Tag: Thriller

Kate’s Review: “The Drop”

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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”

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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”

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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”

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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”

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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”.

Kate’s Review: “Maria the Wanted”

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Book: “Maria the Wanted” by V. Castro

Publishing Info: Titan Books, February 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: Newly turned Mexican vampire, Maria, is not just out for blood, she wants answers.

From the twice Bram Stoker-nominated author of The Haunting of Alejandra and Immortal Pleasures, a gripping tale of empowerment, desire and belonging, perfect for readers of A Dowry of Blood and Certain Dark Things.

Maria is a wanted woman. She’s wanted by an Aztec trafficker, a cartel boss, the people she fights for, and now the Devil she can’t resist. Her journey begins as a would-be immigrant turned vampire in Juarez, Mexico until the injustices of the world turn her into something else.

Forced to leave her home and family, she embarks on a journey across Mexico seeking those answers. She learns a new language and how to survive as a vampire. To ease her restlessness she finds work with an ex-boxer and learns to fight, becoming an unlikely bad ass enforcer of justice for the community that has embraced her. Is she a saint or an old God from a forgotten past?

An encounter with a violent, ruthless vampire boss leads her to finally find her creator, and he is nothing like she imagined. Drawn into a world of ancient vampires, deadly conspiracies and a dangerously seductive devil, Maria must find a way to fight for herself and all humankind.

A fierce and seductive vampire thriller, pulsing with rage, fear and desire, that explores the dark back streets of Mexico and a vampire woman’s determination to find her place in the world.

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

After being a bit let down by V. Castro’s previous vampire novel, I was pretty pleased to see that her newest book, “Maria the Wanted”, was another vampire story! Researching it further I found out that this new novel is actually a re-release, which will hopefully allow it to find new readers now that Castro has gained a bit more attention in the past few years. I had pretty high hopes for “Maria the Wanted”, and I’m happy to report that, for the most part, it was a pretty solid read! For the most part.

But first the good, and the good news is that there is a lot of good to be had! I really enjoyed our vampire protagonist Maria, whose story starts as a worker in a maquiladora in Juarez, but whose life is forever changed when some cartel vampire thugs break in to cause havoc. Maria is turned into a vampire by the most mysterious of the attackers, who disappears and leaves her to pick up the pieces of her old life and to adjust to her new one. I really liked seeing her not only have to find strength within herself to keep going, but also liked her growth journey from fledgling vampire to an avenging force not only looking for her maker, but also someone who helps the helpless, many of whom are women and girls, in a world of violence and corruption. Castro very effectively utilizes Maria’s backstory and culture to make for an interesting arc, and I was pretty damn invested in her from the jump as the moves around Mexico and beyond. I also enjoyed the vampire mythology, as Castro has some interesting twists on what her vampires are like compared to vampires in other tales.

I will say though, I feel like this book had a weird shift between the first two thirds into the final third that felt like a whole new book, but with no proper time or pages to explore it fully. I don’t really want to spoil too much of it here, but I will have to say SOME things to explain what my gripes were, so perhaps proceed with some caution. The first two thirds I greatly enjoyed, as Maria is trying to find her maker, get some justice for those who rarely get justice, and figure out what her place in the world is now that she is a vampire. All of this was solid and I enjoyed watching her go on her journey, meeting up with cartels, other women, and some fun characters be they vampires or not. But then we get to the last arc of the book, and suddenly there are prophecies, a potential armageddon at hand, and maybe even the Devil himself that she has to square up against. And that aspect felt like it needed a lot more breathing room to really flesh out a fairly significant plot point like the literal end of the world. I just felt to me like it was a wild swerve that wasn’t super well explored. It probably should have been a book in and of itself, to be honest, as it took away from the rest of the novel by confusing me as we headed into the climax.

But overall I enjoyed “Maria the Wanted”! I’m glad that they decided to re-release it for new audiences to find!

Rating 7: A really solid and entertaining first two thirds was muddled by a confusing final third, but overall an enjoyable vampire thriller.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Maria the Wanted” is included on the Goodreads list “2026 Women in Horror”.

Kate’s Review: “The Hostess”

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Book: “The Hostess” by Courtney Psak

Publishing Info: Hodder & Stoughton, January 2026

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

Where You Can Get This Book: Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Natalie and her husband decide to escape the city for a much-needed break. After suffering from a terrible accident, Natalie needs some time and space to recover. So when they find a gorgeous rental home on an estate in the Hamptons available at the last minute, it seems too good to be true.

The owner of the estate, Sadie, is beautiful, elegant and wealthy, and Natalie is immediately drawn to her.

But as the women begin to bond, Natalie can’t shake the feeling that Sadie is hiding something beneath her polished exterior.

When Natalie discovers that the previous guest disappeared without a trace, dark questions Who exactly is the hostess? What are her secrets? And can Natalie uncover the truth, before it’s too late?

Review: Thank you to Kaye Publicity for sending me an ARC of this novel!

It’s the dead of winter here in Minnesota, with temps dropping well below zero this weekend. In the dead of winter it’s always kind of fun to read books that have a less frigid setting, and “The Hostess” by Courtney Psak is a twisty thriller that also happens to take place in The Hamptons, a beach setting if there ever was one (though to be fair, apparently New York is also getting rocked by cold and snow this weekend, so even The Hamptons get frigid). I hadn’t ready anything by Courtney Psak before, but when this ended up in my mailbox I thought I’d give it a go. I like a suspenseful thriller with unreliable narrators, after all, and this one sounded like it would deliver on that.

