VBT# Lie in the Bay - Book #2 A Little White Lies Thriller - Holly Danvers - June 2026 There's a particular kind of comfort in a small town, the kind where everyone waves from their porch, the diner knows your order, and duck hunting season means casseroles and gossip in equal measure. I curled up with Lie in the Bay expecting exactly that kind of cozy, familiar backdrop. What I got instead was a slow, delicious unraveling of just how little "cozy" and "familiar" actually mean once you start looking closely at the people behind the porch lights. That's the real magic of this book. Holly Danvers doesn't hand you a town full of obvious villains, she hands you neighbours. The kind you'd bring a pie to. The kind you'd trust to watch your dog. And then, one thread at a time, she shows you how much of that trust was never really earned, just assumed. I found myself thinking about my own street more than once while reading this. Do I actually know t...

Review: The Widower - D.L Fisher - September 2025   I’ve officially hit pause on romance reads for now—nothing personal, but they’re just not holding my attention lately. The silver lining? I’m finally ahead of schedule with my Zooloo’s Book Tours reviews (a small miracle in itself!). And The Widower by DL Fisher was the perfect pick to keep me hooked and on track. This one picks up three months after The Stepson, though you don’t need to have read it to dive into the drama. That said, a little background never hurts. We’re dropped into a tangled web of suspicion, secrets, and suburban unease. Marnie’s husband Mark—cheater and confirmed murderer—has left behind a trail of chaos. But not everyone’s convinced he was the real villain. Whispers around the neighbourhood suggest Carrie’s stepson TJ might be the one with blood on his hands. When another woman goes missing, TJ becomes the prime suspect. Carrie’s torn—she wants to believe in him, but the evidence is stacking up. And just w...

The Art of Falling in Love with Your Grumpy Neighbor Anne Kemp Publication date: September 24th 2024 Genres: Adult, Comedy, Contemporary, Romance All’s fair in love and war…ESPECIALLY with your grumpy, smoking hot, former football-superstar neighbor. Bex: Expecting solitude from my new home shouldn’t be the exception. But when you move next door to the grumpiest human on earth, what’s a girl to do? Austin Porter may be a former football star, but this man does not have an attitude of gratitude. When the strip of land that divides our properties becomes a literal bone of contention, we finally find something we can both agree on: war. Only, I don’t want to fight. I want to show this man that sometimes, the greatest comebacks happen once you’re off the field. Austin: Was I defined by the game I played? Probably. Judging by the darkness I seem to be most comfortable sinking into, the memory of days now gone by is a weight that threatens to drown my soul. Then she moves in ne...

From author Terra Weiss comes a steamy new neighbors-to-lovers rom-com mystery. If you love cinnamon roll heroes and heroines in danger, you’ll fall head over heels for Buried Roots. Keep reading for more details about this upcoming romance release, and be sure to enter to win a $100 Amazon gift card! Title: Buried Roots Author: Terra Weiss Release Date: 09/05/2023 Genres: Rom-Com Mystery Trope: Small Town, Heroine in Danger, Cinnamon Roll Hero, Neighbors to Lovers, Forced Proximity, Friendship/Community, Spicy, What Hurt You Vibes, Lovable Animals I might've found my own grave. Or not, but I don't have time to figure it out. A perfect stranger willed me his neglected fifty-acre farm, and now, this New Yorker has two weeks to get it sell-ready. With a business to run, I can’t stay in this boondock town a second longer. But I’ve got it handled—even after a series of suspicious property mishaps. Even after the threatening notes. ...

Review: Love in the Time of Serial Killers - Alicia Thompson - August 2022 For the past four months, I have tried for 2023 to try and make a dent in my bookshelf as it was starting to pile up and I have been neglecting it and reading more ebooks. I decided that this year was my goal to stop this and go back to reading more print books. I have had a lot of fun rediscovering the books, especially in the Winter season as I get home, have dinner and then curl up with my books as my partner goes to work. Love in the Time of Serial Killers caught my attention with the "true crime" aspect. I did enjoy this book, but again at the same time felt a little disappointed as the main female for someone who loves true crime annoyed me. I get that she is a geekish introvert and studying for her Ph.D. but seriously are all academics like this? Do I come across this way, I sure hope not. As someone who loves true crime, I did love the references and the books and it did get me thinking about ...

          Review: The Whispers - Ashley Audrain - June 2023 I wasn't sure which of my book boxes I was in the mood for, so I let my partner choose for me and he reply after giving him the options of family saga, romance, fantasy, or thriller. He chose Thriller which was the July Book Box with Ashley Audrain's book The Whispers. This was such a good read that took us on a journey of how well you know your neighbors. It also shows the dark side of motherhood and how we don't know what goes on behind closed doors and that all families, even the perfect ones have some cracks in them. In The Whispers, we meet our main family Whitney and her husband Jacob, they have three children Xavier, Sebastian, and Thea. Whitney's oldest son Xavier is on the spectrum and she has never bonded with him. One night he wishes he wasn't her son and the next thing she knows he has fallen out his window and is in a coma. What happened that night? The other thing that happened with this ...

Review: The Neighbour - Gemma Rogers - January 2023 Shelley and her daughter Lauren have finally moved away from her mother's cottage after a crazy last couple of years. They are hoping that this small community will be their new fresh start as for the past couple of years Shelley was the caretaker for her mother who had dementia. The thing though is that she gets off with her next-door neighbour on the wrong foot as it turns out she isn't exactly warm to her dog Teddy and soon crazy things start happening to cause both PTSD reactions for Shelley and especially her daughter Lauren. When cleaning out the attic, Shelley's friend Josh finds a box of belongings from the previous tenant. Why would she leave this here? To return them, Shelley starts digging and soon finds out that the previous tenant Danielle is missing and it looks like someone is trying to be clever to cover it up and make it look like she went travelling. This perfect neighbourhood isn't quite perfect as s...