Catherine Ryan Howard does such a great job of writing the "book within a book" concept, or in this case, "book within a movie within a book." The chapters in this book are mixed with pages of movie script, and within the movie script are chapters from a book the movie's main character is reading. Is your head spinning yet?

What I did like was the isolated setting (if you don't know this about me, you should. I am a sucker for an isolated setting thriller), I loved the creepy vibes in the book, and I loved the narrators' Irish accents (everything I read for about a week after this was read with an Irish accent in my head 😂). I also really appreciated that there were multiple narrators. There were some really good twists near the end as well.

Some of the plot points I found to be a little too convenient, and I did find myself getting a bit confused with the three different stories, like whether each scene was "real life," the movie or the book. I know it's spelled out, but when I was listening to the audio I kept mixing up the characters.

Overall, I did think it was a fun and enjoyable book and would recommend the audiobook! Many thanks to @netgalley and @blackstonepublishing for the early audio copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is an atmospheric thriller that goes back and forth between actors performing according to a script for a movie and then similar circumstances happening real life. It's creepy and brings that anxious feeling that I enjoy with a good mystery. The audiobook has a great cast and I enjoyed this one.

I admit, this book made my skin crawl at times-- in a good way. I love how Catherine Ryan Howard's booksmanage to both close in on themselves and expand the definition of thriller at the same same. Run Time, set on location in a scary claustrophobic Irish woods during the production of an indie film is great example of Howard's skills. The main character, an actress with a complicated history that makes her unreliable 9 or is she???)( and our only guide through the story. Is she trapped on this film set? Is someone gaslighting her or is she gaslighting someone else? Or making the whole thing up? We don't know until the end, but that' okay because we're on board. Side characters include the too-good-to-be-true BFF and creepy film directors. Details of the filmmaking process are spot on. Who knew tress could be so scary. Well performed by narrators Alana Kerr Collins, Alan Smyth, Gary Furlong, Gerard Doyle, Siobhan Waring, Alison McKenna. A compelling audiobook but I wouldn't recommend listening while walking through the woods! Recommended as Listen of the Week in Pep Talk, the Satellite Sisters newsletter.

This was another solid story from Catherine Ryan Howard. I like her thrillers, but I do think her pacing is a bit slow for me. I found that again, I struggled to really get into this story. Once everything really started to get moving, I enjoyed this quite a bit. The ending was a bit off, but overall, I would recommend this to thriller lovers!

In Run Time, we are introduced to Adele, who is a down on her luck actress who gets a call about a leading role in a new horror film that no one knows about. Once she travels from LA to Ireland where the filming is going to take place odd things start to happen. While she is staying at this remote and secluded set in the middle of the forest she starts to realize that the same creepy things that are happening to the character she's playing is also happening to her on set.

This story had such a unique and fresh take on the usual thrillers that read like a true horror film. I really liked the main character Adele who was what I think of when I think of a true final girl who is intelligent, quick thinking and not afraid to fight back. The author did a great job showing the problems women in the filming industry have to deal with while working with men and that sometimes women have to save themselves because no one else will. I think this would actually make a great film or tv adaption and I would be one of the first to watch it. This story was fast paced, extremely atmospheric and very intense. I think my favorite part besides the main character would have to be the ominously spooky vibes that the isolated setting gave off. Thank you to Netgalley for sending the digital audiobook copy of Run Time and I have to say I loved listening to the audiobook and would totally recommend it along with the physical if you can because the narrator's Irish accents were perfect and made the experience that was already amazing so much better. If you love slasher movies, extremely clever psychological thrillers, nail biting writing and a book within a movie storyline then I think you'll love this book.

This is a fun thriller with a movie theme! The cover was engaging and the writing was enjoyable. Pacing wasn’t perfect but it was still a great read!

Thank you so much to the publisher and the author for this review copy.

I've been on such a thriller kick of late and I'm always looking for one with that little bit extra. This definitely hit the spot.

I really enjoyed that there was quite a few different things going on because I was often trying to work out how they were all related.

