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: 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: The Inheritance - Book #1 Happy Endings Resort Series - Jennifer Benson - February 2015 There’s something rather magical about the idea of inheriting a place you never even knew existed. Imagine opening a letter one day and discovering that somewhere out there is a whole resort with your name on it,  a bit like stumbling across a hidden bach at the beach you didn’t know your family owned. That’s the premise behind The Inheritance by Jennifer Benson, the first book in the Happy Endings Resort series. At twenty-six, Rory London is feeling a bit lost in life. She doesn’t have much to show for herself and is pretty much alone in the world. So when she learns she has inherited Happy Endings Resort from a long-lost relative she didn’t even know existed, it feels like the universe has finally thrown her a lifeline. Suddenly she’s the owner of a resort filled with staff, secrets, and a past she never knew belonged to her. Enter Jason Duke, the handsome twenty-eight-year-old attorne...

VBT # Review: Our Daughter Is Missing - Darren O'Sullivan - January 2026 Welcome to The Phantom Paragrapher Book Blog! I'm thrilled to be hosting a stop on the Zooloos Book Tours virtual book tour for Darren O'Sullivan's gripping thriller, Our Daughter is Missing. Imagine waking up to your worst nightmare: your daughter doesn't come home. Now imagine you're physically unable to leave your house to search for her. This is the gut-wrenching premise that pulled me into O'Sullivan's latest psychological thriller, and honestly, I couldn't put it down. Our protagonist is a mother trapped by agoraphobia, watching the world through her windows while her daughter Faye vanishes somewhere out there in the dangerous world she's been hiding from. The setup is brilliant how do you rescue someone when you can't rescue yourself from your own fears? It's the kind of high-concept premise that immediately hooks you, and I found myself racing through chapt...

Review: The Stone Secret - Amanda Tisevich - 2023 I picked up The Stone Secret from my ever-growing TBR pile, only to discover today that it's been reprinted under a new title, When I Disappear. Same gripping story, different cover - just a heads up if you go hunting for it! This one pulled me in from the start. We meet Sylvia, whose world shattered twenty years ago when her mother was murdered. The man convicted, Rhett Cohen, was a construction worker on her mother's house renovation, and it was young Sylvia's testimony that helped put him behind bars. Now, after two decades, he's being released on a technicality and he's never stopped claiming he's innocent. Just as Rhett walks free, Sylvia receives four chilling letters. Each one more menacing than the last, warning her that she's next. The final letter? It contains her mother's bloody necklace, the very one she wore the day she died. Talk about a cold shiver down your spine while you're curled ...

Review: That Night - Amy Giles - October 2018 There's something about young adult fiction that doesn't shy away from the hard stuff that always draws me in. Give me a story that tackles grief, trauma, or those impossible questions we all wrestle with, and I'm there. That Night by Amy Giles landed on my radar because it does exactly that, it sits with the uncomfortable reality of mass shootings and asks: what comes after? The story follows Jess and Lucas, two teenagers forever changed by the Balcony shooting in their Queens neighborhood. Both lost siblings that night. Both survived when others didn't. And both are drowning in the aftermath in their own ways , Jess trying to hold her depressed mother together while her own grief threatens to swallow her whole, and Lucas channeling everything into boxing while his parents hover, terrified of losing him too. When they end up working together at Bruno's Hardware, something shifts. Their shared trauma becomes a bridge r...

Review: Reinventing Hannah - Jack A. Ori - November 2022 I'll be honest—I've been struggling with romance novels lately. The meet-cutes and happily-ever-afters have felt hollow, so I've been gravitating toward my collection of edgier reads that have been gathering digital dust on my Kindle. That's how I rediscovered Reinventing Hannah by Jack A. Ori, and I'm grateful I did. Hannah starts as the archetypal "good girl"—student council member, rule-follower, someone waiting for marriage (or at least the right person) before having sex. She doesn't drink, smoke, or do drugs. She's the perfect student, the one parents point to as an example. But perfection, as we learn, offers no protection from the worst humanity can offer. When Hannah agrees to be the designated driver for her friend Sasha's party, she's still the responsible one—having fun but staying sober. The next morning, though, she wakes up with no memory of the previous night and the...

Review: What If? What If? - Suzanne B. Miller - May 2025 Every now and then, a book comes along that feels like it was written just for you. When I was approached to read What If? What If? by Suzanne B. Miller and saw it was set in New Zealand—specifically Hamilton—I knew I had to say yes. What I didn’t expect was how deeply this story would resonate with me, not just as a reader, but as someone who’s lived through many of the same moments. The story follows Jasmine, a council archivist whose life is shaped by her OCD—nicknamed “Medusa.” Her condition is portrayed with such honesty and compassion, and I found myself relating to her work life more than I expected. Before I was made redundant from Tauranga City Council, I held a similar role, scanning and profiling old council documents. Reading about Jasmine’s day-to-day felt like revisiting a chapter of my own life. The setting was another highlight. Having visited Hamilton, I could vividly picture the Garden Square by the Library a...

Review: Now You Owe Me - Aliah Wright - September 2024 This year, I made a commitment that felt both ambitious and necessary: clearing my physical bookshelf of all those neglected spines staring at me accusingly. As part of my weekday TBR clearing mission, I picked up Now You Owe Me by Aliah Wright, and what a twisted journey it turned out to be. Wright hooks you from page one with a premise that's both horrifying and oddly compelling. Seven-year-old twins Ben and Corinthia witness their father commit murder while hiding under tarps in his truck—a scene so visceral it practically branded itself into my memory. This traumatic foundation becomes the bedrock for everything that follows, and Wright doesn't shy away from exploring how childhood trauma can manifest in the most devastating ways. The narrative structure follows the twins into adulthood after they inherit their grandmother's mansion—a setting that becomes almost a character itself, harboring secrets and providing ...