The plot and pacing was tight and engaging. The author writes difficult scenes well, and some scenes truly hurt to read. Yet you can’t tear your eyes away, because it’s just that well written. Hitting all the right emotional notes, the prose is quite a strength for The Substitute by Nicole Lundrigan.
Title: The Substitute
Author: Nicole Lundrigan
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Suspense, Fiction
Publication Date: June 24, 2017
Review Date: November 3, 2025
Number of Pages: 399 (paperback)
My Rating: 3.5/5
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Book Blurb of The Substitute:
Warren Botts is a disillusioned Ph.D., taking a break from his lab to teach middle-school science. Gentle, soft-spoken, and lonely, he innocently befriends Amanda, one of his students. But one morning, Amanda is found dead in his backyard, and Warren, shocked, flees the scene.
As the small community slowly turns against him, an anonymous narrator, a person of extreme intelligence and emotional detachment, offers insight into events past and present. As the tension builds, we gain an intimate understanding of the power of secrets, illusions, and memories.
Nicole Lundrigan uses her prodigious talent to deliciously creepy effect, producing a finely crafted page-turner and a chilling look into the mind of a psychopath.
Book Review of The Substitute:
Great choice to use an unnamed narrator who is not revealed till the very end. Seeing an “origin story” was a fascinating aspect of this book to me. I have come across quite a few unreliable narrators in this genre, but this is my first time seeing an unnamed narrator’s point of view used like this; to great effect.
The author writes difficult scenes well, and some scenes truly hurt to read. Yet you can’t tear your eyes away, because it’s just that well written. Hitting all the right emotional notes, the prose is quite a strength for this book.
The primary characters are so well developed, especially Mr. Botts, the unnamed narrator, and their family. The secondary characters sometimes felt a little one note, but sufficient depth on the whole, for the purpose of the story.
One thing I want to note here is that there were some loose ends and unanswered questions. I understand some things might not be addressed because they’re not entirely essential to the primary plot. BUT certain things had quite some time devoted to them, so I’d have liked more details. This is just my personal choice as a reader. In the same vein, I was also able to figure out who the unnamed narrator was, much much before the reveal. I would have appreciated some more red herrings thrown in.
Apart from these couple of things, I genuinely enjoyed this story. The plot and pacing was tight and engaging. Even after I did figure out who the narrator was, I still enjoyed reading the rest of the story. Further chapters just continued to confirm who I thought it was.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this – notwithstanding the difficult bits – and finished it in a matter of days. I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been able to guess who the narrator was till a bit further through the story. The use of an unnamed narrator did add more depth to the story, plus I really think POV shifts can greatly improve the perspectives in a story. The Substitute got a lot of things right, and I’d probably read more by this author!
Recommended for fans of:
Unreliable narrators, mysteries, alternating POVs, fast paced stories, well written primary characters. If you love thrillers, check out our Thrillers archives.
