Book Review: Reasons to Lie by Emily Listfield
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — Even the most carefully buried secrets leave footprints behind.
Review Date: February 15, 2026 | Release Date: February 24, 2026
Secrets bind them. Lies protect them. But the truth may destroy them all.
Reasons to Lie is a sharp, atmospheric domestic suspense novel that peels back the polished surface of privilege to expose the messy, dangerous truths lurking beneath. Set against the elite backdrop of Manhattan’s Dearborn Academy, the story centers on three mothers—Abby, Kara, and Hollis—whose unlikely friendship forms in the pressure cooker of wealth, insecurity, and belonging. But when a student is murdered during a school retreat their children attended, their carefully balanced lives begin to fracture.
What makes this story so compelling isn’t just the mystery of who did it—it’s the emotional unraveling of the characters as suspicion creeps into every interaction. Abby, Kara, and Hollis are layered, flawed, and deeply human. Each woman is navigating her own fears, insecurities, and desperate need to protect her child, even when the truth threatens to destroy everything. Their bond feels authentic at first—fragile but hopeful—but watching that trust erode under the weight of secrets is both heartbreaking and mesmerizing.
Emily Listfield excels at building quiet tension. The suspense doesn’t rely on constant action, but instead grows through shifting perspectives, subtle contradictions, and the creeping realization that no one is entirely innocent. Every chapter introduces new doubt, new motives, and new emotional stakes. The elite school setting adds another dimension, highlighting the power dynamics, social hierarchies, and quiet desperation of parents trying to secure their children’s futures at any cost.
What stands out most is the emotional realism. This isn’t just a mystery about a murder—it’s about motherhood, identity, belonging, and the terrifying lengths people will go to when they believe their family is at risk. The lies aren’t always malicious; sometimes they’re born from fear, love, or survival. That moral ambiguity makes the story feel unsettlingly real.
The twists unfold with precision, and the final revelations force you to reconsider everything you thought you understood. It’s not just shocking—it’s emotionally resonant.
This is a gripping, character-driven thriller that lingers long after the last page, reminding you that the truth is rarely simple—and sometimes, the most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves.
Thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Book Review: When I Kill You by B.A. Paris
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — Even the most carefully buried secrets leave footprints behind.
Review Date: February 15, 2026 | Release Date: February 17, 2026
There’s a particular kind of dread that creeps in slowly—the kind that doesn’t explode all at once but coils around you, tightening chapter by chapter. When I Kill You by B.A. Paris masters that slow, suffocating tension, delivering a psychological thriller that blurs the line between victim and villain in deeply unsettling ways.
From the very beginning, Nell Masters feels like a woman standing on a fault line. Her life appears stable—steady job, new partner, fresh start—but the cracks beneath the surface are impossible to ignore. Anonymous flowers, silent phone calls, and the constant sense of being watched create an atmosphere that feels both intimate and invasive. You don’t just read Nell’s fear—you live inside it.
What makes this story especially compelling is its layered exploration of identity and obsession. Fourteen years earlier, Nell was Elle Nugent, a young woman who became entangled in the aftermath of a brutal murder. Her certainty about the killer—and the consequences of that certainty—haunts every decision she makes in the present. As the narrative moves between past and present, the truth slowly unravels, forcing readers to question everything they think they know—not just about Nell, but about justice, guilt, and revenge.
B.A. Paris excels at creating characters you can’t fully trust—not even the protagonist. Nell is both sympathetic and unsettling, and her unreliability adds a constant undercurrent of tension. Her new partner, Alex, brings his own quiet mystery, and their relationship is layered with unspoken truths and emotional distance. Every interaction feels charged with possibility, and every revelation shifts the emotional ground beneath your feet.
The pacing is deliberate and effective, building psychological pressure rather than relying on cheap twists. And when the truth finally emerges, it lands with the kind of chilling clarity that recontextualizes everything that came before. This is a story about obsession, consequences, and the terrifying ways the past refuses to stay buried.
Dark, immersive, and deeply unsettling, When I Kill You is the kind of thriller that lingers long after the final page—leaving you questioning how well you really know anyone, including yourself.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Book Review: The Enemy of Time by Haley-Grace McCormick
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — Time may move forward—but some loves stay with you forever.
Review Date: February 15, 2026 | Release Date: February 17, 2026
Some stories don’t just unfold—they ache. The Enemy of Time is one of those rare books that doesn’t simply tell a love story; it excavates one, layer by fragile layer, exposing every tender bruise left behind by time, memory, and unfinished feelings.
Alex’s return to her Massachusetts hometown feels less like a homecoming and more like stepping into a preserved version of herself she thought she’d outgrown. The yellow shutters and red door aren’t just nostalgic—they’re haunted. And when she finds her old journal, it becomes a key unlocking emotions she never fully processed, particularly those tied to Jamie—the boy who wasn’t just her first love, but her first understanding of heartbreak, loyalty, and emotional complexity.