My only complaint was with the middle, something was a little off. The tension and fear was certainly there, but then the resolution felt a bit strange.

I loved who was behind it all because it was obvious after the fact but I definitely didn't pick up on it while I was reading.

The very ending was a little confusing as I think the author went a bit too meta? Like, saying that there should be one final big twist at the end but then not really following through? I was confused.

Overall I really enjoyed this audiobook and listened to it in practically one sitting.

2.5 but rounding up.

Let me start off by saying I LOVED the concept/format. A book within a book within a movie. Very clever. Catherine Ryan Howard has greatly impressed me with her unique book concepts so I was excited to dive in. The execution unfortunately didn’t work for me. The first 70% was very very slow and had very little action aside from what was going on in the screenplay. There were some cool creepy vibes that I liked though. As a reader, one thing I didn’t like was the extreme amount of gaslighting throughout the whole book. It just got old, repetitive, and somewhat irritating. While the last 30% was filled with action, twists, and big reveals, they were all fairly predictable and nothing revealed came as much of a shock. For me, this just didn’t land.

Thank you to NetGalley, Blackstone Publishing, and Catherine Ryan Howard for my advance readers audiobook copy.

This was a fun, quickly-paced thriller.It was a little hard to figure out at first on audio because of all the different POVs/time jumps but once I caught on, it was smooth sailing. 3.5 stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

• story-within-a-screenplay thriller
• creepy, claustrophobic setting
• questionable characters

CRH's super engaging writing style kept me glued to this story! The ending left me feeling a little meh. I highly recommend the audiobook... the narration (those accents though 🤩) was excellent! Looking for your next book by this author? Check out The Nothing Man.

🗣️ Thank you to @netgalley and @blackstonepublishing for the opportunity to read and review this book via gifted audiobook! All opinions are honest and my own.

This book was super fun as an audiobook! It was such an interesting plot. I did figure out the ending pretty early on but it still held my attention and had me listening any chance I could to see what would happen. I still had some questions at the end, but overall I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a thriller with an interesting premise.

Twisting story. Some interesting characters. Who can you trust if you can't trust your best friend?

Adele Rafferty is a washed up actress hiding from her past failures working in a motel. When the opportunity to work again falls on her lap, via a last minute call and an NDA, she jumps on the next plane to Ireland to begin shooting immediately.

It doesn’t take long for things to start feeling eerie. There’s a bare bones cast and crew, and events off the screen begin echoing the shooting script. What is real and what is art? How long do you wait to find out?

Howard does an excellent job setting the tone for the movie, the set, the book within the script. The layers are great and the outcome was surprising. An engrossing and satisfying read! The audiobook was excellent.

This is like reading every one of your nightmares come to life. Adele is a former soap star on the brink of throwing the towel in when she gets the perfect job starring in a horror film in her home of Ireland. She instantly heads to the set which is located in the woods of Cork. Adele finds the remoteness and quiet ideal until things begin to make her question everything.

There are definitely some heart pounding scenes in this thriller. At one point in the book, Adele is alone in the woods cut off with no means of transportation and communication. The trees are everywhere and the sky is pitch black. And she's pretty sure someone is chasing her and she's hearing noises. The hairs on my neck tingled as I kept turning around to look behind me while reading. Howard does a great job of building the suspense and painting that perfect picture of a truly frightened protagonist. There are several layers to this book but it was overall easy enough to follow and made you question Adele's sanity as she does herself. The mystery kept me guessing until the end. I enjoyed the audio presentation of the book and found that the narrators did a great job of reading all scenes, including those where the book was written as a movie script.

I had not read a book by this author before but will definitely be looking at her backlist as this one had thrills, mystery and true suspense throughout. I would recommend this one to anyone looking for a good psychological thriller.

