A group of high school seniors, some friends, some not so much.. A brother and sister who had been planning to leave this small town behind.
A party and the horrific accident that occurred after changes all of their lives forever.
Ten years after the accident the town is holding a vote to tear down the bridge where the accident occurred, and a mother is planning a memorial service.
What really happened comes out in a way I did not expect with an ending I did not see coming.
Enjoyed this book tremendously and highly recommend.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me this ARC.

I had a really hard time getting through this one. It was really slow and I didn't really like any of the character. This book was not for me but hopefully others find it more their style.

Unfortunately this was not the book for me. It was a very slow burn and full of unlikeable characters I struggled to connect with. It felt a bit longer than it needed to be.

I think I went into this with too high expectations. While it started off strong and the first couple of chapters had me excited … it went downhill from there. Aside from a cast of unlikable characters - which doesn’t normally bother me - I felt that there was a level of depth missing that held them at an arms length away. I pushed through and while it arrived at a satisfactory ending … it was a little too late. I also felt like it was more YA than adult thriller.

With many kind thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my e-arc 🙏

This was an ok read but I had trouble connecting with the characters and at times, the pace dragged. There was a lot of focus on a hedge. There was a nice twist at the end, which I enjoyed.

This is an entertaining, well-written, psychological thriller which is told in two time-lines by multiple narrators. It is a fast paced and suspenseful novel, which is focused on the secrets and mystery surrounding a small town tragedy

A little bit of a slow start for my liking and it took a while to keep the characters straight at first, but I am glad that I kept with it. I enjoyed the character development and the plot twists. I will look for more books to come from this debut author.

This was a slow burn through and through. By 12% I was still learning about characters and wanting to know more. I would have enjoyed more of a faster pace.

It also seemed somewhat disjointed during the character build up but eventually it all started to make more sense.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy to honestly review.

Incredibly compelling and throughly engrossing, I found this thriller very twisty and difficult to put down. It's probably me, but a few of the voices felt very similar, but overall I very much enjoyed this.

🔮 Mood reader index: A slow burn psychological thriller with tons of small town drama

This book has more POVs than any I’ve read recently, but the synopsis boils down to this: 10 years ago, Grant Dean waited 27 minutes to call an ambulance after his younger sister, Phoebe, was fatally injured in a car accident. He was driving. There’s long been speculation Phoebe would have lived if the ambulance had arrived sooner. With the 10-year anniversary of the accident approaching — and a recent additional fatal accident on the same bridge — Grant’s delay is back in the gossip mill.

There is one character in particular who kept me binge reading this one: Becca, a delusional woman who is in a toxic relationship with Grant, who was with the Dean siblings the night of the accident. The twisted, obsessive lens through which Becca views the world was addictive. I was shocked by the ending — not at all what I was expecting — but it was the small-town drama and Becca’s warped world view that made this book for me.

Wow! Wow! Wow! This book starts off with a punch! I found it to be very interesting. It seems so personal from each of the characters points of view. I highly recommend this.

I thought this was a good mystery, with unique twists and although it took me a little bit to get into it, it was a great read! One to add to your list.

In Twenty-Seven minutes you follow several characters; June who lost her brother Wyatt ten years ago when he ran away that night, Grant who’s sister Phoebe died that night, and Becca who was tragically and oh so randomly involved in the tragedy and is trying to keep it together. I was very intrigued with the entire plot, but honestly because there were so many point of views I struggled to connect to any one character. I had trouble remembering whose POV I was reading at first as well. Becca seemed off kilter and crazy the entire novel, making me not believe anything. Grant was just a lousy person with no redeeming qualities or even thought out plan, and June did gain some confidence but it just wasn’t enough for me. Overall, I thought it was a good read, the characters were interesting if not likeable as was the premise, but it just failed to keep me invested. Overall, three star read for a good quick thriller but not something I would read again.

This book had a great plot and twist but I felt like it dragged at times and a lot could have been cut out in the middle.

A bit longer than it needs to be but a good thriller debut and I am looking forward to reading more from Ashley Tate.
A decade old accident haunts a small town and trauma bonds run deep in the community as individuals with various levels of involvement shoulder their grief and secrets in various ways. I felt that the end was not what I expected, but wasn’t a disappointment. Tate has a lot of promise and talent and while this book was overall underwhelming, there’s a certain appeal to her style of writing that I think is worth coming back for.
Thank you for the ARC from Net Galley and Penguin!

Unfortunately, this one didn’t work for me. To start, I’m not a huge fan of the heavy foreshadowing: “this thing happened and people have feelings and thoughts but we’re just gonna keep talking about how it’s secretive to hold you over.” The relationships between characters seemed contrived, and the ending was a bit anticlimactic for me personally. :(

Phoebe Dean was the most popular girl alive and dead.

For the last ten years, the small, claustrophobic town of West Wilmer has been struggling to understand one thing: Why did it take young Grant Dean twenty-seven minutes to call for help on the fateful night of the car accident that took the life of his beloved sister, Phoebe?

Someone knows what really happened the night Phoebe died. Someone who is ready to tell the truth.

With Phoebe's memorial in just three days, grief, delusion, ambition, and regret tornado together with biting gossip in a town full of people obsessed with a long-gone tragedy with four people at its heart—the caretaker, the secret girlfriend, the missing bad boy, and a former football star. Just kids back then, are forever tied together the fateful rainy night Phoebe died.

