Tag: Thriller

Kate’s Review: “The Break-Up Retreat”

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Book: “The Break-Up Retreat” by Camilla Sten

Publishing Info: Minotaur Books, June 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: An undercover journalist goes to expose an exclusive psychological wellness clinic where women go to recover from heartbreak, with dire consequences, in this creepy thriller from The Bachelorette Party author Camilla Sten.

Welcome to Himlafall Clinic, where we use revolutionary therapy techniques to heal you from heartbreak. Whether you are going through a devastating breakup, or can’t seem to stop picking the wrong partners, we are here to help you change your life, once and for all…

Isobel Anderssen has heard rumors. Nestled deep in the Swedish woods, there is a clinic. Primarily aimed at helping women who have gone through devastating break-ups, the Himlafall Clinic is meant to heal your mind and help you move on.

Sometimes people are never heard from again.

Armed with a fake story and a contraband phone to record interviews, Isobel is ready to expose Himlafall’s founder and get closure for the families of missing loved ones. But when she gets there, nothing goes to plan. Her contact is missing. The founder, Dr. Martina Hastings, knows how to get under Isobel’s skin in ways she didn’t anticipate. And all the while, the ghosts of the missing haunt her at every turn. It is clear something is going wrong and Himlafall, and Isobel must uncover the truth, before she disappears once and for all.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

After my previous therapist retired at the beginning of the year, I have started with a new person this summer and I am finding it to be incredibly gratifying and cathartic. I’ve been in therapy on and off basically since I was a teenager (of SO many different types), and this new one has been really challenging me to look inside myself and reflect on a lot, which has been great. Whenever I read a book that has some kind of therapy as a focal point, especially a thriller, I thank my lucky stars that I’ve only had good experiences with my mental health counselors, and I was thinking about that as I read Camilla Sten’s new thriller “The Break-Up Retreat”. No weaponized therapising in my life, I’m happy to report! But it does make for a solid thriller premise, and if you throw in an undercover reporter posing as a patient it makes me all the more intrigued.

“The Break-Up Retreat” has a lot of positives going for it! By having our protagonist Isobel being an undercover reporter checking into a trendy but potentially sinister mental health retreat, we hit the ground running and the tension starts right away. Himlafall Clinic has a lot of hype around it for women who are going through rough relationship fallout, with its founder Dr. Martina Hastings being a media darling and a beaming advocate for helping women work through their despair. But at least one person has disappeared after going to Himlafall, and whispers online have made Isobel think that there is something dark going on, which could be a great story to break out with. I love that concept and have loved it since reading up on good ol’ Nelly Bly, and Sten makes things go weird from the jump which builds the tension almost immediately. Isobel’s contact has gone missing, the other patients are offputting, and the staff seem strange and like they are hiding things, all while Martina is doing unconventional methods in therapy while isolating her patients from the outside world. I love this kind of thing, and I loved the questions about Martina’s motives as she psychologically picks at people she is supposed to be helping. Sten keeps a lot of her cards close to her vest and lets suspense go tauter and tauter until it’s about to snap.

I also enjoyed how we got this from not only Isobel’s POV, but also through found media like message boards, interviews, Internet comments, and news articles. I absolutely love supplemental clues that give us perspectives outside of the protagonist, and these are all pretty subtle at first until things start clicking into place. It broke up the chapters pretty well too, and given that sometimes I did find myself lagging behind at times when the chapters could feel a little repetitive as Isobel investigates these parts did a good job of getting me back on task and back into it.

“The Break-Up Retreat” is a perfect summer read for the beach or the pool, with a solid mystery and a promising premise rising to the top.

Rating 7: A really enjoyed the tension and the entire concept of this one, with a potentially sinister therapist and a plucky undercover reporter trying to expose it all.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Break-Up Retreat” is included in the Goodreads post “A Month-By-Month Guide to Summer’s Biggest Mysteries and Thrillers”.

Kate’s Review: “You First”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “You First” by Caroline Kepnes

Publishing Info: Random House, June 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Joe Goldberg is ready for his life to start. He’s seventeen years old, working in Mr. Mooney’s bookshop, falling in love with every girl on the subway all while wondering who will be the one. He knows what he needs: A woman who will force him to get his GED, go to night school, and make something of himself. But who would ever fall in love with him?

Then he spots it: MISSED CONNECTION, NYC Bookstore Babe.

