Review: The Death Row Club - V.A Vazquez - July 2026 Imagine waking up one day to discover that your mum or dad is a serial killer. Then imagine trying to get through the press, the whispers and the stares, all while starting your life over. It's a heavy thought, isn't it? In The Death Row Club, V.A. Vasquez shows us that these characters don't have to face it alone. They have each other, in a secret, invite-only group made up of the children of serial killers from all walks of life. For them, it's the one place in the world where they can take off the mask and be their whole selves. Nobody has to hide, explain or apologise, because everyone in the room understands. I'll admit that's the part that tugged at my heartstrings the most. Belonging is a very human need, even in the strangest of circumstances. But as we all know, a safe space never stays quiet for long. Word of the group has got out, and there are people who want to punish these children for the sins...

#VBT - Review: You'll Be Sorry - Liz Alterman - August 2026 Pour yourself something cold, pull up a chair, because I need to talk to you about this one. I picked up You'll Be Sorry the way I pick up most revenge stories with a little thrill in my stomach and a promise to myself that I'd only read "just one chapter" before bed. We all know how that promise usually goes. Amelia Montgomery is turning forty, and instead of candles and cake on her mind, she's flipping through a magazine when Ethan Blackmore 's face stops her cold. Ethan:  the man who broke her, humiliated her, and then had the audacity to build a whole shiny new life while she picked up the pieces of the old one. You know the type. Maybe you've even had your own Ethan. I loved the idea of Amelia. A woman who clawed her way back from heartbreak and built something real,  a business, a self, a whole second life is exactly the kind of protagonist I want to root for at my kitchen tabl...

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: The Secrets Next Door - Sally Royer-Derr - March 2024 Happy birthday to me  and what better way to celebrate than curled up with a twisty thriller and a cup of tea? Today feels like the perfect day to share my thoughts on The Secrets Next Door by Sally Royer-Derr, because honestly, this book gave me the kind of gift only a great story can: the thrill of not seeing it coming (well, almost). There's something so unsettling and delicious about a thriller that asks, "How well do we really know the people closest to us?" That question sits at the heart of this story, and Sally Royer-Derr uses it like a scalpel. Talia thinks she knows her life inside and out , her marriage to Zach, her bond with her identical twin Tabitha, even the sprawling generosity of Tabitha and her husband, who bought Talia and Zach the house right next door. Sounds cozy, right? Like something out of a dream where family stays close and life is sweet. But then Anne moves in. Anne, a thriller wr...

Review: Everyone Who Can Forgive Me is Dead - Jenny Hollander - February 2024 There are books you plan to read, and books that find their way to you. This one arrived as a happy accident . a Bookstagram raffle win that led to a small pile of vouchers and the chance to finally pull a wishlist title off the shelf. Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead by Jenny Hollander was one of those deliberate choices, and I can say with certainty it was the right one. "She walked out alive and covered in blood. What she couldn't walk out with was the truth." The novel centres on Charlie (Charlotte), a woman who, during her journalism studies in college, survived a horrific event that would come to be known as the Scarlett Christmas Massacre a night when her friends were stabbed and she was the one left standing, bloodied and shattered. In the years since, Charlie has done what so many trauma survivors do: she has sealed the memory off, smoothed it into a shape she can live with, and move...

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...

VBT# Woman Missing - Kaelin Wennerberg - August 2025 Have you ever read a book that completely frustrates you, and then you find yourself yelling "Nooooooooo!" as you turn the last page? That was absolutely me with Woman Missing, and honestly, I'm still kicking myself because it's been a few weeks since I finished it and I cannot for the life of me remember the main character's name. Yet somehow I can recall every other character and plot twist with crystal clarity. (Let's call our protagonist "J" for the sake of this review – don't judge me!) Wennerberg throws us straight into chaos from page one. J is desperately trying to win back her ex, Mikey, when a drunken night ends in absolute tragedy. She gets behind the wheel intoxicated and strikes a man, killing him. But here's where it gets chilling – with his dying breath, he warns her that "they" wouldn't be happy and would come after her. Those ominous words haunted me throughou...

Review: Those Empty Eyes - Charlie Donlea - March 2023 Sometimes you stumble across an author who just gets how to craft a proper thriller, and Charlie Donlea has definitely earned his spot on my auto-buy list. After being completely hooked by Twenty Years Later and its masterful twists, I found myself scrolling through my Kindle library like a kid in a candy store, looking for my next Charlie Donlea fix. That's when Those Empty Eyes practically jumped off my digital shelf. The story kicks off with Alex Quinlan, a teenager whose life gets absolutely destroyed when she's branded as the monster who slaughtered her own family. The media circus around her case is brutal – they even give her the chilling nickname "Empty Eyes" because of her distinctive gaze. But here's the thing that immediately drew me in: Alex is innocent, and she knows it. What follows is a gripping journey as she spends years fighting to clear her name, eventually winning her freedom and a hefty d...

Review: The Fifth Girl - Book #3 Detective Hollie Turner Series - Paul J. Teague - January 2024 The Phantom Paragrapher here, and folks, I'm not kidding when I say this book left me emotionally wrecked in the best possible way. You know that feeling when a cliffhanger grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go? That's exactly what happened after finishing Her Last Cry. Lucky for my sanity (and sleep schedule), I had Her Fifth Girls ready on my Kindle because honestly, who has the willpower to leave a Paul J. Teague cliffhanger hanging ? This third installment doesn't just continue the story—it excavates the soul of it. We finally dive deep into Sister Sophia Brennan's psyche, and wow, what a masterclass in character development. Paul J Teague reveals why she became the nightmare she was to those teenage mothers at the Unwed Mother's Home. Her cruelty wasn't just institutional—it was personal, born from seeing her own traumatic past reflected in every frighten...