-
Six writers. One island. Seventy-two hours. And a dead man still pulling the strings.
This book throws you straight into a locked-room pressure cooker where ambition rots into desperation and egos sharpen into weapons. And the twist? No detectives. Just writers—people who literally build murder for a living. When careers are on the line, morality becomes… flexible. And finishing the story might require crossing a line you can’t uncross.
Tell me this doesn’t sound like a Netflix series waiting to happen.
Now here’s the thing.
I don’t always love this kind of setup. Closed-circle, too many characters, everyone suspicious—it can get messy fast. But I went in hoping for something with Knives Out vibes, and for a while… I was cautiously intrigued. At first? Slow. A little too slow.
I like my thrillers with bite—fast, sharp, slightly unhinged. This one takes its time setting the stage, introducing characters, building tension… maybe a bit too politely. And the crowd of characters? Yeah, it diluted the tension instead of sharpening it.
But then—
Something shifts.
The story clicks. The tension tightens. The deaths start stacking in a way that finally delivers on the promise. And suddenly I’m in. Fully in. The atmosphere? Dark, controlled chaos. The kind where you feel like something is watching from behind the pages. For a moment, I thought: okay… now we’re talking.
Did it go as far as I wanted? No.
Did it get as twisted or disturbing as it could have? Also no.
And the ending? Didn’t hit. It just… landed. No punch, no lingering chill, no “holy sh*t” moment.
But overall?
It redeemed itself just enough to be a solid, messy, intriguing ride.
Final verdict: 3⭐ — flawed, slow-burn chaos that almost goes feral… but stops just short.
-
You think you know the people you love.
You think you know who to trust.
You think you know how a story ends.
Cute. Wrong.
Nadeeka is convinced Jamie is cheating. She knows the signs—she’s lived this nightmare before. So she does what any self-respecting, emotionally spiraling woman would do: she goes to confront him. Except… this isn’t a confrontation. It’s a crime scene. Jamie is lying dead in the living room. Blood everywhere. Chaos. Police. A DI Burton asking questions while everything—his electronics, her phone, their life—gets swallowed into evidence bags. And just like that, love turns into suspicion.
Day two: more questions.
Day three: she’s allowed back home. The house is spotless. Too spotless.
And I’m sitting there like… okay? Cheating, house drama, emotional damage—been there, read that, yawn. Then part two hits. Like a train. No brakes. No warning.
Nadeeka goes to the police to retrieve her phone… and is told there was no murder.
No DI Burton.
No crime scene.
No report.
Excuse me???
Jamie is dead. That part is real. Everything else? Fabricated. And suddenly the book wakes up. Now we have Lauren, the actual detective, and her fiancé/colleague Fraser circling Nadeeka like sharks, because guess what? She’s not just a grieving girlfriend anymore—she’s a suspect. And I was locked in. This is where the title finally earns its paycheck: it’s not what you think. Not even close. I expected one kind of story—something straightforward, maybe emotional, maybe even predictable. Instead, I got twists that actually slapped. Not gentle plot turns. Full-on narrative whiplash.
BUT. And this is a big but. Somewhere along the way, the story lost me.
By part three, I was mentally packing my bags, hovering over the DNF button like it owed me money. It was still twisty, still trying to be clever, but the themes—especially the focus on racism—felt flat for me. Not because they aren’t important, but because the execution didn’t hit. It dragged. It disconnected me.
So yeah… twisty? Yes.
Messy? Also yes.
Addictive in parts? Absolutely.
But overall?
A chaotic almost, not a solid hit.
-
Fell, New York doesn’t let people leave. Not really.
Violet sees the dead. Vail walked away and never looked back. Dodie tries to forget. Three siblings, three different ways of surviving the same nightmare—the night their little brother vanished during a simple game of hide-and-seek. Eighteen years later, something calls them home. Ben is back. Or something is.
And whatever waited for them all those years ago… is still there.
Okay, I have to admit—I’m not a horror girl. But every now and then, I’ll let a ghost story slip in… and the only author I actually trust to do it right is Simone St. James.
What I didn’t expect? All three siblings basically being haunted in their own way. That part caught me off guard. I did like that Violet ends up working with the former detective from Ben’s case—even though, at some point, it starts to feel like Ben might not even be their brother at all. No one remembers their mother being pregnant, there are no hospital records, no documents, no photos. Nothing. Which is… insane.
For a second, I was fully convinced he was a ghost—but the siblings remember him so clearly, taking care of him, changing him, raising him like he was real. And that just makes everything even more unsettling.
Overall, the story is pretty intriguing. I’m always a sucker for that small-town mystery vibe, so that part really worked for me—even if horror isn’t usually my thing. It’s a nice, easy read, more of a Halloween mood book… though I kind of loved reading it in spring.