Someone is looking for Joe. And that someone is Vail Gunderson, a production assistant with a passion for rom-coms. The only catch: she’s twenty-four, which means that Joe has no choice but to lie about his age…and, naturally, nearly everything else in his life. Joe thinks he’s found true love, but when Vail needs more convincing that Joe is her happily ever after, he’s determined to convince her…no matter what it takes…

With her incisive and darkly comedic prose, Caroline Kepnes captures Joe poised on the edge of manhood, entering the vicious, dog-eat-dog New York dating scene for the very first time, and buffeted by forces that will determine what kind of man he will become—and how he will write his own twisted love story.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

It’s been a couple of years since we last saw stalker super creep Joe Goldberg in book form. His show on Netflix had its run and finale, and I was pretty satisfied with how it all shook out, but it’s been since his time in “For You and Only You” that we’ve seen him on the page. And he’s very different on the page. I will admit that after time passed and I was cycling through my insomnia listens of his books, that previous book was the one I revisited the least, and I was a bit worried that it was the end of his story. When it was announced we were getting a fifth book I was excited. When I saw it was going to be a prequel instead of a sequel I was…. apprehensive. What could teenage Joe tell us that we don’t already know about him? Was it going to be a little bit of a retcon that upends the canon? I didn’t really need to be nervous, because Caroline Kepnes’s “You First”, while a shift in the timeline, is still entertaining and a solidly ‘Joe’ story, giving us a glimpse into what made him Joe, terrible personality and all. I’m still a okay with shitty villain protagonists and their gross twisted stories, and this one keeps it up!

Footage of me when I see people complaining about trash main characters doing obviously trash things in a thriller novel as if its an endorsement of trash. (source)

This is less of a thriller this time around just based on the fact that TECHNICALLY Joe doesn’t really start getting fully into his murderous ways until AFTER this point in the timeline just based on what happens in the other books in the series (there is a little bit of wiggle room here, just to note), and more of a character study set in a historical fiction genre (oh GOD, the early aughts are now historical fiction, I’m Joe’s age and this makes me feel OLD). We meet Joe when he’s seventeen, working at Mooney’s Books (hooray for the return of Mr. Mooney!), and the entire city is still dealing with 9/11, which only happened a few months earlier. He’s hyper-focusing on the Internet and Missed Connection ads, and through his he meets Vail, a twenty four year old woman who works on the “Sex and the City” set. Vail is the blueprint for his future obsessions, and she is neurotic, self absorbed, and flitty. But this is through the eyes of seventeen year old Joe, who has basically been abandoned by his parents, left to his own devices with the occasional support from the weird and abusive Mr. Mooney, and we see how his experiences are, indeed, warping his sense of love and connection. This may sound like it’s getting into excuse territory, but I don’t feel like it is for the most part. Something that does have to be kept in mind is that he is still, technically, a kid here, and it’s an interesting trajectory to see his obsession form and how it stays with him from here on out. Especially since everyone else in this book that influences and interacts with and affects him is a full on adult. It explains a lot. And he does sound like a nervous teenager in his inner monologue with insecurities that feel familiar, even if they are dark and fucked up. It’s a twisted coming of age story to be sure.

Kepnes still keeps the weird dark humor and the seediness of the other books in this one! That is part of the reason I love these books so much, just how damn funny Joe can be and how skeevy they can make me feel as I read them. It’s a little harder to swallow at times in this book given that Joe is only seventeen, and Kepnes does tread a fine line with some of the sexual situations in this book between him and Vail, but it’s far more restrained than previous books. We are seeing similar patterns with bad people being bad to each other, and it’s getting a LITTLE repetitive, but it didn’t drag it down too much. Vail is grating but she’s supposed to be, but she also captures that wannabe Carrie Bradshaw NYC delusion that I remember well from being a high schooler and young adult from this time period (I remember binging “Sex and the City” with my roommate and being so insulted she thought I was a Charlotte even though now I’m like ‘yeah probably, but without the WASP-iness’). It has the vibes I look for in these books. But I do wonder how much longer they can be sustained.

I am curious to know where Joe is going from here. “You First” gives us a backstory, and I wonder if it is telegraphs what is next for the character. I’m still fully on board to go on whatever ride Kepnes wants to make me on with this character, and his lore has expanded in a way that worked for me.

Rating 8: Teenager Joe Goldberg as a concept gave me a little pause, but the execution was pretty well done and the outcome was seedy, twisted, and exactly what I’ve come to expect from Joe, even as a teenager.

Reader’s Advisory:

“You First” isn’t on any Goodreads lists yet, but it would fit in on “I’ll Be Watching You”.

Kate’s Review: “Dead Weight”

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Book: “Dead Weight” by Hildur Knútsdóttir & Mary Robinette Kowal (Translator)

Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, May 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: An Icelandic night may hide secrets and affairs—or even bodies—in this gruesomely cathartic horror thriller from the author of The Night Guest.

Unnur was living a normal, if lonely, life until a black cat showed up at her door.

Trying to do the right thing, Unnur reunites the lost pet with its owner—a young woman named Ásta who is in desperate need of some help. Unnur reluctantly agrees to take in the cat until Ásta is able to care for it again herself.

