a support group band together to catch a killer presumably responsible for the deaths of each of one of their family members. Led by Jordan Rivera, the sole survivor of her family's massacre, the group investigates commonalities between each of the crimes and develop a profile of the killer. It's all very daytime TV with events panning out as you'd logically expect. As a fan of Max Allan Collins, his mainstream crime fiction is yet to impress me, especially when compared to...

I was hoping for more, but it was all very predictable (I figured out the identity of the killer way too early) and the characters were wooden. I listened to it on audiobook, which helped me stick with it, but the narration made a lot of the characters sound annoying. I did like the murders and Jordan's Scooby group. It's a fast read, but I'd recommend it in print vs. audiobook.

First, thank you to Netgalley for an ARC of this book for review. :)Now, on to the nitty gritty.The characters: believable, likeable, entertaining, realistic.The plot: intriguing, twisted, fun.The killer: a little predictable (pegged it early on), but still a nice, twisted, evil son of a b*tch.The pacing: Perfect... not slow and draggy, not breakneck and hard to keep up with... twists and turns revealed every little bit, history shown over the course of the book rather than all at once, overall....

Over the year since I first discovered his work, Max Allan Collins has become one of my favorite writers. He seems to do everything well: thrillers, straight crime, his tie-ins, non-fiction. It doesn't matter.WHAT DOESN'T KILL HER deals with a serial killer, not a new subject to be sure. But even here, Mr. Collins throws a different twist. First off, he's not even suspected by the police.There is one though.Jordan Rivera was sixteen when her parents and older brother were brutally murdered by a

Jordan Rivera is left to survive by the killer of her parents and brother so she can tell his story. Jordan, who is also raped, decides to stay completely silent for ten years in St. Dipna’s Center, a premier Ohio mental health facility. When she hears of another family that is murdered in what she feels may be by the same killer, she breaks her silence and soon after leaves St. Dipna’s. As part of her aftercare program, she joins St. Dipna’s Victims Support Group where she finally begins to tel...

Really loved this book.

Disclaimer: I won a free copy of this book on GoodReads as a part of the First Reads giveaway program. I’d like to extend my thanks to GoodReads, the author, and the publisher.Wow. That was a thrill-ride. It is so great to pick up a book that does that, jumps right into it and hooks you from the first words. Then carries a story across the years and pages, building a great story surrounding the action. Then it throws you back into the action and doesn't let up.There were probably a few minor iss...

I received a copy of the book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. The story is about a woman named Jordan Rivera. Ten years ago, a man entered her home and brutally murdered her family. The man then asked her to pose the bodies on a sofa and he took a "family photo" before he raped her and told her to tell his story. Jordan decided that she would not do what the monster asked and she refused to speak.Jordan was then sent to St. Dimpna's which is an institution and sh...

This novel fell into my email inbox through Bookbub. The cover looked intriguing and the title made me want to know more, and hell, after reading the synopsis, I was sold. But, unfortunately, that’s where my excitement ends.Jordan Rivera was doing what teenagers do—sitting in her room supposedly doing homework, while her mind wandered thinking about a boy, Mark Pryor. She was looking forward to what the future held for the two of them. Unfortunately, a rather tragic night ended Jordan’s dream an...

I really wanted to love this one, and based on the synopsis, I should've - it sounded right up my alley. But something didn't quite gel for me. It started strong, and maybe that set my expectations too high. It didn't go completely off the rails, I still enjoyed it, but something just felt off about things as it moved along. Maybe it felt a bit too much like the plot of a TV series - a young woman who was brutally traumatized as a teen turns vigilante warrior for justice/revenge. In the end, it

I loved this book it was a very believable plot based around the traumatic effect of Jordan surviving her family's murder. I was pleased she managed to survive very unexpected ending I was left wondering if there will be a sequel. Very brave of Max to write a book without feeling the need to put in a sex scene somewhere and I am really pleased about that because it would have spoiled the story. I will be looking for further books by this author.