Trouble

by Jesse Kellerman, Jeff Harding (Reader)

It's late at night, and all Jonah Stem wants to do is to get home and fall into bed. Working long hours as a medical student, he's seen enough drama - not to mention enough blood - for one day But when he hears a scream ring out in the darkness, and an injured woman is on her knees and begging for her life, Jonah finds himself drawn into a dangerous and irrevocable situation. And this situation means trouble. Jonah's intervention will change not only his own life, but also the lives of those he cares about, in ways he never thought possible.
A heart-stopping thriller, masterfully told, Trouble is the story of what can happen when you find yourself in way over your head . . .

Genres: Mystery, Thriller, Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Crime, Suspense, Audiobook

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Jesse Kellerman was born in Los Angeles in 1978. His award-winning plays have been produced throughout the United States and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Most recently, he received the Princess Grace Award, given to America’s most promising young playwright. He lives with his wife in New York City.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Can I give no stars??...........oh go on I will give one * purely because Jesse managed to sit and write 60,000 words in some form of order even if that order wasn't to my liking!!

Where to start? well I don't like metaphor's and simile's but this author clearly does, I don't mind the odd one but this book seemed full of them and it totally distracts me from the story and good grief how much description do we need?? It was waffle waffle waffle from start to finish.

The story was quite disturbing and from my point of view original, with many surprises and unexpected twists and turns. I wasn't at any point one step ahead of the writer, my mind doesn't work in the same way as his and I didn't predict any thing that was going to happen correctly in advance. So maybe I will give this another star for the predictabilities or should I say un-predictabilities! There ya go from none to two stars in three paragraphs!

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Above average thriller which won't be to a lot of tastes because it is dark and creepy. A Fatal Attraction type of plot about a decent young medical student who becomes involved with the woman whose life he saved during a street assault, killing the assailant in the process. Of course nothing is as it seems.

The story is somewhat over the top in gross creepiness and some of the plot is improbable, but I love Jesse Kellerman's writing which is thick and baroque compared to that of his parents' and most other thriller and mystery writers. I also love his characters which are specific and real. Some goodreaders have complained because he has a woman as villain. But portraying women as capable of evil as men is not sexist. It is realistic and fair.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was very disappointed in this book. I love the books by his parents Jonathan and Faye Kellerman, and I enjoyed Jesse's other novel Sunstroke. That one had realistic characters. But this book was just absurd beyond belief. The villainess of the book was too preposterous for words, and there was no explanation for why she was this way. When I read about a sick, twisted character I want some sort of explanation for why they turned out that way. In real life when someone is that sick and twisted it's usually because something sick and twisted happened to them. I found it pretty mysogynist in a way - this evil woman comes out of nowhere and just ruins mens' lives just for fun. THe subplot about the main character's schizophrenic ex-girlfriend was depressing, but that part was at least realistic and believable. The rest of the book just left me shaking my head in disbelief, and the ending was very unsatisfying and unbelievable.

[Daphne Atkeson · Rating 5 out of 5]

top-drawer psychological thriller. Five star books are those I can't wait to get back to or am tempted to leave my writing to read more of. This qualifies. Plus, tremendous voice, eminently readable and interesting.

[Francine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stayed up until 2 a.m. reading this book! Reluctant hero Joshua Stem is being stalked by the woman whose life he saves in a way that makes Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" look like a Care Bear. Terrifying, compelling. I'm glad real life isn't like this. It isn't, right?