Anyway, I gave it 3 stars. It didn’t fully convince me, but it was solid.
-
Eden Fox is about to have it all. A rising artist. A new house. A husband waiting at home. A daughter moved from home. She goes out for a run—and comes back to a life that no longer belongs to her. The key doesn’t work. The house isn’t hers. And the woman at the door looks disturbingly like her. Even worse? Her husband swears she’s his wife.
Six months earlier, Birdy inherits Spyglass, a stunning old house in the coastal town of Hope Falls, just as her world quietly falls apart. A devastating diagnosis (which triggered my panic attacks, not gonna lie). A past she doesn’t fully understand. And a secretive London clinic that claims it can predict the exact date of her death. Once Birdy realizes she’s running out of time, the truth begins to fracture—and some wrongs demand to be rewritten.
One house. One marriage. Two women.
And a story where identity is slippery, love is unreliable, and nothing—especially Spyglass—is what it seems.
Oh my God, I’ve been waiting forever for Alice Feeney’s new book. It makes me feel alive and it’s super, super interesting. Triggering—my mom died of cancer, and normally I avoid anything cancer-related in my thriller reading breaks—but somehow, I still couldn’t stop reading. I still don’t fully know what’s happening with either Birdy or Eden, and honestly? That’s part of the thrill. The book is disturbing, weird, and I’m here for it.
Everything that happens is insanely intriguing, and I think this might be my favorite book of the year already. I loved it so much—plot twists everywhere, situations I never saw coming, just when I thought something was happening, it flips entirely.
I took my sweet time finishing it because I needed a well-earned mental health break, but it was absolutely brilliant. From me? 5 out of 5 stars.
-
Torn gives us Kenzie and Toren — the girl who grew up calling him “uncle” and the tattooed, brooding best friend of her dad who absolutely should NOT be looking at her like that… and yet here we are. One forbidden kiss and suddenly loyalty, age gaps, and decades of guilt are out the window.
I’m picky with age-gap romances (give me professor–student over daddy’s-best-friend any day), but Toren? Oh, Toren walked in with tattoos, muscles, mechanic vibes, and emotional depth and said: “You’re mine now.” And honestly… I didn’t resist.
Midway through I was screaming for more spice — TWO kisses? Bestie please. Don’t Jennifer-Hartmann me with desire → heartbreak → reunion on the last page. I need chaos and happiness together.
But the story delivered. Toren carries the book, Kenzie is sweet, and together they resurrected a biker fantasy I didn’t know still existed. If it’s not Toren copy-paste, I don’t want it.
Loved the story, loved the characters, loved the happy ending. Warm, forbidden, slow-burn goodness done right.
-
June First is a forbidden, emotional romance about Brant—the boy shaped by tragedy—and June, the girl he was never supposed to love.
Growing up together blurs every line between right and wrong until their bond becomes impossible to ignore.
Three tragedies define Brant’s life…but at the center of all of them is one thing: June, and the love that refuses to let go.
I couldn’t sleep last night, so of course I ended up devouring June First in one sitting—finished it in a few hours and finally crashed like my brain had been wrung dry. Jennifer Hartmann has this way of writing heartbreak that you feel in your teeth, and this one shares the same emotional DNA as Older. The forbidden tension? The built-in tragedy? The slow, aching unravel? Yep—same recipe.
Brant falls for June, his practically adoptive sister, because tragedy binds them from the moment she enters the world. When Brant is six, his father murders his mother and then himself. And because June’s parents were close friends of his family—and because Brant was already best friends with Theo, June’s brother—they take him in instantly. He grows up with them. With her. And that’s where the line starts to blur.
Their connection is tender, slow, and honestly uncomfortable in the exact way forbidden romance is meant to be. You feel the tension long before either of them names it. But personally? While I appreciated that slow burn, sometimes it felt too heavy. Too much tragedy layered on top of a romance that was already fragile. I like emotional books, but this one carries grief in every chapter.
And yes—the spice hits later (past the halfway point) and it’s good, but emotionally, it didn’t land with the same punch Older did for me. Older broke me in a way that felt cathartic. June First broke me and then kept piling more on, and somewhere along the way it stopped being my kind of pain.
I still read it fast—because Jennifer Hartmann books are addictive by default—but out of all the forbidden romances I’ve read, this one isn’t climbing into my favorites. Beautifully written? Yes. Emotional? Absolutely. But the grief-to-romance ratio was just too unbalanced for me.
age gap romance, book review, Book reviews, books, bookstagram review, childhood friends to lovers, dark romance, emotional romance, fiction, forbidden love, he fell first, heart-wrenching reads, Jennifer Hartmann, June First, must read romance, romance, romance bookstagram, romance recommendations, slow burn angst -
Popping my Jennifer Hartmann cherry because all I’ve heard lately is about this book.