Soon, Ásta becomes a fixture in Unnur’s life and the two form an unlikely friendship. But like a black cat, trouble is tailing Ásta, and Unnur is the only one there when things take a violent turn.

Nothing tests a friendship like blood on your hands.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novella!

I’m a big fan of stories that like to talk about women’s rights AND women’s wrongs, and especially love stories like that if it’s a cathartic story about women getting revenge on the men that cause them harm. Basically I love a story that has a “Goodbye Earl” kinda vibe to it. When I read the description of Hildur Knútsdóttir’s “Dead Weight”, I DEFINITELY caught that kind of vibe from it. I enjoyed Knútsdóttir’s previous book “The Night Guest”, and this one sounded perhaps less strange, but still very much my thing. I jumped in and was pleased that not only did it have the ‘get revenge’ theme, but also CATS!

This novella is definitely more of a thriller than a horror story this time around, but Knútsdóttir still manages to find ways to not only bring out suspense but also dread at times. The plot is fairly straightforward as we follow Unnur, a woman living in Iceland who keeps to herself and is carrying on an affair with a married man, convincing herself she’s okay with all of it. One night a cat named Io randomly ends up in her apartment, and a woman named Ásta comes looking. Unnur and Ásta are different in temperament, they get to know each other and Unnur takes on Io (and a surprise kitten!) at Ásta’s behest, as her boyfriend Ragnar doesn’t like the cat and she worries he’d flip about a kitten. As the story quietly unfolds we see more and more hints and evidence that Ragnar is a very dangerous man, we also see two women confiding in each other and finding strength in their friendship as they become closer and danger starts to threaten both of them. It’s pretty clear where this story is going, but I was still kept on the edge of my seat as Knútsdóttir lays out the building blocks for a visceral climax.

I also liked the burgeoning friendship between Unnur and Ásta, and the way that Knútsdóttir compares and contrasts their romantic relationships and deconstructs the different ways that they are toxic. For Ásta it’s pretty straight forward, and Unnur is horrified to see Ásta being dominated and intimidated by her boyfriend Ragnar, and his vileness is pretty apparent with how he treats not only Ásta but also the cats (whose presence has helped Unnur and Ásta bond). But we also see the toxic relationship that Unnur has with her boyfriend Joi, who is married with a family and who has been stringing Unnur along for awhile, making promises that she clings to even though she knows deep down that what she is doing is not only cruel to Joi’s wife, but also to herself. I loved the way that both women could see the damaging facets of their friend’s relationship, but had the blinders put on due to the manipulative and abusive, be it overt or not, relationships they themselves were in. As they disentangle and find connection with each other (and the cats!), we see this really empowering story about female friendship, which has a little bit of the “Goodbye Earl” vibes that I was hoping for.

I definitely enjoyed “Dead Weight”! It’s cathartic and atmospheric and I found it incredibly satisfying.

Rating 8: A quick and enjoyable thriller about friendship, solidarity, and the sour parts of relationships where men mistreat women and the women have to fight back one way or another.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Dead Weight” is included on the Goodreads list “Creepy Statue Covers”.

Kate’s Review: “The Drop”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “The Drop” by S.R. Masters

Publishing Info: Sourcebooks Landmark, April 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: A terrifyingly twisty, wholly original thriller following a group of amusement park visitors who get stuck on a roller coaster high above the ground—with no way down.

Six hundred and fifty feet in the air, no one can hear you scream.

Some might say that thirtysomething Cady Ellison landed herself a strange creative career, but Cady finally feels like she’s found her footing. Now an online theme park influencer, she is invited to the opening of a brand-new park by her old friend, Danny, who wants to use her online profile to help build buzz for its flagship ride, Hysteria, a record-breaking 650 foot-tall roller coaster.

When she arrives at the half-complete theme park site in the middle of the desert, Cady is unexpectedly met with her old college friend Femi, an award-winning actor, Naseem, a decorated novelist, and Winston, a member of a popular rock group. Wanting them all to sing the praises of Hysteria online, Danny has arranged an exclusive private ride for them, capped off with the stunning desert sunset. But when their coaster cars get to the top of the first hill, the ride stalls 650 feet above ground. With no one due on site for days and over 100-degree heat awaiting them once the sun rises, the four friends soon realize that they must unravel the secrets from their complicated past if they are to find their way to safety.

Review: Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for sending me an ARC of this novel!

While I can still do some mid level rollercoasters whilst visiting a theme park here or there, it’s been a long time since I could do something really intense. While at Disney World a couple years ago I was fine on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Snow White’s Mine Cart Ride, but I steered clear of the likes of Tron, Space Mountain, and Guardians of the Galaxy. I definitely envy people who can do the big scary coasters (this will be my kid in the future almost assuredly), but I imagine even they would have a problem with being stranded on a rollercoaster ride with no ride operators to be found. That’s basically the premise of “The Drop” by S.R. Masters, a new thriller where a group of friends from university have a reunion at a not yet opened theme park in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, only to be trapped by themselves at the top of the highest coaster in the world. I love creative thriller premises like this, and “The Drop” really leans into the hook with pretty solid results.

