A Scottoline Psychological Thriller Clarifies a Phrase

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Posted on November 8, 2025 by Lori Ericson

A VOCABULARY BOOK REVIEW OF The Unraveling of Julia

The Unraveling of Julia by Lisa Scottoline tells the tale of a young widow who inherits a Tuscan villa and vineyard, plus a load of money. And a lot goes wrong in Scottoline’s psychological thriller style for Julia Pritzker. The mysterious inheritance forces her to face the world again after her husband is murdered in a mugging. Julia struggles with the idea of not knowing why she was named in the will. She does her own investigating and tries to find a possible link to her biological family as well. But once she gets to the villa, a lot of weird stuff happens, and she begins to question her sanity and even worry for her life.

The Unraveling of Julia is full of rich detail of the Tuscan hills where most of the story takes place.

In this blog I offer a different type of book review—one that’s combined with vocabulary building or sometimes just a fun look at words.

From Scottoline’s thriller, I chose a phrase when that pulled me out of the story just because I have always misunderstood it and likely have never seen it spelled out before. I thought the phrase was “on tenderhooks” and didn’t know where it came from, but got the meaning, sort of. I had to look it up when I saw “on tenterhooks” in The Unraveling of Julia. And then I had to laugh at myself.

From The Unraveling of Julia:

“Julia felt on tenterhooks about whether they’d succeed, and her worries about Gianluca gnawed at the back of her mind all day, too.”

“On tenterhooks” is a phrase that, per Merriam-Webster online, refers to “waiting nervously for something to happen.” The word tenter means “a frame used for drying and stretching cloth” and is related to tent, so being “on tenterhooks” compares the tenseness of the stretched fabric to the tension of nervous waiting.

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“The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning. Given that, why in God’s name would you want to make things worse by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you really wanted to use?” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

Her Name Was Rose

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Posted on January 3, 2024 by Lori Ericson

Her Name Was Rose is a wild ride of a psychological thriller that caught me up in the first chapter and kept my head spinning until the surprising turn of an end. Some of the language can be attributed to the novel’s setting on the Donegal Coastline of Ireland.

In this blog, I offer a different type of book review—one that’s combined with vocabulary building. Included here, are a few interesting words I found in Her Name Was Rose by Claire Allan.

The following includes just a few words from Her Name Was Rose that I found interesting:

eejit: noun. Informal Irish and Scottish form of idiot.

From Her Name Was Rose:

“I want to be a complete madly-in-love eegit and wear a T-shirt that says I love Owen & Owen loves me! on it.”

klaxon: noun. <Trademark> An electric horn or a similar oud warning device. Origin — Early 20^th Century from the name of the manufacturing company.

From Her Name Was Rose:

“She’d spoken to my family, for God’s sake, sounded the ‘Emily is going off the deep end’ klaxon.”

Definitions are typically from the dictionary that comes with my Mac or The New Oxford American Dictionary.

Book of Words: Intrusion by Mary McCluskey

Posted on October 17, 2016 by Lori Ericson

Good writers choose their words carefully. This blog offers a different type of book review by combining it with vocabulary building. Included here are a few interesting words I found in Intrusion, a book released in July by British author Mary McCluskey. Some of the words McCluskey used were British and unfamiliar to me, so I included them in this blog.

Intrusion pits a woman who has hit rock bottom against a long-lost best friend with a hidden motive. Mary McCluskey deftly pulls the reader into the emotional turmoil of Kat Hamilton’s shattered life. The mourning mom struggles to support her husband’s efforts to maintain his standing in his law firm and fights to find meaning in her own life, but can barely get through each day. When she’s at her lowest, evil steps in to help push her over the edge. I found Intrusion to be an exciting psychological thriller that kept the tension high while ever increasing the stakes all the way to an end with a unexpected twist. McCluskey knows how to keep the reader guessing.

Cover pdf provided by Author Mary McCluskey

Words from Intrusion:

Cabochon: A gem polished but not faceted. <Origin> mid-16^th century: from French, diminutive of caboche ‘head’. “Sara gave a small smile and looked down, twisting the cabochon emerald ring off her finger, then holding it for a few seconds, as if checking its weight, before replacing it.”

Sepia: A reddish-brown color associated particularly with monochrome photographs of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. <Special Usage> a brown pigment prepared from a black fluid secreted by cuttlefish, used in monochrome drawing and in watercolors. “These memories dropped softly, completely intact, into her mind. Sometimes, they were in strong, primary colors, occasionally in a kind of sepia, like old movies.”

Intransigent: Unwilling or refusing to change one’s views or to agree about something. “He is a lawyer. He has the nitpicky legal mind. I never dreamt he would be so intransigent.”

Janus: An ancient Italian deity, guardian of doorways and gates and protector of the state in time of war. He is usually represented with two faces, so that he looks both forward and backward. <Special Usage> two-faced; hypocritical; two-sided. “In profile, the two sides of her face could look quite different: one side so bare, the delicate bone structure clear and unobstructed, the other side hidden by a cascade of rich brown hair. A Janus face, Maggie had said once.”

Sussed: (Chiefly British, informal) A verb meaning to realize, grasp. An abbreviation of suspect or suspicion. “Though Sister Judy may have sussed me.”

Gobsmacked: (Chiefly British, informal) Utterly astonished; astounded. <Origin> 1980s: from GOB + SMACK, with reference to being shocked by a blow to the mouth, or to clapping a hand to one’s mouth in astonishment. “They’ll all be gobsmacked.”

Definitions are from The New Oxford American Dictionary through Kindle.

What interesting words have you taken note of lately?