Review: Just One Catch - Nikki Vogel - July 2026 T he premise alone had me hooked before I'd even opened the first page. Harper and Lauren have just lost their parents in a sudden accident, and grief hasn't even had time to settle before the will reading turns their world upside down again. Lauren has been disinherited entirely. Everything, the $3 million, the freehold house, all of it, goes to Harper. But there's a catch (just one, as the title promises): she only gets it if she divorces her husband, Kyle. That's such a deliciously uncomfortable question to sit with, isn't it? Would you give up your marriage for a fortune, if your own parents seemed to be all but begging you to from beyond the grave? And worse, would you start to wonder what they knew that you didn't? As the story unfolds, Vogel does a lovely job of letting suspicion creep in slowly, like a kettle coming to boil on the stove. Kyle starts to seem like exactly the kind of man your parents wou...

    Review: The Daughter in the Cellar - Yvette Davies - July 2026 There's something about a UK psychological thriller that just hits differently, isn't there? Less blood-splatter, more slow-creeping dread , the kind that settles into your bones over a cup of tea rather than jumping out at you. That's exactly what I found in The Daughter in the Cellar , and it's why I ended up loving it so much. At its heart, this is Violet's story, a woman who wanted nothing more than to be a mother, but was born without a uterus and never got the chance. Instead of accepting a life without that dream, she's spent years finding "daughters" of her own, brunette girls she takes and keeps, hoping this time it will stick. Three didn't last. Now there's Florence,  a young woman who thought she'd simply met a kind stranger willing to help her one ordinary night, only to wake up locked in a cellar, realising far too late what kind of help she'd actually acce...

Review: Little Lies - Book #0 - Little Mercies Series - Heather Gudenkauf - March 2014 Heather Gudenkauf has been one of my favourite thriller authors for years now, and there's something so comforting about picking up her books like settling into a well-worn armchair, except the story inside might keep you up past bedtime. Little Lies, a prequel to her novel Little Mercies, is exactly the kind of quick, absorbing read I reach for when I want to be pulled in fast and not let go until the last page. The premise hooks you immediately: the body of a woman is found in a local park, her bewildered four-year-old son sitting quietly beside her, too young to understand what's happened. It's a gut-punch of an opening image, the kind that makes your chest tighten even before you know any of the details. Veteran social worker Ellen Moore is brought in to help the police, and I loved having her as our guide through this one. There's something grounding about a protagonist whose jo...

Review: The Half Sister - Sandie Jones - June 2020 There are certain themes that will always pull me straight off the shelf, and this book had two of them: a secret sibling, and DNA testing. I'm a sucker for both, but the second one hits especially close to home. A few years ago, I did my own DNA test on a whim, never expecting it to lead anywhere. It ended up leading me to my dad's family , people we had no idea existed, uncovered after 65 years of not knowing. One test, a lot of late-night rabbit-hole searching, and suddenly a whole branch of family history opened up that had been hiding in plain sight all along. So when a novel promises a knock on the door and a DNA result that turns a family upside down, I'm already sitting down with a cup of tea, ready to be pulled in. That's exactly how The Half Sister opens. Kate and Lauren have their Sunday lunch ritual down to a comforting art , a tradition that's meant even more since losing their dad. It's the kind ...

Review: I Dare You - Book #1 Ruin Me Duet - Monica James - July 2026 I have to be honest  I was hooked before I even opened the first page. That blurb alone had me convinced this was going to be a 5-star read, and honestly? I love it when a book actually lives up to that kind of hype, because it doesn't always happen. This one did, and then some. The story kicks off with a bang (quite literally)  a popular cheerleader turns up dead, and from there we're pulled into this gripping dual timeline of past and present as we piece together not just who killed her, but who Hallie Holiday really is. We get her before, the girl she used to be, and her after ,  the version of herself she built from the ashes of one brutal night that changed everything. Watching that transformation unfold, layer by layer, was honestly one of my favourite parts of the whole book. Three years on, Hallie is living under a new name, tucked away in a town where nobody knows her history, just trying to s...

Review: Solitary - Book #1 Solitary Tales - Travis Thrasher - August 2010 I picked this one up expecting a cozy, creepy little YA read to curl up with, and what I got instead was... something else entirely. Something I'm still turning over in my head, if I'm being honest. Chris Buckley moves to the small town of Solitary, North Carolina, right in the messy aftermath of his parents' divorce to a new school, new house, that particular kind of loneliness that comes from starting over somewhere nobody knows your name. It's a setup that feels instantly familiar and warm, like settling into a worn armchair. You root for Chris immediately. He's just a kid trying to find his footing. Then Jocelyn Evans walks in, and the book shifts into something stranger. She's beautiful, guarded, impossible to read ,  the kind of girl who pulls you in precisely because she keeps pushing you away. And Chris, sweet and a little lost, falls for her anyway. Underneath the small-town cha...