This is the debut novel for author Ashley Tate, and was hooked from the beginning, and it slow-burned all the way through. It is entertaining and well written. The ending is gratifying and also a bit of a surprise!

Thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book took me a bit of time to get into; none of the four narrators were compelling and the story didn’t grab me at first. As with most suspense books, it did catch fire for me about halfway through and I was turning the pages quickly after that. Does that mean I liked Twenty-Seven Minutes? Not exactly.

Our narrators are Grant Dean, brother of the dead girl Phoebe; Becca Hoyt, a troubled young woman who shares a secret with Grant; June Delroy, another young woman whose mother has just died of cancer; and Wyatt Delroy, June’s brother returned to town after 10 years gone (he disappeared on the night that Phoebe died).

Interspersed with the narrator chapters are chapters set 10 years back, right before the accident. These are seen from the perspective of various townspeople and focused usually on on of the narrators or on Phoebe.

In the present day, Grant is a depressed, anxious mess; as a high schooler he had a promising future in football, but the accident that killed Phoebe damaged his leg and ruined his prospects. Now he works at a chicken processing plant, drinks heavily and picks up random women, and is stuck living with his mother, who disapproved of him when Phoebe was alive (Phoebe was the golden child) and silently loathes him now.

Becca works at a grocery store and fends off her parents’ concerned entreaties that she consider returning to therapy. She is big mad that no one in West Wilmer seems to care about her or the fact that she was in the accident that killed Phoebe. It quickly becomes clear that she’s delusional about her “relationship” with Grant, among other things.

June seems like a somewhat nicer, though mousier version of Becca – her life is going nowhere, and with her mother’s recent death she’s all alone in the world. She lives in a dilapidated house (if she has a job I’m not sure I ever caught what it was), and is so poor she doesn’t have a car and has to walk a mile to town when she needs something, or borrow her elderly neighbor’s car. With Wyatt’s unexpected return, June becomes interested in finding out what really happened the night that Phoebe died and Wyatt disappeared. Was Wyatt at the high school party that Phoebe, Grant and Becca left together? What was he doing there? Did he and Grant have some sort of conflict?

Finally, we have Wyatt – formerly a town troublemaker and drug dealer, allegedly to Grant. His thoughts and motives remain frustratingly elusive throughout the book; he’s alternately protective of and menacing towards June, and he appears to be suffering from some sort of (possibly fatal?) disease that is taking a toll on his body (he keeps losing teeth, for one thing). Wyatt puts off June’s questions, for what feels like plot purposes more than anything else. He seems intent on confronting Grant at Phoebe’s memorial.

Not a lot happens for much of the book; the characters mostly spin their wheels, wallowing in their misery. It’s clear that everything is heading for a reckoning at the memorial, so a lot of the story before that feels like filler. But I did feel compelled to find out what actually happened, and I appreciated that the revelation, when it occurs, is straightforward, without twenty shocking twists. Actually, much of it was telegraphed and quite obvious, but the one twist actually *did* surprise me, though in retrospect the signs were there, so I’m thinking other readers might guess it earlier on.

What it came down to in my lack of enthusiasm for Twenty Seven Minutes is two things: unlikable characters and a grubby aesthetic. Of the four narrators, only June could be viewed as “probably a good person, more or less.” She’s also a sad-sack, so while I could feel sorry for her, I couldn’t like her. Grant is spiraling – has apparently been slowly spiraling for 10 years – but he’s full of anger and self-pity, and the way he strings Becca along is gross. Speaking of Becca, she’s not the worst of the four, but she is the most irritating. Sure, she’s clearly not well, mentally, but that doesn’t excuse how petty, mean and self-obsessed she is. Wyatt is the most opaque of the four; he seems to have been a troublemaker at one time but mostly seems pathetic at this point.

Pathetic is a fair description of the main four characters, most of the people in West Wilmer, and honestly the town itself. There’s a reason I gravitate towards suspense books set in upper-class London or New York, or at posh universities. As when I primarily read romance, I prefer a bit of glamor in my reading. At the very least I don’t want *everything* to feel both depressed and depressing. This is a personal preference, so it’s not a criticism of the book – the sense of hopelessness, low-grade poverty and the dead-end quality of West Wilmer is well depicted. I just really don’t vibe with any of that at all.

One smallish thing that I felt was a missed opportunity – Phoebe never really came alive for me, and I think that’s important when you have a story that centers around a dead character that other characters are mourning. I was told that she was beautiful, smart, ambitious, and kind. It later becomes clear that she’s in her own way as messed up as everyone else, and she has an obsession with controlling her brother that verged on creepy. Somehow I never really cared about her or the fact that she died young and tragically.

The ending featured some arguably supernatural elements – depending on how you read things, but I definitely read them in a way that suggested the supernatural. It was a little unexpected, but I liked that aspect of the story. I’m not sure what grade to give Twenty Seven Minutes – readability is a B+, enjoyment is more like a C. I guess I’ll give it a B-/C+.

I was very disappointed in this one and I was so looking forwards to reading it. I just found that for over 300 pages long, nothing much happens. All the characters were unlikable and the "twist" was predictable and disappointing.

Past and present converge near the anniversary of Phoebe's death. Rumors and secrets have swirled for 10 years on why it took Grant 27 minutes to call for help. The truth will come out as as small town and its residents ask questions and push for answers. Told by multiple characters in different timelines, this quick paced and engrossing novel was a delightful thriller!