Review: Just One Bite - Miranda Rijks

VBT# Review - Just One Bite - Miranda Rijks - June 2026

There are some authors whose names alone are enough to make me drop everything else on my TBR pile, and Miranda Rijks is absolutely one of them. So when I saw Just One Bite popping up for a Zooloos Book Tours stop, I didn't even need to read the blurb twice , I just knew. And then there's that cover. Honestly, who can resist a gorgeous, glossy cupcake staring back at them? It's the kind of cover that makes you want to curl up with a cuppa (and probably an actual cupcake) before you've even cracked the spine.

This story pulled me in from the very first page. We meet Tyler and Brittany, a glamorous "power couple" with a little daughter, Alissa. Brittany is the main breadwinner, a recognisable TV personality, but underneath the glossy exterior she's been quietly struggling since severe postnatal depression left her feeling disconnected from her own child. Their nanny, Riley, has really been the one holding things together at home until the day Riley calls in sick and Brittany has no choice but to bring Alissa to work with her. A tantrum, a phone camera, and suddenly Brittany's worst moment as a mother is online for the world to judge.

What follows is a slow, sickening unravelling that I genuinely couldn't look away from. The footage is twisted and manipulated into deepfakes that paint Brittany as abusive, the blackmail begins, Tyler starts believing the worst (caring more, it seems, about the family business than his own wife), and then CYFS step in to take Alissa away. Just when you think it can't get any worse for poor Brittany, Riley turns up dead and Brittany becomes suspect number one.

I found myself constantly asking: who could hate her this much? Who wants her life destroyed so badly they'd go to these lengths? Miranda Rijks does such a brilliant job of making you question everyone around Brittany, all while you're rooting for her with your whole heart.

Just like that cupcake on the cover, this book promises you'll only need "just one bite"  and before you know it, you've devoured the whole thing in one sitting, exactly as I did. Another triumph from Miranda Rijks, and one I'll be recommending to everyone who loves a domestic thriller with real emotional bite.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4eyAHQZ