Review: All The Lies They Told - Robin Mahle - August 2025 There's a particular kind of dread that comes from watching two families you already suspect are hiding something. Robin Mahle taps straight into it in All The Lies They Told, and I devoured every page. I'll admit I came into this one with high expectations. I've toured several of Robin Mahle's thrillers now through Zooloos Book Tours , and she's never once let me down  but this book, loosely inspired by the real-life Delphi case, felt like it demanded even more from her, and she delivered. The setup is deceptively simple: Lexi Brewer and Skye Metcalf were once inseparable, the kind of friends who walked home from school together sharing secrets like currency. Now they barely speak. Their families barely speak. And then, on one ordinary evening, both girls simply don't come home. What follows isn't just a missing-persons investigation, it's an excavation. Robin Mahle peels back layer after lay...

  Review: The Weekend Guests - Liza North - January 2025 There's a particular kind of dread that comes from watching old friends reunite while knowing, as the reader, that not everyone is who they claim to be anymore. Liza North taps straight into that feeling in The Weekend Guests, and honestly, I was hooked from the very first postcard. Five old university friends - Aline, Sienna, Rob, Michael, and Brandon  haven't all been in a room together for years. Now they're gathering at Aline's stunning clifftop house in Dorset, the kind of setting that practically begs to be photographed for an estate agent's brochure, right up until you remember someone in this group might be capable of murder. There's wine, there's the slightly awkward business of meeting each other's partners for the first time, there's a sitter minding the kids so the grown-ups can relax. It should be idyllic. It is not idyllic. Because underneath the reunion warmth sits somethi...

Review: Sounds Like Love - Ashley Poston - June 2025 You know how there are just some authors you will always read, no matter what they write next? For me, Ashley Poston is one of those authors. Every single one of her books feels like it was written to be a movie, and honestly, I'd give anything to see them on the big screen one day. This little gem found its way to me as a bookstagram birthday gift from the lovely @nzbookfae, and what a gift it turned out to be. If I had to describe the vibe, I'd say it's a cosy mash-up of What Women Want crossed with Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist equal parts magic, music, and heart. We meet Joni Lark and Sebastian McKellan, two people who couldn't be more different. Joni's a songwriter quietly battling writer's block, and Sebastian's a singer with the whole world watching him. They're polar opposites, right up until a surprise Kiss Cam moment throws a spark between them that neither of them sees coming. Suddenl...

Review: Our Last Resort - Clemence Michallon - July 2025 I'll be honest with you when I picked up Our Last Resort almost entirely because the blurb whispered Waco and Jonestown to me. A cult in upstate New York. A dramatic escape. Siblings carrying the weight of something unspeakable. I was practically already in my reading chair before I'd finished the synopsis. Sometimes a premise is just that good.  The flashback sequences to Frida and Gabriel's cloistered upbringing have that eerie, suffocating quality that makes cult narratives so compulsively readable , the kind of world where the walls feel like they're slowly closing in even when everything looks perfectly ordered from the outside. That tension is real, and it's the engine that kept me turning pages. The present-day setup has promise too. The Ara Hotel  a luxury desert retreat in Escalante, Utah is a gorgeous setting, all heat-shimmer and isolation. A dead woman. A powerful older husband. A brother with a ...

Review: The Mirror House Girls - Faith Gardner - January 2025 Winona is looking for somewhere to belong after her grandmother dies and the guy she was dating turned out to be married and have a family. When she meets Dakota at a grief group, she is invited to check out the eccentric Mirror House. Faith Gardner turns that achingly ordinary human need into the engine of a slow-burn cult thriller that gets under your skin long before it scares you. Simon Spellmeyer is  a charismatic psychologist whose self-improvement protocols feel plausible enough to make you uneasy about your own susceptibility. He stays dangerously reasonable for most of the novel, which is exactly what makes the story work. As someone who has read almost everything Faith Gardner has written, I recognised her signature move here: making you understand, page by page, how intelligent people end up somewhere they never intended to go. The first half of the novel is its strongest. The atmosphere of Mir...

Review: Close Call - Book #3 Kate Green Series - Elise Hart Kipness - August 2025 You know those moments where life gets so hectic that even your beloved books start gathering dust on the nightstand? That was me  deep in a reading slump, work absolutely swamping me, wondering if I'd ever find a story that pulled me back in. Then a gorgeous PR box landed at my door from the wonderful Elise Hart Kipness, and just like that, the slump was over. Inside was Close Call, Book #3 in the Kate Green Series, and honestly, it felt like it had been sent at exactly the right moment. The story drops us straight into the electric world of the USTA Tennis Championship and if you know me, you know I am an absolute sucker for sports woven into a thriller. Tennis in books especially has a special place in my heart; fans of Carrie Soto is Back, you'll understand the vibe completely. There's something about the high stakes of competitive sport that pairs so naturally with tension-filled storyt...

Review: Killer Story - The Truth Behind True Crime Television - A Memoir - Claire St. Amant - February 2025 You might already know that alongside running this little corner of the internet, I write a true crime column over at Gothic Bite Magazine ( https://gothicbitemagazine.rip / ) so when Killer Story landed on my radar, it felt less like a happy accident and more like fate. One of my reading goals for 2026 is to tackle at least one non-fiction book a month, and I'm thrilled to say I've been keeping that promise to myself. This memoir? Absolutely the right book at the right time. Claire St. Amant spent nearly a decade working as a journalist and TV producer for heavyweights like 48 Hours and 60 Minutes, chasing the country's most gripping true crime stories. And what I adored about this book is that it pulls back the curtain on a world most of us only ever glimpse through our screens. We see the polished final product,  the dramatic interviews, the tearful families, the ...

Review: Actually I'm a Murderer - Terry Deary - June 2025 Picture this: you're scrolling through BookHero with a birthday voucher burning a hole in your pocket and you spot a new Terry Deary title. If you grew up in the 90s and early 2000s devouring Horrible Histories, there was absolutely no way I was leaving that page without clicking "add to cart." Terry Deary shaped a huge chunk of my tween/teenage reading life  Horrible Science, Foul Football, Murderous Maths , I inhaled the lot of them, so when I saw he'd written an adult mystery novel, I was intrigued to say the least. The story opens in 2023 with Tony, an older man quietly preparing to meet his end. Back in 1973, he struck a deal with a professional assassin , fifty years of life in exchange for something, and now that half-century is finally up. He's made his peace with it. But as the clock ticks down, a figure from that same murky past emerges with a potential loophole. The premise alone is gloriou...

Review: Because the Night - Kylie Scott - March 2025 Okay, let me be real with you all , I have been in a serious reading slump lately. You know the kind. You pick up book after book, read a few chapters, and just... nothing. No spark. No that pull that makes you want to cancel all your plans and stay up until 2am. It has been frustrating, and honestly a little heartbreaking for someone who lives and breathes books. So I did what any self-respecting book lover does in a crisis  I went back to a sure thing. I reached up to my trusty bookshelf and pulled down Because the Night by Kylie Scott. I have never once been let down by a Kylie Scott book, and after a recent rewatch of Vampires Suck had me deep in my Twilight feelings, the timing felt absolutely perfect. And you know what? It worked. Slump: shattered. In Because the Night , we meet Skye Carter, a property manager who makes the very unfortunate and very life-altering mistake of accidentally waking a sleeping vampire named Lu...