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read both of his parents books (Jonathan and Faye Kellerman), I enjoyed the completely "his own" style of writing that Jesse Kellerman has.
Although I could see that Eve was "trouble" from a mile away, I kept reading because I wanted to know why. One thing I didn't enjoy: Jonah, the main character, is a med student. Got it. So much time is spent following him around the med school and spouting off all the medical jargon, and it has nothing to do with the rest of the story. We get it, he's a med student, it's in his nature to help people, he's smart. We don't need to follow him around the teaching hospital for days at a time. I didn't think that anything was gained from all the time we spend with him at the hospital. It just seemed as a way to fill up some extra pages and make the book longer.
I did enjoy the twists and turns, and although you never really learn the "why" about Eve, it was a thrill getting to the end.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love can take many forms in one’s life, growing and evolving as time passes into something far better and brighter than anything we might have hoped for, or it can warp into something far more twisted, pervasive and corrosive than anyone could ever imagine. Jonah Stem, a bright young medical student saves the life of Eve, a beautiful and talented young New Yorker apparently attacked by a brutal molester. Eve’s gratitude is so intense and complete that Jonah hopes for the former but begins to suspect the latter. This author once again displays his extreme talent for creating characters that develop slowly, transforming and morphing as the story develops. Jonah displays all of the exuberance of youth that becomes laden with cynicism and ultimately, hatred as the story moves ahead. The twists and turns of the plot keep the reader’s emotions in line with Jonah’s as mysteries unravel. A good read. A little disturbing but a good read for mystery fans.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've been considering not listening to the rest of this book since the first disc. I'm half-way through now and decided to read some of the more in-depth reviews. I see I'm not alone in my feelings about this book - and that the ending doesn't make sticking it out worthwhile. I think I'll follow my gut and turn this one back into the library for something far more plausible and entertaining. This book is sadistic and extremely far-fetched - two things I can tolerate if the writing is decent. The writing here is lackluster and amateurish at best.

[Kristin Fenwick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to this book at work and I really was not to thrilled with it. Jonah Stem is a medical student and a lot of the story is just a lot of medical terms and gross hospital experiences. He saves a woman who is absolutly crazy. They have a love affair, she goes all whacko and he tries to get rid of her. The ending was a little crazy as well. Over all, some of the twists kept me reading but it was not a book that I would read again.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book did not even deserve one star. Yuck.

[Ariane Chiasson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ce roman aurait pu être très bon. L’intrigue avait énormément de potentiel. Beaucoup trop de blabla qui veulent rien dire autour du personnage principal. Je suis quelqu’un qui se force à finir un roman, donc je l’ai terminé et je ne suis pas déçue du dénouement. Après le 3/4 le roman devient vraiment meilleur. Mais j’aurais abandonnée rapidement.

[Amber · Rating 1 out of 5]

Insensitive, problematic, and traaaaaash

[Catherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Je n'ai pas du tout aimé ce livre, trop stressant et l'univers de la folie est trop intense

[Beverley · Rating 1 out of 5]

There was nothing I enjoyed about this book. The characters were unlikeable and either bland or ridiculously over the top, the storyline was unbelievable and in parts very unpleasant, and the ending weak and predictable. I shan't be tempted to read anything else by this author.

[Jeanann Barrett · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bizarre!!! Weird!!!

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the original writing style in this book, although I found the lack of question marks at the ends of questions to be a bit distracting. The story was definitely a page-turner for me. It became introspective when the protagonist found himself watching a video of an event he was involved with and realized that his memory of the event differed pretty drastically from what he was seeing in the recording, and I found that to be pretty insightful given the circumstances surrounding the event. Sorry, trying not to spoil the story here...

The basic premise of the story is boy encounters girl in trouble, boy saves girl, boy and girl fall in love, girl turns into a complete psycho, boy tries desperately to get away from girl, and eventually succeeds. Nothing super original there, but the combination of writing style, incremental character development, bits of plot twisting here and there, and one extremely entertaining room-mate pulled it off for me.

Maybe I'm just enthralled with beautiful women that turn out to be creepy and evil, but I had a great time reading this book. Maybe five stars if it had more question marks and fewer F-words, but that might be a stretch.

[Margaret · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jesse Kellerman is a very good writer and doesn't shy away from the bizarre. His plotting and characters remind me of Ruth Rendell - someone is always very twisted. This book doesn't do Mr. Kellerman justice, however. Yes, there's a very twisted, interesting character, but the main character, a 26-year old medical student (so presumably bright, unless medical schools have become so desperate as to enroll complete dimwits), is such an idiot that it was hard to listen to this one. Certainly his predictable in their regularity blunders had me rolling my eyes a lot. Things finally get moving in the right direction round about CD #8 of 10. That's a long time to wait for the main character to develop some brain cells. The narration is excellent (reader Scott Brick), which pushes the book up to 2 stars...

