She Treads Softly: The Break-In

Sunday, August 17, 2025

The Break-In

The Break-In by Katherine Faulkner
8/26/25; 400 pages
Gallery/Scout Press

The Break-In by Katherine Faulkner is a highly recommended psychological thriller/mystery full of secrets.

Alice Rathbone has two friends over on a playdate for their children when a young man breaks into the house, grabs a knife from the kitchen, and moves toward the room where the children are playing. Alice grabs a stool and hits him on the head, resulting in his death. Now she is waiting to learn if she will be charged or cleared for the fatality and mentally struggles with what happened. Although her husband Jamie tells her to let it go and move on, she was protecting the children, she can't.

Amidst her mental struggles Alice wants some closure. She learns that the young man was 18-year-old Ezra Jones and he has a surviving mother and twin sister. At this same time she is receiving phone calls warning her and threatening on-line comments. Inexplicably she goes to Ezra's house, meets his mother and later his sister, never identifying herself. She enlists her journalist friend Stella to investigate them. What follows is a series of impossibly flawed decisions and poor discernment as Alice's life unravels.

The writing is very good in this psychological thriller and twisty mystery which will hold your complete attention. The plot moves at an even pace, with several twisty reveals and surprises along the way to keep the momentum moving. You will have to set a healthy dose of disbelief aside several times as the narrative unfolds. Alice makes one bad decision after another and seems clueless about the the actions of people and the events happening around her.

Alice is the main narrator with other character's viewpoints occasionally inserted, along with newspaper articles and the comments which follow. Most of the action is in the present, but there are also flashbacks to past events. This is a very satisfying novel, although a case could be made that better editing could have tightened up the story and result in a faster paced novel.

None of the characters are likable. Alice is a sympathetic character, but all her flaws and poor choices can overwhelm your feelings about her. You'll wish her well, but you will also want to tell her to snap out of it, open her eyes, and get a clue already. Sometimes it is difficult to believe that she is an adult woman in her forties and it was hard to believe she could be so clueless, especially about Jamie.

The Break-In is a great choice for anyone who enjoys psychological thrillers and mysteries. Thanks to Gallery/Scout Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.