I read a book from this author last year and loved it, can not say the same for this one.
This was unbelievably boring, with one of the most frustrating main characters I have come across in a while.
Most of this takes place across like 2 nights and the conclusions this character jumps to are ridiculous. She spends much of the book running around panicking for absolutely no real reason.
Near the end, I thought it was going in a good direction but then it did a complete 180 and decided to go with a tired cliche you've seen before.
Truly didn't enjoy much in this one.
1.5 stars

Adele is an actress struggling to make ends meet working for a motel waiting for a big break. When she fails an audition and her past in her home, Ireland, starts to haunt her, she decides it is finally time to give up. Acting is not for her. Then she gets the call she's been waiting for - a last-minute motion picture where she will star in the main role. The problem - it's shooting in Ireland where she has tried to bury a past filled with trauma and mistakes.

When we first meet Adele, there is an immediate feeling of unease about her and you just know the plot line that follows will be thrilling and maybe a little spooky. She's working a dead end job, gets the call of a lifetime and as soon as she steps foot on the set of this film, it just gets worse and worse. I loved reading this building anxiety as Adele encounters real and imagined horrors on the set of this film. From a sleazy crew member to spooky sounds in the night, power outages. It ticked all of the boxes for a good thriller/horror book. I was hooked.

And then, unfortunately, we go the "big reveal." We discover what's been going on, who is behind the perfect little touches that I loved so much... and it fell apart for me. It seemed incredibly unlikely. There was nothing shocking or exciting about it. It unfolded at an odd pace. And the book itself acknowledged that it was a boring ending that wouldn't captivate an audience! Two characters literally have this conversation on the page! It tanked for me right there. I was so disappointed because the build up is fantastic.

The audiobook is quite well done. The narrator for Adele was wonderful to listen to. Her accent gave it a great authenticity versus listening to someone that isn't from Ireland doing their best at the accent.

I received a reviewer copy of Run Time by Catherine Ryan Howard from the publisher Blackstone Books from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

What It’s About: Adele Rafferty is licking her wounds in LA after her last role ended in disaster. Just when she decides to give up on this career, she is offered a role in a low budget horror movie by an up and coming director, however this horror movie slowly becomes a real life horror story.

What I Loved: The premise is original and gives a unique premise to the alone in the wilderness theme. This book mixes the Ireland movie/TV scene with paranoia with mystery. I think this book is very creative and is squarely in the horror genre.

What I didn’t like so much: Okay, so there's a lot here. The first is that we have a 'poor little famous girl' who really has no background to make us care about her (okay, I feel like this is pretty standard with thrillers, but with the ambitious original premise, I expected a bit more). I found Adele quite annoying. There were too many male characters and I really couldn't keep track of all them which made the shocking moments maybe less shocking? Also, this book has a script within a book so we also get the story of the movie Adele is acting in and it kind of breaks up the novel in a confusing way?

Who Should Read It: People who wish there was more Hollywood in their deserted woods thrillers.

Summary: A fascinating premise that didn't quite deliver for me.

This is a book within a book, within a movie that gets made into a book then a movie. Lol. Some of it is happening in real time, some as a movie script, all of it based on a book that only exists in the movie. Scratching your head? You’re not alone.
I really wanted to love this book. Unfortunately I couldn’t get past Adele’s paranoia and the endless chapters of her running from nothing. It was all running and panic and no climax. The actual climax/twist was totally predictable and unsatisfying.
As an audiobook, it was well done. I enjoyed the narrators and felt they fit the book. It helped having another narrator for the movie scene parts of the book, helping to break it up.
I’m so sad I didn’t love this book. I really like this writer. But the book needed so much more then what was given. Maybe throwing something supernatural in it, or an actual deranged killer, would have saved it. Without it, it fell flat

I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how to write this review. The writing was stellar and I loved the originality of incorporating a screen play within a thriller, but…it wasn’t very thrilling. Which makes me sad, because Catherine Ryan Howard is one of my favorite (and auto-buy) authors. Not much really happened. There weren’t any twists, but just some mild mystery that was quickly explained and tied with a nice bow. I did listen to the audiobook, and it was a lot of fun, so at least there was that.

I had higher expectations for this because I loved the author's previous book so much. However, I thought it was still very interesting & a unique story.