My first ever Lisa Jewell novel and I can definitively say: I get the hype.

B̷R̷I̷N̷G̷ ✨ 𝗕𝗢𝗥𝗥𝗢𝗪 ✨ B̷Y̷P̷A̷S̷S̷

In other words: If I am reading a thriller or suspense novel and I'm okay putting it down at the end of a chapter (ANY chapter, even the first!), you're doing it wrong. And that was definitely not an issue here - I grabbed this off my shelf hoping to ease into the month of October and WHOOPS I read it in less than 24 hours?

In even other words: Jewell knows what's up. (She also knows some super dark & twisty stuff - it's basically like reading an episode of Criminal Minds except way more involved and just like, it's super good but also I kind of need to go watch Muppet Treasure Island or something after finishing to bring back happy thoughts?)

I think thrillers can be hard to review (for me) sometimes, because it's not as though I want to say "I LOVED THESE CHARACTERS" because I honestly feel that most characters in thrillers are terrible people. And I don't want to say "I LOVED THIS TWISTED PLOT" because honestly this stuff is messed up? But at the same time I DO want to say (especially for this book) that I loved the WAY the characters were written, and I loved HOW the book was written, and I loved trying to guess how it would all come together (which I pretty much had figured out but it was still a wild ride getting there!)

Anywho, what was I saying? Oh yeah - read the book. That was it.

(But if you find you can be squeamish with dark / twisty type storylines, definitely check out the content warnings for this, because wow)