I saved Older as a winter read, mostly because the author captures that season so beautifully that posting about it in autumn would feel like a crime.
Before he discovered her age, he uncovered her heart.
Seventeen-year-old Halley, bruised by a loveless home, meets Reed one fateful night under the stars—a man who sees her in a way no one ever has. What begins as a fleeting connection turns into something dangerous and forbidden when Halley realizes Reed isn’t just any man… he’s her best friend’s father.
Older is a forbidden, slow-burn, age-gap romance about heartbreak, healing, and love that dares to break every rule.
To be fair, I wasn’t looking for a slow-burn romance (because honestly, I can’t yearn any longer), but when Halley meets Reed at that party by the lake—some small talk, a spark, a pull—and then things take a turn behind closed doors, I was instantly hooked. Reed believes she’s 21, he’s 34, and everything seems set for a classic tension-filled affair… until a neighbor calls out that Halley is actually 17. The second Reed hears it, he walks away—and that’s when the story truly begins.
And shame on me, because they had me from the start.
It takes a lot of slow-burn moments to make one catch fire, and I was there waiting, hoping that massage scene would burn the building down. Instead, it just simmered—months passing before Mr. Reed even admits to himself how much he wants Halley.
They weren’t kidding about the slow burn. Things barely happen, and when they do or might, another two or three months pass before they see each other again. I get the age issue—it’s complicated—but even after she turns 18, he’s still 34, and the whole “best friend’s dad” situation just keeps twisting the knife. Especially since she lives with his ex-wife and daughter.
Still, I can’t help rooting for them. They’re a perfect match—wrong on paper, right in every feeling that matters.
It’s painfully slow, but beautiful. I loved the characters, loved the writing, and yes, this romance made me cry (and I’d like to point out—dark romances would never!). It was heavy, wrong, emotional, and raw, and it made me feel every bit of that forbidden tension.
Even knowing it’s wrong, I couldn’t look away. And that’s the magic of Jennifer Hartmann—she makes you question everything, especially your heart.
-
Once upon a time, Lottie Jones was the nightmare under the bed. Now she’s just trying to win bingo without throwing her back out and keep her past buried deeper than her victims. Retirement was going so well — a fake name, a quiet town, and the most dangerous thing in her life being weak church coffee.
Enter Plum Dixon, a journalist with too many questions and not enough survival instinct. One knock on the door and suddenly Lottie’s golden-years peace turns into blood-spattered nostalgia. Because sure, murder was easier when her joints didn’t crack like bubble wrap… but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
Another visitor. Another loose end. And Lottie? Well, she might be too old for this — but there’s nothing like a fresh kill to make a woman feel young again.
Not a spoiler, but dear Lottie fucking killed Plum in not even half an hour after she walked into her house for an interview — Plum wanted to hear Lottie’s side of the story because she believed Lottie had been wrongfully jailed. Well, jokes on you, Plum…
Now Lottie’s trying to get rid of her laptop and phone and scrub Plum’s blood off the kitchen floor.
Interesting POV — an old-age serial killer.
High hopes.
So far it’s pretty interesting to follow Lottie. She knows exactly what to say to the detectives to make Plum’s boyfriend look guilty, even though she’s the one who chopped her up and burned the pieces. Then she took some of the ashes to her Thursday church friend — who used them for gardening.
But when you’ve been a killer your whole life, it’s fascinating to see how dangerous and resourceful someone truly evil can be.
Also — do police officers lie to suspects in interviews? Makes sense, but honestly, I’d never paid attention until now.
Okaaaay, I did not expect a corrupt detective who already suspects Lottie — but that spices things up. I also didn’t expect Lottie to actually plan to kill a detective… a detective desperate for money, clearly dangerous… it’s moving slowly, but it’s moving.
I think Lottie’s mistake is trying to kill everyone around her who suspects her.
But she’s been wanting to kill Burke for a long time.
Burke’s the detective who interviewed her for her first crimes, and he knows for sure she’s a killer. He and Plum’s mother are both trying to catch her, but when Plum’s mother also disappears, Lottie’s getting closer and closer to being caught — though it’s insane how she’s always one step ahead, lying her way through everything.
A cute little book — a bit too long, could’ve been shorter, but still okay.
Okay, I wasn’t expecting a twist at almost the end, but what Lottie finds in Burke’s hotel room is quite interesting.
Insane ending… I just fucking hate Lottie but I’m also impressed by her, a good thriller.
-
The first electrifying mystery in Karin Slaughter’s new North Falls series, and damn, what a start.
Welcome to North Falls — that quiet little town where everyone swears they know everyone… until fireworks night, when two teenage girls vanish and panic spreads like wildfire.
Officer Emmy Clifton takes it personally — one of the girls was her best friend’s daughter, and Emmy wasn’t there when it mattered. Now she’s got one shot to fix that. Except, the more she digs, the more it’s clear she never really knew these girls at all. Nobody did.
