This was a very quick read thanks to short chapters and a compelling plot. Not very believable but compelling nevertheless.

Stay-at-home dad Nate Lovejoy is kidnapped one day when his two daughters happen to be visiting their grandparents. He is drugged and when he awakens he is in a lavishly appointed room that is securely locked. Soon a man named Rogers comes into the room and tells him that he represents a consortium that was founded by a man who can see into the future. Vanslow DeGange has seen that a class-action lawsuit his wife, Jenny, is leading against an energy company will be won by her but the result will be that energy companies will use a chemical to scrub their emissions that will be far worse for the environment. So Rogers says that the only way to avoid this is for Nate to kill his wife in a few days time. Nate of course denies that he could ever do such a thing and he suspects that this is a scam the energy company is running to get the lawsuit stopped. As the days pass, however, he is convinced that DeGange can see the future and the unthinkable becomes possible. Or perhaps there is another way to get Jenny to drop the suit. Nate tries everything but Jenny, an extremely bright and articulate advocate, overcomes everything thrown in her path. The clock is ticking for Nate. What will he do?

What would you do? It's more than an ethical dilemma when it involves your nearest and dearest. ( )

I've enjoyed previous books from Brad Parks. His latest is Unthinkable.

Parks has used a premise that I really like in previous books and reprises it in this latest. Everyday guy put in an untenable situation.

Stay at home Dad Nate Lovejoy is kidnapped by a secret society that tells him he must kill his wife to save a billion people. What?! The leader of the society, Vanslow DeGange can see the future. Nate's wife Jenny is a lawyer with a case against a large power company. The society says one life sacrificed to save many is what needs to be done. And it has to be Nate who kills her. Nate doesn't believe a word of it.....and then he does. He can't honestly be thinking of killing the love of his life - can he?

Okay, so secret societies have driven many plotlines in many books in the past, so this isn't anything new. And I don't mind taking a few grains of salt to buy into a plot. But, in Unthinkable, I was holding on to the whole shaker. Parks throws in some twists that changed things. I appreciated those. Even with changes to the direction things were going, I still found the plotline to be just too much to buy into. And the actions of Nate and Jenny were Unbelievable. I did keep reading as I really did want to see where Parks took things in the end. Which fell flat for me.

Often, an author will raise funds for charity by including a donor's name in the book. Parks has done this for Unthinkable and the names are listed in the notes at the end. One distinctive name, Marcus Sakey, is not listed there. This is the name of another suspense writer. His name appears more than once and it felt like a cheap inside joke as the name is attributed to a homeless man.

I'm disappointed with this latest, but hey, you can't love them all. ( )

“Unthinkable” explores the concept of cause and effect. Can a butterfly flapping its wings in California start a whirlwind that becomes a tornado in Kansas? Is there a correlation between separate events? One can use statistics to associate events in the past, but how accurately do statistics predict the future? This book presents a series of life-shaping experiences. Is this a game? A scam? A prank of the worst kind? The ravings of a madman, or a frightening reality? Characters stand at a fork in the road, and readers watch the drama unfold not knowing which path the characters will take. (No spoilers in this review.)
Nate Lovejoy is a “retired” lawyer, now stay-at-home dad with two preschool-age daughters, Parker and Cate. His wife Jenny Welker is a “rock star” lawyer, a gifted problem solver; perhaps she is too successful. The drama unfolds in chapters that alternate between Nate and Jenny. They are confronted with a problem, a big problem that will change their lives forever. Is this “thing” just the delusion of a resident of a mental hospital? Is it a deep fake and if so, how could they even tell? Is it akin to little green men dissecting cows? What is next, wearing tinfoil hats? Should they just leave? Run away? Live completely off the grid?
Parks creates a scenario where the unthinkable becomes possible, the abnormal becomes ordinary, and every choice has unintended and tragic consequences. The tension builds exponentially on every page, and readers expect a landslide to come barreling down the hill at any moment, burying everyone and everything. It is impossible to stop turning the pages.
“Unthinkable” is compelling and terrifying with a surprise on every page. Just when I thought things could not get any stranger – they did. I received a review copy of “Unthinkable” from Brad Parks and Thomas & Mercer. In a “nice shout out” to the Carter Ross books, where things started, Jenny works for the law firm of Carter, Morgan & Ross. ( )

UNTHINKABLE is an easy read that makes the preposterous proposal that a man in a committed and loving marriage can be forced to shoot his spouse in the head to save humanity from environmental disaster. Considering the common skepticism surrounding global warming prevalent in the world today, one could easily argue the negative here. This novel also has pretensions to explore the bigger theme of free will versus predestination, yet in the final analysis, it is mainly genre fiction. If one enjoys thrillers, this plot-driven novel should satisfy.

Nate Lovejoy is an underachieving lawyer who serves as the fulltime nanny for his two daughters while his wife, Jenny Welker, goes out to work for a high-powered Richmond, Virginia law firm. She is deeply involved in building a pro bono class-action lawsuit against Commonwealth Power and Light alleging that one of its plants bears responsibility for multiple cancers and respiratory diseases in the community. Enter the villain, Lorton Rodgers, representing the prescient Vanslow DeGange and his underground organization known as Praesidium. Rodgers takes on the task of convincing Lovejoy that if his wife prevails, a devastating climate catastrophe will become inevitable. The only solution seems to be to shoot her as she sleeps. It is unclear why more humane methods for her elimination are never considered or how Rodgers proposes to get Lovejoy off the hook once the deed is done, yet it is what it is. As anyone might be, Lovejoy is initially skeptical, but following multiple lines of evidence that would spoil the novel to reveal here, Lovejoy does come around. Brad Parks then succeeds in taking the reader on a rollercoaster ride with a few jaw-dropping plot twists.

Its success at creating tension and a supremely dark and threatening mood notwithstanding, the narrative has a few glaring weaknesses that are not easy to overlook. The Richmond setting never comes alive. This could have been anywhere. The nature of DeGange’s gift of prescience is never really explored. This is unfortunate since it is THE key premise of the plot and leaving it unexplained makes the whole thing less believable. Praesidium is supposed to be defending the many by executing the few. The ticket to membership is to have killed one unfortunate soul. How Praesidium works at the granular level is never really clarified, however. Parks’ characterization of Nate and Jenny’s loving and committed relationship also is unconvincing. Jenny seems too busy with outside commitments for her family and Nate definitely has inferiority issues that may be influencing his libido. As genre convention dictates, all of the characters are cartoonish notwithstanding Parks’ creative flare for naming them (e.g., Lovejoy, Lorton, and the matchless Vanslow DeGange). Despite its high-tension climax, the final resolution seems a little too pat and unrealistic. If one is willing to ignore such flaws, this book would be great to take to the beach this summer. ( )