Do Not Disturb by Freida McFadden

Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into another Freida McFadden thriller Do Not Disturb which has spine-tingling Bates Motel vibes. A twisty thriller set in a snowed-in motel, with sketchy characters, this is definitely a weekend read to check out.

Main Characters:

• Quinn: After doing something she could have never imagined goes on the run in an attempt to escape the consequences, stumbles on the Baxter Motel when she is trying to get out of the snow, and finds that this little motel may be more like hell than a safe haven where no one knows her
• Derick: Quinn’s abusive husband who will stop at nothing to control his wife
• Nick: Owner of the Baxter Motel, his ill wife Rosalie watches the motel from the window of his home scrutinizing his every move
• Greta: An old psychic who lives in the Baxter Motel full-time and has some interesting things to tell Quinn when she comes to stay
• Claudia: Quinn’s sister who tries to figure out why Quinn would go on the run, and like a big sister also tries to keep her out of trouble in the process

My Review

At this point Do Not Disturb by Freida McFadden may be the fifth or sixth book of hers I’ve checked out this year. I haven’t run into a bad book by her yet, Do Not Disturb included, but I definitely didn’t enjoy Do Not Disturb as much as I have some of her other books. It definitely is not a bad read and is filled with her classic writing style and twisty suspicious characters, but holding it up to some of her other books, it just wasn’t my favourite. I am starting to notice though each of her books tends to have a unique and interesting main setting for the book, in this one it’s a creepy motel run by an odd couple.

Overall, I gave Do Not Disturb a 7.5/10 rating. I really enjoyed the plot in this book and it made for a super-fast-paced book where we just start off running from the first page and don’t stop till the last. The book starts off with us being introduced to Quinn in a very intense way. She is in the middle of a crime scene and doesn’t know what to do. Fearful that she will be blamed for what happened she decides to go on the run. While on the run she stops at the Baxter Motel to get out of the snow. Meeting the charming owner of the motel Nick, Quinn feels like she may be able to finally rest her panicked system. While staying at the motel though Quinn finds she may have walked herself into a bigger issue than the one she tried to escape from. The Baxter Motel has a stranger history being known as the murder hotel when a young woman was found stabbed to death in her room a few years ago. They were never able to figure out what happened but as Quinn soon finds the answer may have been in the motel the whole time.

The only downfall for me in this book was how to me it was a bit obvious how a few of the twists were going to go. Don’t get me wrong there were still a few I didn’t see coming, but there definitely was a handful that I did. I think it was just because there was a limited number of characters in this book there were only a few ways for it to go, and I just happened to guess right. Others who have read it may have had a different experience.

I liked Quinn as a main character in some parts but there were others where the things she does is just an eye roll. She is just naive and makes these really weird decisions that just get her in more trouble rather than helping her. Without saying too much it’s clear that Quinn was justified in what she did, so I just didn’t get why she ran. It all becomes a bit more clear later on, but that initially tripped me up a bit. Given that she is trying to stay hidden she just does a really crappy job at it. She isn’t a criminal at heart because she sucks at it. I think that aspect of her did make her the perfect character though because she wouldn’t have ended up in the situation she did at the motel if she was really good at this. Quinn is a damaged person who has dealt with a lot of pain in her life, so in that respect, it makes sense why she runs rather than deal with it. It seems like she often runs from her feelings and tries to hide them in other things, so why not this. I was totally shocked by the ending. Completely didn’t see it coming but I felt like it fit very well with the rest of the book and the setting it was placed in.

Overall a super interesting read, and if you’re like me and really enjoy Freida McFadden’s books I would recommend checking this one out. It kind of reminded me of her other book Never Lie, obviously, they are very two different books but the creepiness to the setting in each was very similar. As in her other books, all the characters in this one are hard to trust, and we can never know if the perspective they are giving us is an accurate one.

Have you checked out Do Not Disturb by Freida McFadden before? What did you think?

*** Don’t go any further if you don’t want any spoilers ***

As we could have guessed (I mean I just guessed this from reading the blurb) the crime Quinn commits is killing her husband. He was abusive to her in their relationship and one night when he was choking her she decided to defend herself leading to his death.

It turns out that Quinn’s sister Claudia was having an affair with Derek and she wasn’t actually doing everything in the book to help Quinn but actually so she could find her first. Claudia believes that Quinn is always trying to ruin her life, and by taking away the man that loved her (even though he was Quinn’s husband).

Freida makes it seem like Quinn is in danger at the Motel from Nick and his wife, but the reality is that they are the only thing that saves her. Claudia comes to the motel looking for her stabs her and shoves her in the trunk of her car. Claudia tries to kill everyone else in the motel to cover up what she has done but Rosalie can get the jump on her and take her down. Quinn survives and starts a fresh life away from all the crazy people.

We find out though at the end that it was really Greta, the old woman at the motel who killed the girl there years ago that got the motel its bad name. She did it because Nick was cheating on Rosalie with this other woman, so Greta put a stop to it. Rosalie isn’t able to do anything and Greta gets away.

It was just a very weird twist I didn’t see coming. I had suspected that Quinn’s sister was sleeping with her husband, I just didn’t suspect that she was also a psycho killer at the same time. Overall a very fast-paced ending that matched the start of the book for sure.

Thank you for checking out this review, I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review.