VBT# The Home Swap - A.A Chaudhuri - September 2026 There's something delightfully unsettling about curling up on your own sofa, tea in hand, reading a thriller about a house swap gone catastrophically wrong. I'll admit, I've had the same daydream as everyone else,  swapping keys with a lovely couple in Cornwall or the Cotswolds, waking up somewhere new, pretending for a week that our lives are a little more glamorous than they are. And then, being the thriller addict I am, that fantasy always curdles into the same nagging thought: but what if they're weird? What if they go through my drawers? A.A. Chaudhuri clearly had the exact same intrusive thought, except she actually did something with it  she wrote this brilliantly twisty, deliciously paranoid book. The setup pulled me in immediately. A couple, marking their tenth wedding anniversary, swap homes for a week  partly for a change of scenery, partly to paper over cracks in a marriage already strained by something ou...

VBT# Review- Nourish - Laura Baggaley - July 2026 Imagine a world where nobody eats. No Sunday roasts, no warm toast, no biscuit dunked in tea. Instead there are liquid injections and vitamin pills, and a generation of people who wouldn't know what taste is. That's the world of Laura Baggaley's Nourish, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Our hero is Cal, who lives in a post-food society where people receive what's known as Nutritional Provision. It's tidy and efficient, and everyone accepts it as simply how things are. Then Cal's father dies, and he's sent to a fancy boarding school. It's there that he finds a rare edible substance, something that shouldn't exist, and it makes him question everything he's ever been told about nourishment. What I loved most is how the book gets you thinking about the small, ordinary things we take for granted. The smell of something baking, the way a meal brings people to a table, the comfort of ...

Review: The Pick Up - Sadie Ryan - September 2026 I'll be honest, when I sat down with this one this morning, I really didn't know what I was walking into. Something about a bar, a meet-cute, maybe a slow-burn romance? That was about the extent of my guess. What I got instead was so much richer, and honestly, a little more heart-stopping than I expected. We meet Melissa, freshly out of a ten-year relationship and staring down forty with the sinking feeling that love might have left the building for good. I think anyone who's ever felt that particular kind of post-breakup dread will recognise themselves in her immediately. Then comes one night out with her friends, and suddenly she's swept into the orbit of Ralph Darling. And swept really is the word. The whirlwind romance moves fast, with a wedding on the horizon just two months in. But here's the thing that had me gripping the pages: Ralph is too good to be true, in the most unsettling sense possible. He's a ...

VBT# The Family Lies - Lorna Henderson - July 2026 There's a particular kind of ache that comes with childhood memories you can never quite trust again, and Lorna Henderson taps straight into it with The Family Lies. I went in expecting a straightforward family drama and came out with my heart in my throat and my loyalties in the wrong place entirely but more on that later. The story opens with a memory that colours everything after it: fourteen-year-old Suzie and her cousin Rachel on holiday in Canada with Aunt Linda, in what turns out to be their final day together. A car accident takes Linda and Rachel, and Suzie carries that loss for thirty years, never imagining she'll ever learn what really happened. Then her mother dies, and the past comes crashing back in. A box in the attic. A patient named Nicole who seems to know far more than she should. And cousin Jake, conveniently poised to inherit his father's estate now that Suzie's mother is gone. Lorna Henderson l...

    Review: The Daughter in the Cellar - Yvette Davies - July 2026 There's something about a UK psychological thriller that just hits differently, isn't there? Less blood-splatter, more slow-creeping dread , the kind that settles into your bones over a cup of tea rather than jumping out at you. That's exactly what I found in The Daughter in the Cellar , and it's why I ended up loving it so much. At its heart, this is Violet's story, a woman who wanted nothing more than to be a mother, but was born without a uterus and never got the chance. Instead of accepting a life without that dream, she's spent years finding "daughters" of her own, brunette girls she takes and keeps, hoping this time it will stick. Three didn't last. Now there's Florence,  a young woman who thought she'd simply met a kind stranger willing to help her one ordinary night, only to wake up locked in a cellar, realising far too late what kind of help she'd actually acce...

Synopsis: Don't Let Her In - J.M O'Rourke - July 2026 Lesley seems like a perfectly normal woman. Until you ask her to leave. Gillian wants to do right by her elderly Aunt Myra. A safe nursing home. Daily visits. A peaceful final chapter for the woman who has been like a mother to her. A plan that’s derailed when a stranger turns up on the doorstep claiming to be Myra's long-lost niece, Lesley. She says she’s here to look after Myra. Within days, Myra’s bank accounts are being drained and Lesley has taken full control of the house. And Gillian , the woman who has always been there for Myra isn't allowed through the door. When she demands to see her aunt, the threats begin. Smashed windows. A slashed tire. Headlights chasing her down a lonely country road. But Gillian isn’t backing off. Suspicious that Lesley isn’t who she says she is, Gillian digs into her past. And discovers a secret far more horrifying than anything she could have imagined. A chilling, tw...

Review: My Friend's Husband - Rupa Mahadevan - June 2026 Pour yourself something warm, settle into your favourite reading nook, and let me tell you about the book that kept me up far too late this week. I'm thrilled to be part of the virtual book tour for My Friend's Husband by Rupa Mahadevan, organised by the lovely folks at Zooloos Book Tours. This one had me curled up on the sofa, blanket forgotten, completely unable to put my phone down between chapters. At its heart, this is the story of a woman trying to rebuild her life after years of bad choices and bad luck, finally given a fresh start by her best friend-  a job, a place to live, a reason to believe things could be different. Then her friend disappears, leaving behind only a frantic, unfinished phone call for help. The police think our narrator knows more than she's letting on. But she's certain the answers lie much closer to home, with the husband everyone assumes is simply a grieving, devoted partner. ...

Review: The Striker - Book #1 Gods of the Game Series - Ana Huang - October 2024 I'll be honest with you Ana Huang and I have had quite the complicated relationship. Her books have been a bit of a mixed bag for me over the years, landing anywhere from absolute favourites to DNFs (did-not-finishes, for those not deep in the bookish rabbit hole). So when I packed my bags for our Readers Retreat in Taupō last week, I finally decided it was time to give The Striker a proper chance. It had been sitting on my shelf since release, quietly judging me every time I walked past. You know that feeling. We've all been there. And oh my goodness  how did it take me this long? I'm so glad I finally cracked the spine on this one, because The Striker completely won me over. At its heart, it's a football romance and when I say football, I do mean soccer, just so we're all on the same page! Our hero, Asher Donovan, is an absolute dreamboat of a soccer champion who has just switched ...

Review: The Landlady - Jane E. James - May  2026 I'm curled up here with my favourite mug and a biscuit, writing this from the comfort of my own home  and goodness, never have I felt more grateful for that simple fact. One of the quiet little joys of being a bookworm is that a brilliant thriller can make you count your blessings. The Landlady by Jane E. James did exactly that. I have never had to deal with renting, unpredictable landlords, or difficult neighbours, and after reading this one I am sending the universe a heartfelt thank you. Our narrator arrives at Rose Cottage, a pretty little place on a quiet country farm, with her five-year-old daughter Lily tucked close. After time spent in a women's refuge, the pair desperately need a haven, and Mrs Skinner seems to offer just that bone-crushing hugs, homemade cakes, freshly baked bread, and cheese on the doorstep. Warm, motherly, reassuring. My own heart melted a little at that image. It felt like the ki...