Cady is a youtube influencer who reviews and livestreams amusement park rides, and is thrilled when she is contacted by her university friend Danny, who is working for a company that has a theme park being built to be the best in the world. She arrives, sees that hers and Danny’s friends from college Femi, Naz, and Winston, are also there, and Danny puts them in the cars of Hysteria, the tallest rollercoaster in the world, and promises them a good time… Only for the car to stall hundreds of feet above the ground, and Danny to basically ghost them. It’s a good device, and it has a growing dread as the friends go from amused, to irritated, to absolutely horrified that they may be stuck with no help coming, no water, and no shade as the hot sun is set to rise in hours. These kinds of thrillers can be hard to pull off, but when you do pull it off it makes for such an unsettling experience for the reader/viewer. I mean the very idea of being trapped in this way is SO scary to me, especially since it is drawn out and mentally torturous as well as physically. We have reasons as to why this is all happening, and while it’s not super creative or reinventing anything in terms of motivations the setting of being trapped on a coaster more than makes up for it.

But I will admit, I also loved all of the over the top soapiness that came with this book. All of our characters, be they be the ones trapped on the rollercoaster as the night goes on and the threat of desert temps has them terrified, or the ones who have a beef with others, are dramatic and have things they are hiding and stewing over. I found twist after twist and reveal after reveal to be enjoyable and very sudsy, and while some characters felt more caricatures than others, I was definitely turning the pages to see who had backstabbed whom, and how it was all going to shake out after their revelations were out in the open. We get insights not only through their confessions in the moment, but also in flashback sequences for the various players to show where they were coming from when they were making the choices they were making.

If you are looking for a fun read, especially with summer approaching sooner rather than later, “The Drop” is one to add to your to be read pile. And it may put you off rollercoasters for a bit.

Rating 7: A creative thriller with a suspenseful main storyline (and some soapy asides to build the suspense even more) kept me reading and invested.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Drop” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of now, but it would fit in on “Theme Parks”.

Kate’s Review: “What We Did To Survive”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “What We Did to Survive” by Megan Lally

Publishing Info: Sourcebooks Fire, March 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: A vacation in paradise turns deadly when four teens’ sailing charter hits stormy seas in this propulsive new thriller from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Megan Lally!

Hannah is having an incredible spring break. A week at a resort in Mexico with her best friend Emmy and her family is perfect for de-stressing from senior year, even if it’s awkward being around Emmy’s older brother, Jackson, who she’s had a crush on for as long as she can remember.

Still, the beach is gorgeous. So is the guy they meet in the surf. Except Hannah is now the third wheel in Emmy’s vacation romance.

Eager to impress Emmy, her wealthy new boyfriend charters a private sailboat to make the most of their last day in paradise, and Hannah and Jackson are invited along. As the clouds roll in and the skies darken, their boat is the only one leaving the marina. And the further they get into open water, the more unsettled Hannah becomes. A storm is brewing onboard that’s as deadly as the one racing toward them. Forget surviving graduation. Who will make it back to land alive?

Review: Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire for sending me an ARC of this novel!

Even though Spring Break has come and gone (and I opted to spend it someplace not so tropical, but the lake called), I feel like I always enjoy survival thrillers where a tropical vacation goes wrong any time of the year. When I received “What We Did to Survive” by Megan Lally in the mail I knew that it was going to be a fun vacation based survival thriller, as tourists in trouble is always a fun sub-genre within a sub-genre. I jumped into it expecting a ride.

And it was a fun ride in a lot of ways. The basic premise is a familiar one for survival thriller tales: a group of people set out into a wilderness situation unprepared and things go south quickly. In this case it’s teenagers Hannah, her best friend Emmy, Emmy’s brother Jackson (who is also Hannah’s crush), and Emmy’s vacation/situationship based hook up Ben, who are all on vacation at a resort in Puerta Vallarta and want to do more for the last day. Ben charters a boat outside the resort’s purview, and they sail into a storm, with danger and death ensuing. It’s a familiar set up but it’s one that is always entertaining, as they have to fight the elements, secrets, and perhaps even each other to survive. I definitely had a hard time putting it down because Lally keeps it going apace, not wasting any moments and making bad situations worse until it’s clear that not everyone is going to make it out of this. The tension builds well and it reads nice and fast because of it.

