VBT# Lie in the Bay - Holly Danvers

VBT# Lie in the Bay - Book #2 A Little White Lies Thriller - Holly Danvers - June 2026

There's a particular kind of comfort in a small town, the kind where everyone waves from their porch, the diner knows your order, and duck hunting season means casseroles and gossip in equal measure. I curled up with Lie in the Bay expecting exactly that kind of cozy, familiar backdrop. What I got instead was a slow, delicious unraveling of just how little "cozy" and "familiar" actually mean once you start looking closely at the people behind the porch lights.

That's the real magic of this book. Holly Danvers doesn't hand you a town full of obvious villains, she hands you neighbours. The kind you'd bring a pie to. The kind you'd trust to watch your dog. And then, one thread at a time, she shows you how much of that trust was never really earned, just assumed.

I found myself thinking about my own street more than once while reading this. Do I actually know the people two doors down, or do I just know the version of them they let me see over the fence? Holly Danvers leans into that unease so gently you almost don't notice it happening until suddenly you're side-eyeing every friendly wave in your own neighbourhood.

The cast here is the real triumph. Colton and Jess, quietly running their Madame Butterfly cam business behind drawn curtains. Linc, devoted on paper, distracted in practice, with a girlfriend who deserves better than his wandering eye. Gabrielle and Alec, keeping up appearances on a budget that clearly can't sustain the lifestyle they're performing for everyone else. Every single one of them is hiding something small, human, and a little bit shameful , the kind of secret that feels enormous to the person carrying it and mundane to everyone else, which is exactly what makes this town feel so real.

And then there's Dublin. As the newcomer, she's our way into this world, but she's no passive observer she arrives with her own grief and her own suspicions, convinced her grandmother's death wasn't the quiet ending everyone assumed it was. Her digging into what really happened to Tori and Mikey three years ago gives the book its backbone, and watching her pull at those old, half-healed wounds is genuinely unsettling in the best way. Old ghosts don't like being disturbed, and this town has plenty of them.

What I loved most was how busy this felt in the warmest sense of the word. This isn't a thriller with one villain and a tidy reveal. It's a whole community, each person clutching their own little bundle of guilt, and Holly Danvers lets us sit with all of them long enough to genuinely suspect and sympathize with nearly everyone. It's the kind of book that makes murder feel less like a shocking anomaly and more like the town's secrets finally boiling over, because with this many people hiding this much, something was always going to give.

By the time the duck hunting season closes and the truth about that bay starts surfacing, you'll find yourself doing the thing I always do after a book like this glancing out the window at your own quiet street, wondering just how well you really know the people living behind those friendly, familiar doors.

A wonderfully unsettling, character-rich small-town thriller that earns its warmth even as it pulls the rug out from under it. Perfect for anyone who loves their murder mysteries served with a side of neighbourly small talk.

Amazon: https://link.amazon/B03nZNjUd