Trapped on an island in the middle of Lake Superior, creepy things happening, gruesome finds, a group of people who can't quite trust each other....this book had everything I want in a thriller! I made the mistake of starting this book in the evening and lost half a nights sleep because I had to find out what was going on. It was worth it! My one con is the dialogue. At times it seemed immature, the 16 year old sometimes came across as smarter than the adults and the dropped threads in conversations was frustrating. I wanted everyone to take some time and properly communicate!

This isn't your normal closed room mystery. This is spooky horror stuff.

Oh I love this. So our girl owns this massive and creepy private island. Her ex-husband bought it for her and built her an amazing modern home on the island. They're still friends but it is awkward. But she can't afford to own an island now that they are divorced, because she is a teacher/writer and is raising her niece, so she rents it out to rich people who trash it and do weird things.
She gets a call from the latest renter about blood on the property so she gathers her niece and they head out to check on the island. When they arrive to get on the boat her ex-husband and his sister are there.
They insist on coming and she relents. The rest of the horror occurs on the island, which is completely isolated with no cell service or anything else.
There are a lot of gorey and terrifying moments here. our protagonist is flawed and relatable. Yu really do feel her.
She doubts herself at every turn but not in a weak and annoying way. She just wants to be certain before she panics. It is the most relatable thing.
With all the incredibly strange things happening here on this island it is a good thing.
AND as someone who owns a not even special piece of property I know how incredibly annoying people are about wanting to buy your property. I can't even go a day without some jerk contacting me about buying my house.

This is the scariest book I have ever read and I am so glad I read it on a sunny day.
Thanks for the nightmares.

I didn't expect to get sucked into this book like I did, but there was so much going on that I finished in one sitting. The mystery was twisting and immersive and I loved trying to figure out who the culprit was.

This book totally caught me off guard. It was easy to get into the story, become engrossed in the twisty mystery, and make guesses about the culprit while trying to gather the pieces to answer the questions that kept piling up in each chapter. The claustrophobic sensation of being trapped on an island with a killer lurking around and the entire connection between characters who keep secrets from each other, along with surprising revelations, kept me on my toes.

What I didn't expect was how things wrapped up. It was twisty, but it was also incredibly awkward! I found myself screaming "What the hell?" several times. When the paranormal vibes were thrown into the mystery meets horror equation, I felt a little confused about my feelings. The revelations honestly sucker-punched me because they were a little far-fetched. I had second thoughts about how the story concluded in the most logical way. At least the author found a way to patch the loopholes up by giving us less eye-popping and more earth-shattering and satisfying ending!

The only thing that bothered me was that the dialogues' tone resembled more young adults than mature adult conversations.

The story revolves around Laney Kilpatrick, an English teacher and debut thriller author who is recently divorced during the pandemic and grieving her sister who lost her battle to cancer. She is raising her 16-year-old niece, Madison, and reluctantly renting a vacation home on a remote island to strangers. The house was a marriage gift from her ex, Kit, who signed the place over after their split. Laney rejected his request for alimony but cannot afford the expenses of such a grandiose place: a two-thousand-square-foot custom-built home on a five-acre private island in Lake Superior.

By renting the house to strangers, she's not only letting them invade her privacy, but she is also allowing them to move chairs from her secret spots, burn down her gazebo with a bonfire, and destroy her grandmother's coffee table with what are clearly canine teeth marks, despite promising that their dog would stay outside.

Things get out of control when the renters call her in the middle of the night to inform her that there are blood and nail marks all over the green/guest room's closet. When Laney drives to the house with her niece Madison, she finds her ex-husband, Kit (a tech company CEO), Kit's sister (a counselor and Laney's ex-best friend, Jayla), their mutual friend, Sadie, and Sadie's cop brother, Garrett, who Laney has some unexplained irritation towards.

Laney still harbors resentment towards her ex-husband, suspecting he's having an affair with Sadie, trying to soothe things with her estranged friend Jayla, and gets irritated by Garrett's existence for some unknown reason.

When they decide to spend the night together at the house, things get out of control. A hand of someone they found in the backyard is only the beginning of the escalating situation. The whispers raise. The pressure trembles. The secrets they keep are about to come out and change the course of their lives. Somebody is playing a deadly game with them, but who?

Overall, I went back and forth between giving the book three and four stars and ultimately decided to round up 3.5 stars to 4 for the riveting writing style and great blend of paranormal meets horror elements.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Reviewed for NetGalley:

Laney, becoming the recent guardian of her teenage niece after her sister's passing, still reeling from her divorce, travels to her vacation home to investigate the strange, bloody complaint from her Airbnb guests.