But on the other hand, the characters in this were all pretty two dimensional. I did like Hannah a fair amount, probably because we got the most in her head, and I liked her and Jackson, but ultimately Jackson didn’t really bring much outside of a protective love interest for her (though she doesn’t think that it would ever be more than a crush on her part, natch) and a protective big brother to Emmy. Emmy and Ben, however, are both pretty insufferable in their own ways, whether Emmy is the shallow best friend who will drop all sense for a boy, or Ben is an over the top villain built of wealth, privilege, and cowardice. I recognize that sometimes YA novels have a bit more direct characters and want to spend time telling rather than showing, but I think that it’s a disservice to their target demo to assume that such OBVIOUS villains and antagonists are needed as opposed to something more complicated. But then again, seeing how all these rich and privileged people are behaving these days maybe Ben isn’t too far off and I’m just being naive. Nevertheless, it made it less suspenseful than it could have been because I wasn’t as invested in their fates as I could have been.

So fun popcorn reading that would be good for a vacation read, but it doesn’t reinvent the wheel outside of a simple survival thriller story. But sometimes that’s exactly what is needed.

Rating 6: A fun survival thriller that was an entertaining read, though some of the characters were a little flat.

Reader’s Advisory:

“What We Did to Survive” is included on the Goodreads list “YA Suspense/Thriller/Mystery”.

Serena’s Review: “Where No Shadow Stays”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Where No Shadow Stays” by Sara Hashem

Publishing Info: Holiday House, March 2026

Where Did I Get this Book: Netgalley!

Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: Seventeen-year-old Mina is always focused on what comes next: exams, school dances, opportunities for a picnic by the lake. Filling up the future keeps her from lingering over how little she knows about her history or where she comes from. Anytime she asks her father questions about Egypt–or about her mother’s mysterious death–he struggles to open up.

When Mina receives an invitation from an aunt she’s never met to visit the Haikal mansion, her mother’s childhood home in El Agamy, Mina accepts. She can’t resist the chance to learn more about her roots or what happened to her mother, even if it means lying to her loves ones for the first time in her life.

But when Mina returns from El Agamy, she doesn’t come back alone.

A sinister entity follows Mina from the Haikal mansion to her tiny California town. Mina is forced to abandon her friends, her father, and everything she loves in order to prevent the entity from violently possessing them. Isolated and fighting for her life, Mina must seek help from an unlikely ally: Jesse Talbot, the mortician’s hostile son and the only person who proves immune to possession. Jesse would rather floss with barbed wire than team up with social butterfly Mina, but he doesn’t exactly have a choice—after all, he’s running from family secrets of his own.

As Mina and Jesse dig deeper into Mina’s family lore, they uncover a bloody debt that must be satisfied if Mina wants to finish senior year alive.

Review: I have once again stolen a book from Kate’s genres, but Hashem wrote one of my favorite fantasy romance duologies of the last several years, so….yeah, I don’t care! I’m going to read whatever she writes at this point!

So, while I don’t typically read horror, this was the kind that I can get behind. Probably because it’s also YA, so the truly horrific stuff that Kate wades into is largely absent here. That said, Hashem does a great job of blending historical fiction and horror together in ways that are both intriguing and disturbing. The tension was perfectly wound tighter and tighter, only to release unexpectedly before starting it all up again.

I really liked the mystery at the heart of this story and learning more about Mina’s family and history. And on top of this central mystery behind what is making up this curse and how it can be defeated, Jesse also had mysteries of his own that were slowly revealed as the story continued.

Hashem also reconfirmed that she excels at writing compelling, swoon-worthy romances. I was a bit unsure how her talents would translate being removed from all of the fantasy trappings, but she definitely proved me wrong. Jesse and Mina’s relationship was so lovely, a slow-burning, tension-filled affair that drew me in right from the start.

I don’t want to go into spoilers with regards to the ending, but it was truly heart-wrenching. I guess I don’t know this for a fact, but I’ve always assumed that horror, as a genre, has a greater tendency to end in tragedy or, at best, an unclear future. And such is the case here. It all played out so well for the story that was being developed, but tissues were definitely needed.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one! Sara Hashem is just an excellent author, all things considered, and I’m happy to genre hop alongside her! If you’re a fan of YA horror stories, I definitely recommend this one!

Rating 8: Tension-filled in every way, both the romantic and the horrific!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Where No Shadow Stays” can be found on this Goodreads list: YA Novels of 2026.

Kate’s Review: “Two Truths and a Lie”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Two Truths and a Lie” by Mark Stevens

Publishing Info: Thomas & Mercer, April 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publicist

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Lambasted for a tragedy caught live on camera, then lauded for her help capturing the elusive PDQ, a serial killer, Flynn Martin’s career has reached new heights. But now, the TV journalist and mother has much further to fall. And someone wants to push her over the edge.

PDQ is behind bars, for life and then some, but someone on the outside has picked up the killer’s mantle. Flynn is neck-deep in an investigation when the copycat emerges, targeting her sources and delivering cryptic messages. It’s clear that Flynn’s stories are getting deadlier. This one proves no exception.