Jamie is written with extraordinary nuance. He isn’t idealized or simplified; he’s messy, wounded, protective, and painfully real. His struggles and vulnerabilities ripple through every memory Alex revisits, making their connection feel both inevitable and fragile. Their relationship isn’t defined by grand gestures, but by quiet moments—shared silences, stolen glances, and the kind of emotional intimacy that lingers long after it ends.
What makes this story especially powerful is its exploration of memory as both refuge and reckoning. Alex isn’t simply remembering Jamie—she’s confronting the version of herself she became because of him. The journal serves as a bridge between who she was and who she is now, forcing her to reevaluate truths she thought were settled.
The emotional pacing is deliberate and immersive, allowing readers to sit with each revelation and feel the weight of every realization. This is not a story about fixing the past—it’s about understanding it, and finding the courage to live forward anyway.
By the final pages, The Enemy of Time leaves you with the quiet, devastating truth that love doesn’t disappear just because time passes. Sometimes it evolves. Sometimes it scars. And sometimes, it gives you the strength to finally heal.
This book doesn’t just break your heart—it honors it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Rising Action Publishing Company for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Book Review: Love on Ice by Sara Ney
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — A secret deal, a hockey star, and the kind of first love that changes everything.
Review Date: February 15, 2026 | Release Date: February 17, 2026
There’s something undeniably magical about first love—the kind that sneaks up on you when you least expect it, disguised as a deal, a dare, or a desperate attempt to keep a secret. Love on Ice captures that exact lightning-in-a-bottle feeling, blending humor, vulnerability, and heart-melting chemistry into a story that feels as tender as it is electric.
Harper Conrad is sharp, observant, and far more self-aware than most people give her credit for. She knows opportunities when she sees them, and catching rival hockey star Easton Westermann red-handed in her backyard gives her the perfect one. Their bargain—her silence in exchange for him being her prom date—is supposed to be simple. Transactional. Temporary. But what unfolds between them is anything but.
Easton is more than the confident athlete everyone sees at school. Beneath his cocky exterior is a boy carrying pressure, expectations, and a surprising softness that he doesn’t show easily. Watching him slowly let his guard down around Harper is one of the most rewarding parts of the story. Their relationship builds in layers—awkward, hesitant, charged with meaning in every glance and every moment they linger just a little too long.
Sara Ney excels at capturing the emotional intensity of being young and on the cusp of everything—adulthood, heartbreak, independence, and love. Harper and Easton’s connection feels authentic because it grows out of shared moments rather than grand gestures. It’s in the quiet conversations, the stolen looks, and the realization that what started as pretend has become the most real thing either of them has ever experienced.
What makes this story especially compelling is how it balances sweetness with emotional depth. It isn’t just about falling in love—it’s about learning to trust someone with your truth, even when it’s terrifying. It’s about realizing that sometimes the person who enters your life unexpectedly is exactly who you needed all along.
Love on Ice is soft, nostalgic, and quietly powerful—a love story that reminds you how transformative first love can be, and how the bravest thing you can do is let yourself feel it fully.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Book Review: The New Neighbors by Claire Douglas
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — Secrets don’t stay buried forever—and neither does guilt.
Review Date: February 15, 2026 | Release Date: February 17, 2026
Some stories creep up on you quietly. Others plant a seed of dread so deep that every page feels like walking across a frozen lake, waiting for the crack. The Halifax Hellions does both—and brilliantly.
From the very first moment Lena overhears her seemingly harmless neighbors discussing something they were never meant to say aloud, the entire tone shifts. What should be a safe, sleepy suburban street becomes charged with suspicion, secrets, and the unsettling realization that evil doesn’t always look the way you expect it to.
What makes this story so effective is Lena herself. She isn’t a perfect narrator. She carries guilt. She carries regret. And perhaps most dangerously, she carries the desperate need for redemption. Her fixation on the Morgans doesn’t just come from concern—it comes from a place of personal reckoning. That emotional complexity adds layers to every decision she makes, forcing you to question whether she’s uncovering truth… or unraveling herself.
The tension builds slowly but deliberately. Alexandra Vasti excels at making ordinary moments feel threatening—casual conversations feel loaded, quiet glances feel accusatory, and the normal rhythms of suburban life become a mask hiding something far darker. There’s a constant push and pull between paranoia and possibility, and it keeps you guessing until the very end.
What truly elevates this story is the moral ambiguity. There are no clean lines between right and wrong, only choices made in fear, guilt, and survival. Lena’s journey isn’t just about uncovering what her neighbors are hiding—it’s about confronting the parts of herself she wishes she could forget.
This is the kind of thriller that lingers. It makes you question how well you really know the people around you. And more chillingly, it makes you question how well you know yourself.
Dark, tense, and emotionally layered, this is a gripping reminder that sometimes the most dangerous secrets live right next door.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Perennial and Paperbacks for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