However, this is not the first complaint, and once she heads to the rural, Lake Superior island, her ex and old friends are also there to investigate.

A wild, thriller/horror read that kept me guessing until the end.

Really enjoyable.

Many thanks to Kelley Armstrong, the publisher, and netgalley for this ARC. I have read Kelley Armstrong before, I was not expecting to be reading horror from her and I loved every minute. This book had me jumping at random, but normal noises in my house, and I am not mad at it. I am very hard to scare but my heart was pounding. Overall, holy crap this was great. Read it, trust me.

What if the place you always dreamed of became your worst nightmare? This is exactly what happens to Laney Kilpatrick in Kelley Armstrong’s new horror novel, Hemlock Island.
When Laney’s husband, Kit, bought her the private island as a wedding present, it was a dream come true. Then the pandemic hits and Laney and Kit’s marriage doesn’t survive. Now she is forced to rent out her treasured island in order to keep it. When strange and mysterious things begin appearing on the island, Laney decides to make a quick trip out to look for a cause. Unbeknownst to her she’s not the only one.
I really enjoyed this book. It was full of surprises, and kept me constantly guessing. Every time I thought things could not get any worse, they did! This book actually gave me nightmares! I have always loved Kelley Armstrong’s writing, and she did not disappoint me with this one. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys horror or thriller genres.
(Trigger warnings- This is a horror novel so there are descriptions of violence and gore, but I should also warn readers of mentions of SA and the victims aftermath in case anyone is trying to avoid such topics.)

I am wrecked today as I stayed up basically all night reading Hemlock Island!

I started it yesterday afternoon, and I picked it up again when I went to bed & read until 11:30pm. I had to go to sleep with the lights on because I was so creeped out. I was at 78% complete at that point. But I was dying to know what happened next, so I got up again at 3:30am to finish reading it.

In my opinion, that's the hallmark of an excellent book!

This is Kelley Armstrong’s first full length horror novel—and, I’d have to say, it’s a home run. She’s struck the ball out of the park with this one. So, so, so good!

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

Holy forking shirt-balls. What a wild ride this was.

I'm not a horror fan. When I'm forced to watch scary movies, my hands are suddenly glued to my eyes. But I've read everything Kelley has ever written and thought, "It won't be that bad." Boy, I was so wrong... but so right.

Right off the bat, you meet Laney, her niece Madison, and Laney's getaway, Hemlock Island. I loved these characters, and the island from the very beginning was a major character.

This started so tame, and then it was absolutely nuts. Again, keep in mind, I'm not a horror fan, and reading this at night while attempting to sleep was very, very dumb, but I loved every second of this book. I could not have seen that ending in a thousand years.

If you're looking for a stand-alone thriller/horror, get this. You're welcome.

Absolutely amazing! Kelley Armstrong is one of my favorite authors. I’ve been reading her work since the Darkest Powers series. Hemlock Island was a very unique mystery/thriller. The setting was so beautiful and the characters were fantastic. I really loved Laney. She was complex but very real. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book. Can’t wait to purchase it and at it to my collection!

I struggled with this book from start to finish. The writing just didn't do it for me, and I had a hunch that I knew where everything was going right from the get go. 2 out of 5 stars.

I will read anything Kelley Armstrong writes, but this blew my mind! I expected a twisty mystery, but this is actually horror at it's finest. Laney rents out her home on the private island she got from her now ex-husband, Kit. She's been getting complaints from her renters about weird things happening, so she and her niece, Maggie, head to the island to investigate. Along the way they run into Kit and his sister, who decide to go along with them to find out what's going on. A couple of friends from Laney's past also show up, so the 6 of them head to Hemlock Island.

What seems to be a straight forward thriller is so much more, and the horror escalates quickly. This was a "can't put down" for me - loved it!

I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to read this arc book and it did not disappoint. I had never read anything from this author and Kelley Armstrong is now one of my favorite authors.

Hemlock Island book a little bit of everything for a horror book (some creepy, some nail biting, secrets…) — it had great detailed characters with strong dialog, amazing world building, twists & turns.

I was so sad when this book ended — I wanted MORE! This book was fast paced and kept me turning pages and guessing what was waiting on the next. This book needs to be on your read list if it isn’t already. I will be recommending this book to all my friends and reading clubs and cannot to read more from this author!