A family of four has gone missing, leaving behind ties to New Hope Church more tangled than they appear. The dangerous web rivals the threat in Flynn’s personal life. And it’s up to her to unravel each knot.

Scandal. Conspiracy. Murder. Flynn hardly knows where to begin—and if her stalker has their way, she might not live to see the end.

Review: Thank you to Roger Charlie for sending me an ARC of this novel!

My kid had Spring Break last week and instead of going someplace warmer, we actually opted for colder and went up the North Shore of Minnesota to stay at a resort on Lake Superior. Usually this is a Fall trip for us, but we couldn’t make it happen this past Fall and decided to do it now even if that meant it was going to be in the 30s. But cold weather or not, I LOVE reading by the Lake, and the choice of literature this time around was “Two Truths and a Lie” by Mark Stevens, a mystery with a scrappy reporter, a copy cat serial killer, a missing family, and mysterious and threatening letters. It sounded like it would be up my alley whilst listening to the lake hit the shore.

The premise of this is what sold me, as I do love a detective story that has an unconventional detective at its heart. Flynn fits that mold pretty well, as she is a TV journalist for a local news station and does investigating through the lens of journalism. It’s a very Lois Lane-esque vibe, and I found Flynn to be a fun character to follow and enjoyed her point of view. I enjoyed her character dynamics with the supporting cast, whether it’s her coworker Tamica or her son Wyatt or her ex husband Max (it was nice to see an actually pretty healthy relationship between these two characters). And I also enjoyed the idea of a copycat serial killer and Flynn having to reach out to the killer that is being copied, especially since apparently her catching that killer was the premise of book one (more on that in a bit). It just has a lot of things that did work for me.

All that said, I will say that I probably made a bit of a mistake not reading the first book in the series before picking this one up, as I was missing context for a fair chunk of the references that were being made to Flynn’s previous case, the fallout of it, and her relationships and how they were shaped due to it. That is one hundred percent on me, as I had hoped that it would be similar to other mystery series where you can kind of do that (I think about the Temperance Brennan books and how for awhile I was just hopping around and reading random ones). So my critiques in that regard are absolutely more a reflection on me and not the book. But I will say that it did feel at times like this book could have been tightened up. It clocks in at more than 450 pages, and that’s a lot of pages to sustain a tense and gripping mystery and keep the tension up.

Ultimately it was a mixed bag that probably was mostly on me. But if you like a not as often seen take on detective stories with a fun heroine, perhaps take a chance on Flynn Martin!

Rating 6: A likable protagonist with a unique take on a detective story has lots of potential, though there is a bit of a pacing issue.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Two Truths and a Lie” isn’t included on any Goodreads lists as of yet, but it would fit in on “Female Detective Series”.

Kate’s Review: “Yesteryear”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke

Publishing Info: Knopf, April 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1805—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.

My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.

Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it.

Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a brutal reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.

A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening,  Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

I remember when the announcement for the book “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke hit the publishing news, and the very concept completely had me hook line and sinker. A tradwife homesteader influencer being possibly transported to the early 1800s (aka a time where women had no power or choices in their lives) that she has always claimed to want to experience? And tries to sell it as something that all women SHOULD want to experience? Only to find it to be ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE?

Oh the sweet sweet irony (source)

So yes, I had pretty high hopes for “Yesteryear”. And “Yesteryear” blew them out of the water.

“Yesteryear” keeps a lot of its secrets hidden away, slowly unveiling them through a couple of unfolding narratives. We start on a typical day on Yesteryear Ranch, with tradwife influencer Natalie Heller Mills going through the motions of content creation for her millions of followers. She presents a front of traditional Christian values, rustic and ‘natural’ living, and a perfect family of multiple children, a perfect husband, and a ranch she runs herself (no one has to see the multiple nannies, the fact husband Caleb is an aimless dolt, or the fact they have MULTIPLE hired hands). You get the sense that something on this day is off, with tension building between Natalie, Caleb, and one of her producers. Then, Natalie awakens to find herself in a dank ranchhouse that looks like Yesteryear but is far more dilapidated, with children that aren’t the children she knows, and a husband who seems like Caleb but is violent and controlling. Not to mention it seems like she has really been transported back in time to the early 1800s, a time she claims to long for where women were submissive to their husbands and eager to fulfill their gendered duties, but is in actuality a nightmare. So the narratives become going to the past to see Natalie’s journey from devout Christian gal to the mogul of an empire that seems to be on the brink, and then the new reality that has her feeling trapped and desperate to escape. I loved the framing of this as they slowly start to converge, and the building tension and questions about what the HELL has happened to Natalie to get from Ballerina Farms-esque wealth and status to actual tradwife hell. It kept me guessing the whole time, presenting not only nightmare scenarios of Natalie’s new normal and her seeking out of answers, but also a clear villain story of how she got to her dream and the people she stepped on to get there. All will be revealed, and done so nearly perfectly, but the slow burn of it all crackles and kept me so hooked I read this in two days.