Review: Repeat - Book #1 Larsen Brothers - Kylie Scott - April 2019 There's something so special about reading a book that landed in your hands as a birthday gift and getting to curl up with Repeat, sent to me by one of my beautiful book birthday groups on bookstagram, made this reading experience feel even warmer and more meaningful. Books really do taste sweeter when they come wrapped in friendship. Kylie Scott has long held a special place on my shelf as one of my favourite Australian New Adult authors. It all started years ago when I fell hopelessly in love with Mal from the Stage Dive series, and ever since, her name on a cover is enough to make me clear my schedule. Repeat opens with Clementine walking into a tattoo parlour, innocently asking if the owner did her tattoo completely unaware of the storm she's about to walk into. Turns out, she used to date the tattoo artist, Ed. They broke up, she walked away, and it shattered him. But here's the gut-punch: Clem doesn...

Synopsis: Don't Let Her In - J.M O'Rourke - July 2026 Lesley seems like a perfectly normal woman. Until you ask her to leave. Gillian wants to do right by her elderly Aunt Myra. A safe nursing home. Daily visits. A peaceful final chapter for the woman who has been like a mother to her. A plan that’s derailed when a stranger turns up on the doorstep claiming to be Myra's long-lost niece, Lesley. She says she’s here to look after Myra. Within days, Myra’s bank accounts are being drained and Lesley has taken full control of the house. And Gillian , the woman who has always been there for Myra isn't allowed through the door. When she demands to see her aunt, the threats begin. Smashed windows. A slashed tire. Headlights chasing her down a lonely country road. But Gillian isn’t backing off. Suspicious that Lesley isn’t who she says she is, Gillian digs into her past. And discovers a secret far more horrifying than anything she could have imagined. A chilling, tw...

Review: Forever Defiant - Book #2 Fourth and Forever Series - Eve L. Mitchell - July 2026 There's something wonderfully fitting about a book landing in my hands on my own birthday. Forever Defiant published on the 7th of July, and reading it felt like unwrapping a gift made just for me  the kind of serendipity that makes this whole reviewing hobby of mine feel a little bit magical. From the first chapter, I was hooked, but it wasn't Dustin Slater's wicked smile that pulled me in hardest , it was Hadley. I don't think I've resonated with a heroine quite this much in a long time. Watching her chase the truth, notebook in hand, utterly unwilling to back down even when powerful men wanted her silenced, stirred something very personal in me. Journalism has always been my own quiet dream one I chased extramurally through years of study, and one I've kept alive for two decades now, writing for online magazines and review sites in whatever spare hours I could find.  ...

Review: Home Truths - Charity Norman - August 2024 I picked this one up on my Kindle while scrolling the other day and landed on Home Truths by Charity Norman. I'd heard her name before she's based here in New Zealand now but I honestly had no idea what I was walking into. The first chapter drops you straight into a courtroom, with Livia (who I quickly clocked as the mum of the family) on trial for torturing a man, waiting on the jury's decision. Then the book pulls back to the beginning, to show exactly how this ordinary family fell apart, domino by domino. It starts with her husband's brother dying, and from there Scott spirals into health-conspiracy territory , the rabbit-hole kind, the kind that turns extremist, especially once he starts watching videos and corresponding with a man called Dr. Jack. Meanwhile their daughter Heidi starts shoplifting, using the guilt and pain of it as a strange outlet for everything she's been bottling up. This is a proper slow-b...

Review: Slice - Angie Caedis - September 2023 There's something so satisfying about judging a book by its cover and having it actually pay off, and that's exactly what happened with Slice. I had absolutely no idea what this story was about when I picked it up , I just knew I loved the cover and had to click in. Sometimes that's all it takes, isn't it? What I got was one of my all-time favourite tropes: a group of people stranded on a secluded island, being picked off one by one. There's just something so deliciously tense about that setup, and Caedis leans right into it. The story follows Bec, celebrating her thirtieth birthday (which, funnily enough, feels extra fitting to be reading about on my own birthday today) with a trip her boyfriend Tyler has organised a private mansion, a secluded island, and their whole friend group along for the week. It starts off exactly how these trips always do in books like this: sun, drinks, laughter... and then the cracks start ...