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about this thriller. I was interested in checking out the second generation Kellerman novelist. He has a different style than his author parents -- one that is more cryptic and certainly one that is more scary which is saying a lot because Jonathan can keep you on the edge, but with more finesse. I found myself mesmerized, but I also found the story a bit too unbelievable and creepy for comfort. I was consistently annoyed by the wimpy medical student who was too nice to take charge of a really bizarre situation and who couldn't think his way out of a difficult dilemma. Jesse gets points for thinking up such a unique and farfetched plot. It is just believable. Just.

It would make an excellent scary movie about a nice young man and an evil woman who wraps him around her little finger. However, it would be too creepy for me to watch.

[Pa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty good read. I would actually give this somewhere between a 3.5 and a 4.
The tale of a medical student who saves a young woman who has been stabbed. In the process, the assailant ends up dead. "Superdoc" goes from being a hero to the realization that he is in no end of "trouble", starting with a lawsuit from relatives of the dead attacker and escalating when he connects with the stabbing victim.
Pretty good character development and also a good description of life as a medical student in a hospital.

[DWGibb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's a hapless medical student who intercedes in an assault against a woman on the street and kills the assailant. Though perceived as a hero, his world becomes a virtual self-induced prison, especially when the woman he saved becomes an inescapably entwined with his life.

I had a love/hate relationship with this story. It is fascinating, but troubling. It made me uncomfortable, but I couldn't leave it.

[Kevin Pickett · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book kept my attention, but seemed like there was way too much fluff in it. I kept finding myself scanning ahead through rhetoric to get to the point of what was being said. The story wasn't bad. There's a lot of language in it. The "C" word is even in it. I can't even remember a book I've read with that in it.

Anyway, I was glad to get through this one and move onward with my life. I don't regret reading it, but am glad it is done.

[Michelegg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this book. It made me nauseous the whole time I read it. This doctor gets involved with a woman whose life he thought he saved, in reality she was a pain freak who set the whole thing up. Way too much for me.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was very entertaining. I really enjoyed the characters and I couldn't believe how crazy it got, all of a sudden. I guess you never really know who anyone is.

[Mauoijenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know why it took me 3 days to finish this book. I must admit I put this book down alot so it would last longer. A major WTF kind of book.

[Pvw · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unbelievably bad. Kellerman is the son of two successful writers, and that explains a lot—otherwise this thing would never have been finished, let alone published. Jonah is a medical student in New York. One evening he rescues a young woman from an assault and accidentally kills the attacker. It soon turns out that the girl is the real psychopath: she starts stalking Jonah, and he becomes afraid… of what, exactly, is never quite clear. In any case, he is apparently terrified enough to let himself be completely pushed around: he makes his roommate move out “for safety reasons”, has his parents change the locks, hires a lawyer, calls the police, and barely dares to step outside.

In short, Jonah is a painfully passive coward, and an unsympathetic one at that. Always earnest, always whining. Kellerman never manages to make the threat posed by this S&M-obsessed young woman convincing enough to carry an entire novel, which is a problem, because there’s nothing else holding it together.

He’s also a very clumsy writer. Take this description of a mishap in the operating theatre:

“The worst part was the smell. The body belched gases like a shot-down zeppelin.”

What on earth is that supposed to mean? First of all, it’s wildly over the top. Secondly, it tells the reader absolutely nothing. Have you ever smelled a shot-down zeppelin? No? Neither have I.

It gets even worse when Kellerman tries to convey that the rescued girl, Eve Jones, is—let’s just say it—a knockout. There, I’ve said it. Not that difficult. You should see the ridiculous, timid detour Kellerman takes to arrive at that simple fact. And with that, I’ll happily wrap up this review: stay clear of this book.