But the heart of this story (even if it’s a bit of a rancid one, and I mean that in a good way) is Natalie and her trad wife influencer ambitions and how far she will go to achieve them. In other trad wife books I’ve read in the past year, we have protagonists who are definitely complex and are seeking out fame and status with this highly damaging platform and influence, but ultimately they have learning moments and kind of see the error of their ways, or came to their positions through means that are ultimately empathetic and give them some grace. This isn’t a bad thing, really, and I did enjoy the ability to give them grace with the context that we get as the tale goes on. But Natalie? Natalie is also a well rounded character who doesn’t feel like a moustache twirling villain, but she is smug, she is a hypocrite, she is judgmental and cruel, and she is a sly and subtle monster who knows how to hide behind a veneer of piety in order to achieve her goals. Sure there is a Ballerina Farms vibe to her, but there is also a very clear undercurrent of Ruby Franke in her cruelty and her thirst for power at any cost. I was thrilled to see Burke take her places that others haven’t, like the fact that she is more than willing to cozy up with white supremacists and spew bigoted talking points (but in a gentle way) if she can feel superior to everyone else, especially the ‘angry women’ who she feels incredibly victimized by even though she’s hardly a victim. She’s just venomous, and it felt like it was epitomizing the darkest realities of the trad wife movement and its ties to Christo-fascism and white supremacy, and how it gets enmeshed with far right political movements. It’s the harshest critique of the movement I’ve seen and it is spectacular, even if it is deeply, DEEPLY uncomfortable.

“Yesteryear” is phenomenal. It kept me guessing, kept me engaged, and is sure to be a favorite read of the year for me. I’m blown away.

Rating 10: Mind blowing. A fantastic critique of the performance of conservative (to far right) femininity that trad wife content bolsters that is rife with suspense and building dread.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Yesteryear” is included on the Goodreads list “Tradwife Thrillers”.

Kate’s Review: “You Did Nothing Wrong”

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Book: “You Did Nothing Wrong” by C.G. Drews

Publishing Info: St Martin’s Press, March 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: A relentless, horror-inducing psychological suspense for fans of The Push and Baby Teeth by New York Times bestselling author CG Drews.

Single mother Elodie’s life has become a fairy tale. She’s met Bren, equal parts golden-retriever devoted and sinfully handsome. He’s whisked her and her autistic son, Jude, to the crumbling family house he’s renovating. She has a new husband, a new house, and a new baby on the way. Everything is perfect.

Then Jude claims he can hear voices in the walls. He says their renovations are “hurting” the house. Even Elodie can’t ignore it–something strange is going on. The question is, is it with the house, or with her son?

Then the one secret Elodie has been hiding is revealed, and no one is safe anymore.

A pulse-pounding, clever take on the haunted house novel, You Did Nothing Wrong examines the complexities of motherhood and the twisted bonds of family as it races to its shocking ending.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

We are getting some interesting subversions of the haunted house horror sub-genre recently! I love a haunted house story, but I’ve been pretty pleased with the way that authors have been experimenting with the themes that come with the sub-genre. “You Did Nothing Wrong” definitely falls into that category, because something that starts off seeming like just a ghostly tale turns into something even scarier than things that go bump in the night.

Whew, this book is intense for so many different reasons. We follow Elodie, a young mother to an autistic six year old named Jude (more on him in a bit) who has just married Bren, and is pregnant again. They move into a new house that Bren is trying to fix up, but Jude keeps talking about how the house is alive. And Elodie starts seeing strange things too. This is one layer of the tension, because Drews also throws in hints and clues to Elodie’s past, which carry a whole lot of darkness even if they aren’t apparent from the jump. Elodie is a narrator that I would shift between wanting to root for, to being completely horrified by, and I never quite knew if she was someone I could trust as a protagonist. But I had the same thing happen with Bren, who on the surface seems so kind and patient and doting, but has little flashes of menace and aggression. But then again, is that actually the case, or is it because we see what Elodie sees? As the story goes on and the tension between Elodie and Bren escalates, mostly because she also thinks she’s seeing things in the house AND because Bren is potentially abusing or manipulating Jude. As the story goes on Elodie gets more unhinged, but is she paranoid? Or is it something else altogether? Drews kept me guessing a good long time, and I was tearing through this book desperate to find out what happened next.

Another stressful point is the themes with Jude, who is presumed to be autistic based on how he is written, but who hasn’t been diagnosed because Elodie refuses to do so in case it is somehow blamed on her. As someone who has a child who is presumed autistic, there were beats in here that felt very familiar, either due to the way that some people just refuse to understand some of the more uncomfortable things about autistic people, or the way that things can go south in the blink of an eye without necessarily knowing why because your kid doesn’t really know why either. You add in a possessive obsession she has to her child and it makes it all the more intense. But then again, I was ALSO freaking out at Bren because I was so afraid that he was going to hurt Jude due to HIS misconceptions about how to treat an autistic child. It made me so uncomfortable but I’m pretty sure that was the point. Gosh I just wanted to sweep Jude up.