And when their bodies turn up, things get darker fast. The town pins it on the local creep — the guy with Cheyenne’s necklace buried in his yard (because of course). But Cheyenne’s also got sixteen grand stashed away, drugs hidden in her room, and a side hustle that screams too much, too soon. Her friend Madison? Clean record, straight-A daughter of Emmy’s best friend Hannah. Except now both are dead, Emmy’s found the bodies, Hannah’s stopped speaking to her, and the town perv is behind bars.
Twelve years later, he’s out.
A new girl goes missing.
Emmy’s dad — a detective — gets shot right in front of her.
Her mom’s unraveling. The whole town’s falling apart.
And guess what? The skeletons in North Falls didn’t stay buried.
Then there’s Jude, the high-profile FBI agent on the brink of retirement, who sees Emmy’s tragedy splashed across the news and decides to dive back in. One last case — one that refuses to stay cold.
I started this book last night and read 50% in one sitting. It’s that good. Karin Slaughter has that unnerving way of making you feel disgusted, sad, and obsessed all at once. Her writing is cinematic, violent in truth, and her characters? Messy, real, broken — just how I like them
The chapters are long (painfully long sometimes), but not boring — which says a lot, because I get bored of everything lately.
I ended up reading it curled under a blanket, feeling like autumn decided to cosplay as winter. I was supposed to watch a horror movie — instead, I lived one in North Falls.
It’s dark, heavy, and impossible to look away from. Everyone’s hiding something. Everyone’s guilty of something.
Not a spoiler — just the truth.
Highly recommend this one.
-
Gosh, I wish they would translate Musso’s books into English, but if you know Romanian or French, this one’s for you. Musso is such a brilliant thriller author—sometimes I feel like he’s secretly the real-life Dexter Morgan.
“There are three versions of the truth: mine, yours, and the truth itself.”
Côte d’Azur, spring 2023. A yacht drifts off the coast of Cannes, carrying Oriana Di Pietro—Italian publisher, Milanese heiress, and soon, a victim. Brutally assaulted, she falls into a coma for ten days before her life slips away. Who killed Oriana? Four voices try to answer: Adrien, her mysterious jazz-pianist husband; Adèle, his young mistress; Justine, the police officer hunting the truth; and Oriana herself, recounting her final weeks from the edge of death. No one lies, but no one agrees either.
What blew me away was how the story starts—we’re thrown straight into Oriana’s violent attack, and then we learn of her death through news reports and articles. That’s insane to me, and it shows how good Musso’s writing is. He writes with this sharp, cunning, almost surgical precision that completely transfixes you.
A year later, a detective is still searching for Oriana’s killer, with her focus fixed on the husband. And yes, the husband had an affair—but not in the way you’d expect. Just when you’re sure you’ve got it figured out, Musso twists the plot again: the husband isn’t the killer. He keeps me on edge, always dangling the truth just out of reach. He has me in a chokehold, every single time.
Now here’s the part that drove me crazy: Oriana had brain cancer. Honestly, that subplot felt unnecessary on top of her being a murder victim. But Musso used it to show just how controlling Oriana was—even in death. She actually paid the babysitter to seduce her husband, because she wanted to handpick who would raise her kids after she was gone. She trained the babysitter to take her place. Oriana literally seduced her husband a second time in the same life, through another woman—and that’s so twisted, but also strangely poetic.
Normally, I don’t enjoy too much action in thrillers, but even in the chaos, Musso keeps me hooked. It’s this constant dance of deception, and he’s always one step ahead of me.
And that ending? Wild. I had a completely different theory about the killer, and I was dead wrong. The reveal caught me off guard. I actually liked how the cancer storyline was wrapped up—it almost ruined the book for me, but Musso nailed it in the end. After Justine’s final talk with Oriana’s doctor, I felt half-right, half-wrong, but totally satisfied. Then came the epilogue. The killer was caught, Justine was sleeping with Oriana’s husband, and for a second everything seemed fine… until those last lines hit. And suddenly I wasn’t so sure the killer was caught after all.
Surprised is an understatement. Breathless is more like it. A thriller that leaves me stunned like this? That’s Musso at his finest.
#BookBlogger, #BookReview, #GuillaumeMusso #Altcineva #ThrillerBooks #MysteryThriller #PsychologicalThriller #BookReview #BookBlogger #Bookish #AmReadingThrillers #ReadersOfWordpress #FictionBooks #SuspenseReads #DarkReads #Mus, #MysteryThriller, #PsychologicalThriller, #ReadersOfWordpress, #SuspenseReads, #ThrillerBooks, book review, Book reviews, books, fiction, guillaume musso, thriller
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Reading in the Mountains 