Here’s the passage in question, to illustrate the point:

“He noticed something else about her photograph. Not that it mattered—he was almost comically glad about that, since a person in need was a person in need, regardless of race, sex, or religion; he was very much in favour of equal rights. Still, it couldn’t escape him, because he wasn’t blind and he was a healthy member of the male species. Besides, it was obvious in any case: Eve Jones was extraordinarily attractive.”

(Gag.)

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started off well enough, med student Jonah Stem dealing with the crappy work and long shifts common to those in medical school, whose bad day only gets worse when he comes across a woman being stabbed in a dark alley. A skirmish ensues between Jonah and the attacker that leaves Jonah injured and amnesic, and the attacker dead. I pretty much expected this book to follow a similar course as others I'd read, with the legal ramifications complicating Jonah's already full life in the hospital, and throw in the romance of the woman he saves for some spice.
Instead, the legal case becomes much of an afterthought as the romance between Jonah and Eve, the victim, takes a crazy roller coaster ride. Thankfully interspersed among encounters with Eve are Jonah's shifts in the hospital, which are what kept me reading. Kellerman drops hints pretty early on that perhaps there is more to Eve, and the attack, than Jonah realizes, it just takes Jonah a while to catch up.
I felt that the supporting characters in this book were weak too. We have Lance, Jonah's stoner roommate who livestreams the goings-on in their apartment (set in 2004, I suppose the livestreaming plot was somewhat ahead of its time, as I don't recall much livestreaming going on in my college days), but otherwise his role in the book seems muddy. Then there's Hannah, Jonah's ex, and her father George. Hannah apparently had some psychotic break during their relationship, so Jonah feels obligated to care for this shell of his former girlfriend while George sits in the living room, gets drunk, and tries to bully Jonah into babysitting Hannah during his Christmas break so that George can go on a cruise with a lady friend who knows nothing about Hannah and her condition.
Overall, I found the book very disjointed and not the thriller I expected going in. It wasn't horrible, but I'm not feeling compelled to read another book by this author.

[Lyly Sand · Rating 2 out of 5]

+ 0.5 ⭐️
Il y a un problème avec la fin, pourquoi elle est autant éclatée ? Ça partait bien, l'histoire avait du potentiel, les personnages sont originals et l'écriture est agréable à lire. Pourtant, on a aucune explications sur la psychologie d'Eve, l'auteur va pas me faire croire que la meuf est aussi folle de nature ? Tellement dommage sur ce point. J'ai l'impression que Kellerman a eu la flemme de continuer son roman au milieu du récit et a juste écrit ce qu'il lui passait par la tête sans pour autant faire avancer ou progresser l'histoire dans une direction intéressante... surtout que les descriptions à rallonge pour gratter quelques pages en plus c'est non.
Je suis vraiment déçue de cette lecture qui paraissait prometteuse, malgré ça l'écriture m'a intrigué alors il se peut que je laisse une deuxième chance à cet auteur.

[Tory Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trouble by Jesse Kellerman is a full throttle suspense story about a medical student being stalked by a woman whose psychiatric problems make her unpredictable. Jonah is an idealistic young man who accidentally happens upon a murder in progress and defends the woman while inadvertently killing the assailant. This starts a series of increasingly menacing behavior on the part of the "victim" that turns Jonah's life into a living hell.

[Linda Dezenski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jesse Kellerman is a great writer and an intelligent man. It is difficult to imagine though the depth of the inter-workings of the mind that came up with such a disturbing story. When the details of the video tape were revealed, I had to put the book down for a break. Eve is the most screwed up person I could imagine and I was so annoyed at Jonah for being such a wimp. I did not like the story but it was well done. The end was riveting.

[Suzie Q · Rating 3 out of 5]

It started out pretty slow and boring. Honestly I probably would not have finished it if I weren't The type of person who tries to finish every book I start. Somewhere around the middle of it, things finally got going and then it was a lot more interesting. Jonah kind of pissed me off though with all his inaction. I was like man up already and do something about this!