I do think that the ending had a few too many shocks and surprises, however. I’ve never been one to get behind a thriller novel that has a lot of last minute twists just to get a rise out of the reader, and while this book still stands very well on its own two feet due to the things I mentioned, I do think that there was a bit of an overreach when it comes to how things all shook out by the end.

But that’s a quibble in the long run, because overall I greatly enjoyed “You Did Nothing Wrong”. It kept me stressed out and it kept me flipping the pages whenever I had a chance. I definitely recommend it.

Rating 8: An addictive horror tale with unreliable narration and incredibly tense moments flies high for awhile, but has a slight petering out of an ending.

Reader’s Advisory:

“You Did Nothing Wrong” is included on the Goodreads lists “Autism in Horror Literature”, and “Dark Literature”.

Kate’s Review: “Turn Off the Light”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Turn Off the Light” by Jacquie Walters

Publishing Info: Mulholland Books, March 2026

Where Did I Get This Book: I received a finished copy from the publicist

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon| Indiebound

Book Description: Two women living centuries apart are bound by the same dark secret in this haunting novel that “upends everything you think you know about ghost stories” (Jennifer McMahon, author of The Winter People).

The Devil enters through doors left open…

On the isolated Eastern Shore of Virginia, Edith is a healer, a woman of knowledge—and a woman watched. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Whispers creep through the dark. Terrified she has opened her home to the Devil, Edith makes a desperate choice.

Claire doesn’t believe in ghosts—until she returns home to care for her dying father and finds her childhood house… listening. As one sleepless night bleeds into the next, she becomes convinced something is stirring beneath the floorboards. Something that has waited a long time to rise.

Is the house haunted? What compels this lurking darkness? As the danger mounts, Edith and Claire will discover they’ll need each other to survive. But they are separated by four hundred years. And time is running out for them both.

Review: Thank you to Little Brown and Company for sending me a copy of this novel!

I so enjoyed Jacquie Walters’s horror novel “Dearest”. It was a tense and evocative about motherhood and generational trauma, and it was done in a way that felt organic and earnest while also being very creepy. So I was absolutely interested in checking out her newest horror/supernatural thriller novel “Turn Off the Light”. It sounded like a haunted house story as well as a story about women dealing with difficult shit even without a haunted house to gaul them, and I was definitely in.

We have two narratives that we follow in this book. The first is in the modern day and follows Claire, a single mother returning to her childhood home to see her ailing father who is dying of dementia. Claire has avoided home for awhile, as she still has lingering trauma and sadness about the disappearance of her oldest sister Gabby, and the absence has caused a coldness between her and other sister Tilly who has been left with husband Peter to care for their dad. Claire feels like something strange is lurking in the home, and her worry grows as weird things start happening. The other narrative follows Edith, a woman living in the same house but during Puritan times, who works as a healer and medicine woman, but who starts to feel a weird presence in the house, which starts to feed into her anxieties about how her community, including her husband, sees her and her practices that she has kept mostly stifled due to fears of witchcraft. While I usually have a strong and clear preference for one narrative over another in these kinds of stories, I actually ended up liking both of them pretty evenly in this one. Claire’s life was engaging because of the family tension and the unsaid sadness within her family with her lost sister and sick father, and Edith’s story sucked me in because I am ALWAYS going to be into stories of healer women being viewed with suspicion because of Puritanical zealotry. I also thought that both women were pretty well fleshed out, and that they had complexities that made them all the more interesting to follow.

In terms of the horror/supernatural and thriller elements, this one did have a fair amount of suspenseful beats as both Claire and Edith think they are living through a haunting in the house that they both inhabit, centuries apart. I loved the slow burn of weird incidents in both timelines, which seem to be escalating but always feel just a little bit odd so that it wasn’t totally clear as to what was going on. I had a pretty good feeling I could track where things were going, and while I was basically right it still was interesting to see where Walters was taking the reader. I don’t want to spoil anything so will remain vague, but it went in directions that may be a little unexpected and did so in a way that made me feel like it was pulled off. It’s just very creative and I liked taking the journey and all of the tension that came with it.

“Turn Off the Light” is another fun novel from Jacquie Walters! I definitely recommend it for horror fans who like to think a bit outside the box of what a haunted house is.

Rating 8: A creative historical and supernatural thriller that jumps through time, “Turn Off the Light” had some solid twists, a lot of suspense, and two narratives that complemented each other quite well.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Turn Off the Light” is on the Goodreads list “Horror Releases Coming in 2026”.