Review: The Girls Before - Kate Alice Marshall - February 2026 I've been a fan of Kate Alice Marshall for a while now , she has a real knack for that unsettling, atmospheric tension that makes you want to keep reading with all the lights on so when The Girls Before popped up on the Libby app, I didn't hesitate. Into my queue it went, and I settled in with a cuppa and high hopes. The premise is genuinely gripping. A girl called Stranger, trapped alone in a dark basement, rationing her last scraps of food and water, with only the desperate scrawlings of girls who came before her scratched into the walls for company. Meanwhile, Audrey, a search and rescue expert carrying the weight of her best friend Janie's long-ago disappearance  stumbles onto evidence in the forest that pulls her into decades of buried secrets tied to the town's most powerful family. There's even a local legend woven through it all: a forest witch who saves girls from bad men - this gave me Urban L...

Review: A Killing Cold - Kate Alice Marshall - February 2025 In A Killing Cold , Kate Alice Marshall delivers a chilling, snow-laced thriller that blends romance, family secrets, and the unsettling power of memory into an unputdownable read. This is the second book I’ve read by Kate Alice Marshall, and once again, she proves her talent for weaving atmospheric suspense with emotionally complex characters. We meet Thea, a young woman who was never meant to survive. After a traumatic childhood that led her into the foster system, she’s finally found happiness with Connor Dalton. Their whirlwind romance quickly leads to an engagement, and Connor whisks her away to his family's luxurious winter retreat nestled in the snow-covered mountains. But what should be a fairytale getaway soon descends into a nightmare. Thea is gripped by a sense of déjà vu, and a shocking discovery—a childhood photo of herself in the Dalton family home—unlocks long-buried memories. As she begins to piece toge...

Review: What Lies in the Woods - Kate Alice Marshall - January 2023 This book had been on my reading list for a few weeks and I was captured by the title and the cover. Also, the fact that it talked about children as victims and stopping a serial killer and included podcasts about true crime. All this had my attention as 2023 has been the year of mysteries so far. Twenty-Two years ago, three girls found a dead body that they called Persephone and played a game with the Goddesses. During one of their visits to their secret hideout, Cassidy and Naomi had an argument and Naomi stormed out and sat on the log eating her lunch. That decision though led her to be stabbed and left for dead as her friends hid. The girls told police it was a serial killer they had been searching for and their testimonies got him to put away for life. Now that killer is dead and someone is in town asking questions when Naomi gets a call from Olivia, she heads back, and sooner than later - Pandora's box of w...