A perfect blend of thriller and horror! Word of warning though, you may not want to read this when you are all alone and it is dark outside. Laney owns an isolated house on an island in Lake Superior. She rents the house out to help make ends meet and her latest renters have called her up to complain that there is blood in a closet. They are demanding a refund and are leaving immediately. Laney, a teacher and writer, brings her niece with her to check out what is happening. When they are almost there her ex-husband and his sister meet her to help find out what is happening. Once on the island an ex-friend and her brother who happens to be a cop show up. Things are not what they seem and there is definitely hidden tension among everyone in the group. Just when they think they may have figured out what is happening a dead body appears. The situation quickly spirals and secrets are spilled.
This is a must read! I am a huge fan of Kelley Armstrong and this book did not disappoint. It is different from her other books but it caught my attention and I could not stop reading. The blend of horror and thriller along with the drama of the characters had me hooked from the beginning to end.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this advanced copy.

Hemlock Island was such a quick and easy read for me. I was so Interested in the character dynamic and the island itself. I really loved the mystery of it all and that towards middle half It started to seem more horror ish.⁣
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This novel is definitely very atmospheric and very fun to read. Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for approving me!

This is my first book from Kelley Armstrong, so I'm not familiar with her catalog to have had any expectations. I requested this book based on the ominous looking cover and the synopsis, which sounded intriguing.

The good:

1. I love isolation thrillers, especially a group stuck on an island. Has it been done a thousand times already? Absolutely, but I'll read it every time.

2. I enjoyed a lot of the horror elements

3. ...I'm sure I'll think of something.

The bad:

1. The dialog. No one talks like this. The dialog was written as if by aliens who've never heard a human conversation. The exception being maybe vapid teenagers? Which brings me to my other complaint:

2. These were adults, right? Not a single person reacted to the situation in a believable way. They're having looong, completely unnecessary discussions while legit horror is happening *literally* right outside the door. It's as if this book was intended to be YA, but then last minute the characters' ages were changed, and a 'grown up' plot twist added.

3. The 'plot twist' was hard to see coming, but mostly due to it being just on this side of ridiculous. Also, the horror takes a back seat to the years old drama of this friend group. A drama, I might add, that also feels incredibly forced. These are people in their 30's who seem incapable of having an adult conversation, and tip toe around every single topic that could actually heal their drama. It's like spending days working yourself crazy about what you should make someone for dinner. Tons of inner dialog, flashbacks, *almost* attempts at actually getting an answer, a build up of tension, until it finally culminates into an emotionally stunted conversation when you could have just asked the question you wanted to know!

This was a wild, frenetic ride. If it had been YA, I could have afforded it more leeway. I seem to be in the minority here, most reviewers appear to be familiar with, and fans of the author. I didn't have that luxury, so I had to give it an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the e-ARC of Hemlock Island.

Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong.
I have read and loved almost all of Kelley Armstrong's books. I barely read the blurbs because I know that if Kelley Armstrong writes it, I will love it.
I was not expecting this book to go the way it did. It is a straight horror book. I don't usually read horror, so I can't really compare it to others. I will say that this one is intense but I could still sleep at night, maybe meant for young adults but gripping enough for everyone.
The story teller, Laney, gets divorced from her rich husband, Kit, after being quarantined together during the pandemic. She walks away with the dream vacation home that they built on private Hemlock Island. Unfortunately, she can't afford the place on her own, so she rents it out.
After receiving a frantic call from one of the renters, she and her niece, Mags, head to the island to investigate. They are joined by her ex and some friends that she is on the outs with.
Throughout the book, past drama is unveiled while present horror rapidly picks up its pace. Is Laney imagining what she is seeing? Or is everyone in over their heads? 4.5 stars.

#bookreview #2023 #netgalley #horror #YA #postpandemic #romance

Wow! I absolutely inhaled this book! Within a few pages, I quickly realized this would be one of those conundrum books for me….I want to enjoy it as long as possible but can’t stop reading it. This was the first book I’ve read from this author and now I’m ready to Add All to Cart. I loved the characters, loved the atmospheric setting, and loved the fast pace thrill that started almost instantly and didn’t end until the last page. Thank you to the publishers for letting me read an ARC of this book. I cannot wait to tell everyone to add this to their TBR lists!

4 stars

To say I was surprised with this book would be an understatement. I always thought that Armstrong wrote paranormal romance or urban fantasy. I’ve never read her before because those genres dont appeal to me. I was really shocked to see that she writes sooo much more and so good as well. This book was totally engrossing and had all the best elements of a good horror novel. I highly recommend.

What a ride! What started as a thriller/suspense novel turned out to be something I never expected.

Huge thanks to @stmartinspress and @netgallery for the advanced copy. I LOVE Kelley Armstrong novels!