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: All the Dark Places - Terri Parlato - December 2022 There’s something about settling in with a good psychological thriller on the Libby that just feels like the ultimate cosy escape and All the Dark Places by Terri Parlato absolutely delivered that for me. From the very first chapter, I was hooked. The story opens with Molly planning a beautifully thoughtful 40th birthday surprise for her husband, Jay. You can feel the warmth of the celebration, the comfort of friendships, and the ease of a life well-built together. It’s the kind of opening that lulls you into a false sense of security and then everything shatters. Molly wakes to find Jay missing from their bed, only to discover him in his office, murdered in the most brutal way. That moment gave me chills. What follows is a tangled, slow-burn unraveling of secrets within their close-knit friendship group. I loved how the story peeled back layer after layer, revealing hidden affairs, long-buried resentments, and the unset...

Review: The Dead Husband's Cookbook - Danielle Valentine - August 2025 There's something wonderfully cozy about curling up with a book that centers around food, recipes, and the warmth of a kitchen until that comfort turns deliciously sinister. That's exactly what Danielle Valentine serves up in The Dead Husband's Cookbook, which I devoured on the Libby Library App. I'd already fallen for Danielle Valentine's YA thrillers, so I was eager to see what she'd cook up for adult readers. Let me tell you, this didn't disappoint. What makes this book particularly charming is how it weaves actual recipes throughout the story and it's like getting a cookbook and a thriller all in one satisfying package. The book-within-a-book structure reminded me of Catherine Ryan Howard's The Nothing Man, adding layers of intrigue that kept me turning pages late into the night. The premise is absolutely mouthwatering: Maria Capello, a beloved celebrity chef with her ow...

Review: Regrets Only - Kieran Scott - January 2023 I curled up with Regrets Only by Kieran Scott on my trusty Libby app this February, and what a treat it was to dive back into her world. I've been a longtime fan devouring her YA novels years ago and falling hard for everything she wrote as Kate Brian so when I discovered she'd penned a suburban mystery, I couldn't download it fast enough. It felt like reconnecting with an old friend. Kieran Scott absolutely nails the chaos and cattiness of PTA or as they call it in this book PTB culture in this delightfully twisty tale. Our protagonist, Paige Lancaster, returns home to Connecticut nursing wounds from a Hollywood disaster. She's broke, humbled, and bunking with her mom and eight-year-old daughter Izzy. Enter Ainsley Anderson: gorgeous, intimidating, and inconveniently married to John, Paige's high school sweetheart. At the annual Parents and Pinot fundraiser held at Ainsley's magazine-worthy mansion everythi...

Review: What Waits in the Woods - Book #2 Detective Rita Myers - Terri Parlato - December 2023 You know that feeling when you spot a book cover across the library app and just know you have to read it? That was me with What Waits in the Woods. Total cover crush, and bonus points for discovering a new-to-me author! I devoured this one as a Libby ebook on my phone during my commute and late-night reading sessions. Terri Parlato weaves a solid small-town thriller that had me genuinely creeped out at times. Esmé's return to Graybridge after her ballet career ends should have been a quiet homecoming, but instead she's thrust into investigating her childhood friend's murder in her own backyard , possibly at the hands of the same man who threatened her years ago. The atmospheric New England setting absolutely worked for me, all those woods and whispered secrets. What I loved was The dual timeline structure kept me engaged, and Detective Rita Myers was a refreshing perspective.  ...