We have two narrative voices in “The Hostess”. The first is that of Natalie, a woman who needs to get away from her everyday life after being in an accident that has given her mental health woes and hallucinations (though her past traumas are also causing issues). She and husband Luke luck out in renting a house in the Hamptons, with their hostess being Sadie, a wealthy and charismatic woman, who also happens to be our second narrative POV, and who has some secrets of her own. We alternate between Natalie and Sadie, slowly learning about both of them through flashbacks and the slow reveal of secrets that they are keeping. Natalie and Sadie both have interesting layers, with my opinions starting in one place for each of them and then evolving in ways that I didn’t expect.

I will say that it took a bit for me to get fully invested in this, as for whatever reason the first half it dragged a little bit as the exposition and clues were starting to be set out. There were a few red herrings that I could spot from the jump, and while I was interested to see what surprises were laying in wait, I was also kind of getting anxious to get further into the action and suspense. But that said, once things did click into place, I was pretty well pulled into the story and the mystery at hand. By the time I was getting to the final chapters I was racing through the pages to see what was going to happen, and that, to me, is what ultimately made this story worth the read, and one that would be a solid choice if you are looking for a thriller with some interesting twists and turns.

“The Hostess” is ultimately an enjoyable thriller with some interesting narrative characters. Think about picking it up if you want a mystery on a cold winter night.

Rating 7: Once the pace picked up in the last half I was pretty into it!

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Hostess” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of now, but this is probably a read for Frieda McFadden fans.

Kate’s Review: “All The Little Houses”

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Book: “All The Little Houses” by May Cobb

Publishing Info: Sourcebooks Landmark, January 2026

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

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

Book Description: It’s the mid-1980s in the tiny town of Longview, Texas. Nellie Anderson, the beautiful daughter of the Anderson family dynasty, has burst onto the scene. She always gets what she wants. What she can’t get for herself… well, that’s what her mother is for. Because Charleigh Andersen, blond, beautiful, and ruthlessly cunning, remembers all too well having to claw her way to the top. When she was coming of age on the poor side of East Texas, she was a loser, an outcast, humiliated, and shunned by the in-crowd, whose approval she’d so desperately thirsted for. When a prairie-kissed family moves to town, all trad wife, woodworking dad, wholesome daughter vibes, Charleigh’s entire self-made social empire threatens to crumble. Who will be left standing when the dust settles?

From the author of The Hunting Wives comes a deliciously wicked new thriller about mean girls, mean moms, and the delicious secrets inside all the little houses.

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

When I was a kid I had a nanny that really loved “Little House on the Prairie”. I remember her sometimes trying to get me to watch it, but I found it so utterly boring that she never was able to convert me. I have read a good deal of the “Little House” books (I’m a Minnesota girl after all), but never got into the TV show mythos (as it’s extensive and different from the books I hear tell). When I started reading “All the Little Houses” by May Cobb, it took me a little bit to realize that I was reading a book that was a 1980s kind of interpretation of the “Little House” TV show, but when I did I thought ‘oh, that’s kinda fun!’ Given that Cobb wrote “The Hunting Wives”, which is now a hit show on Netflix (I haven’t watched it yet but it sounds wild), I was really hoping for something unhinged and covered in suds and over the top dramatics. I live for that stuff. And with a “Little House” vibe it felt all the more ripe for the picking. Unfortunately it didn’t click for me.

But first the good stuff. As much as I am not a “Little House on the Prairie” person, I know enough about it to be able to make the connections to the characters that are representative of the characters from the show, and some of that I really enjoyed. Especially because some of the directions that a few of the characters were taken (specifically Ethan, the patriarch of the Swift family, though the reveal here is a bit more in line with the real life Charles Ingalls as opposed to TV show or book… if you know, you know). I also enjoyed the character of Jackson, Charleigh’s best friend who is an interior decorator and happens to be a gay man in the 1980s, feeling a need to be careful while also being flaunted by Charleigh as a novelty. While none of the characters were particularly likable (more on that in a bit), at least Jackson’s prickly and abrasive behaviors made some sense as being a gay man during this time was incredibly difficult.

But there were definitely some stumbles that came with this book. As mentioned above, most of the characters were completely unlikable, and very few of them had the complexities to make their terrible personalities bearable/understandable. This was especially disappointing for the character of Nellie, who is clearly the Nellie Oleson analog but is SO awful that it’s not even fun to follow her in her chapters. And even when we got a slight tread towards making her nuanced or at least a little bit complicated, Cobb never quite pulled the trigger with her to have her move beyond being completely horrendous (and while I haven’t seen “Little House on the Prairie” all that much, I’ve seen enough clips to know that Nellie has a HUGE redemption/development arc, so that made this even more disappointing). Also, these characters seemed to be 1980s caricatures of the TV show, but then also references the TV show as something in universe. Which was confusing. And finally, the ending was incredibly rushed. We got some hints throughout the book about a murder or at least a dead body in the local lake/pond with question as to who it is and who did it, but then by the time we got to the climax it landed with a huge thud, and then abruptly ended. Generally I can forgive a lot if there is a lot of suds and over the top melodrama, but it wasn’t enough to bolster it above the ho-humness of the execution.

“All the Little Houses” had potential but didn’t really meet it. It may work for others, but it didn’t really work for me.

Rating 5: With very few likable characters and a thud of an ending, even the soapy fun couldn’t fully redeem this book.

Reader’s Advisory:

“All the Little Houses” is included on the Goodreads list “2026 Mystery/Thriller New Releases”.