VBT# Review - From My Dead Husband - Rowen Chambers - October 2026 Two years ago, Claire was trapped in an abusive relationship with Rob. She knew that if she didn’t act, she would never be free, and might not survive. So one day she snapped, had simply had enough, and did what she had to do. Now she’s building a brand new life, creating something wonderful for herself and even dating a lovely new man. Things are finally looking up, and my heart was so happy for her. But life has a habit of sticking its oar in. As what would have been her wedding anniversary approaches, a card arrives, postmarked from her hometown. Inside is an anniversary card, written to Claire from her husband Rob. Rob, who she swears was dead the last time she saw him. How can that be? Is it a cruel prank from one of his friends? Determined to get answers, Claire starts digging, only to discover that Hank, one of Rob’s closest friends, has recently been found dead after suicide. What on earth is going on? Is it a...

Synposis: Never Tell A Secret - Miranda Rijks - October 2026 Having secrets is dangerous. Confessing them can be fatal. Today I’m delighted to shine a spotlight on a gripping new psychological thriller that tackles a very modern fear: what happens when the thing we trust with our deepest confessions is listening a little too closely? The Story Emma’s family is coming apart at the seams. Her marriage to Hayden is crumbling, their 21-year-old daughter Willow is unravelling after a painful breakup, and teenage son Fred is isolated and unhappy. It’s the kind of household where everyone is under the same roof but struggling alone. So when their friend Marcel, a widower, invites them to test ClarityU, a revolutionary AI therapist he has built himself, it feels like a lifeline. And at first, it genuinely seems to help. Each family member finds a safe space to talk, to cry, to say the things they can’t say out loud to one another. But there’s a catch, and it’s a chilling one. ClarityU i...

Review: One Missing Girl - Kristi Belcamino - October 2026 Three girls were on their way to big dreams and college, but when a night goes wrong - only two of those girls will find their way home and one will remain missing until a few days later. Years ago, Sofia had a family until one day she found a dead body in her basement and her family exploded and her father went to prison and she escaped her mother who blamed her for her brother's death.  As the book goes along, and Kate is considered missing - Sofia believes her past has caught up with her and this is somehow related especially when she finds hidden letters from Sofia's mother to Kate , however what if Sofia didn't realise that the danger wasn't her family but something closer and someone she cared about and this book showed us that sometimes the threats and the dangers are the one's right under our noses, the ones that we never consider as dangerous or ones that we would trust our lives with as we thought...

VBT# Review - The Woman In My Home - D.L Fisher - October 2026 The Woman In My Home opens with a moment I’m sure many of us would recognise: a message lights up on her husband’s phone, and she reads it. Of course she does, who wouldn’t? She’s turning thirty in two weeks and thinks she’s about to be surprised with a birthday gift, so she’s thrilled to learn he’s bought them their dream log cabin in the Poconos, tucked beside a private lake. But when she drives out to see it while he’s supposedly away on a work trip, his truck is already there. And so is another woman. What a hook! The double life storyline is one of my all-time favourite themes, and I’m always on the lookout for a new take on it. What makes this one different is that the woman he truly loves is the one who doesn’t have his children. Usually it’s the other way round, with the other woman as the secret, and the family at home. DL Fisher turns that on its head, and it made me look at every character in a completely new li...

VBT# Good Twin, Bad Twin - Renita D'Silva - October 2026 I’ll admit it straight away: I have a soft spot for stories about twins. There’s something endlessly fascinating about two people who start out so alike and end up so different, and Good Twin, Bad Twin gave me plenty to chew on. It opens with a chilling hook. A postcard arrives bearing a pretty Cotswold village and a nickname only one person ever used, a person who, by rights, shouldn’t be able to send it. If she’s alive, then whose body is buried under the patio? I was hooked by the end of the first chapter. Our narrator was the shy, bookish twin, forever living in the shadow of her golden sister. Now she has what she always wanted: a stunning home on the Dorset cliffs, a handsome husband and a beautiful teenage daughter. But her husband vanishes at night, and the family dog seems to be the only one who truly loves her. Cosy it is not, and I loved every unsettling minute. This is very much an unreliable narrator story, and...

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...

  Review: Her Beautiful Secret - J.S Ellis - September 2026 There's a particular kind of book that gets its hooks into you from the very first page, and Her Beautiful Secret is exactly that kind of read. I picked it up expecting a straightforward thriller and instead found myself curled up on the sofa, tea going cold beside me, utterly unable to put it down. The story opens with Jade, a young woman whose relationship with an older boyfriend brings her parents storming into a hotel room, convinced she's throwing her life away for a man who doesn't love her. What follows is a shocking, visceral opening that sets the tone for everything to come ,Jade's parents are killed, and we're left reeling before the story has even properly begun. We meet Detective Lydia Falzon, brought in to interview Jade, and as the story unfolds through her eyes, we realise this isn't just Jade's story , it's Lydia's too. As Jade speaks, Lydia is pulled back into her own past...

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: Inventing Mr. Darcy - Susanna Craig - September 2026 Confession time: I picked this one up because I, too, am the kind of person who would name a cat after Mr. Bingley. So when I met Elle a grad student whose entire dissertation, reading life, and general worldview orbit Jane Austen  I felt instantly, embarrassingly seen. Elle's world is a cozy, familiar one. She's deep in her research on Pride and Prejudice, her cat Bing Bong (no relation to the sweet elephant from Inside Out ,  though I did have to do a double take) is curled up nearby, and Austen is basically the sun her whole life orbits. Then, one late night in the university archives, working on the AUSTEN-C database, a geomagnetic storm rips through the sky. Flash. Bang. And Elle wakes up in a world where Jane Austen never existed at all. This is where the book really won me over. It's not just "no Austen" as a throwaway premise Susanna Craig actually follows the ripple effects. No Hallmark Chan...

Review: The Last Eight Hours - S.C Shannon - September 2026 There's something deliciously unsettling about a book that opens with blood already spilled and a mind already blank, and The Last Eight Hours wastes no time pulling you into that unease. I curled up with this one expecting a straightforward thriller, and instead got tangled in a web I'm still thinking about days later  the kind of read that makes you want to text a friend at midnight just to say "you HAVE to read this." We meet Tessa in the worst possible moment of her life: sore, disoriented, and standing over the bodies of her husband and his business partner. She can't remember the last eight hours. She doesn't know if she did this. Honestly, neither do we, and that shared confusion is what makes the opening so gripping , we're figuring it out right alongside her. From there, we read as Tessa returns home to Cascade Bay, falling into a whirlwind romance with the charming Grayson, and meet...