"Twenty-Seven Minutes: A Novel" by Ashley Tate is a captivating exploration of time, relationships, and the impact of life-altering decisions. The book stands out for its unique narrative structure and thought-provoking examination of the consequences of a single, pivotal moment.

One commendable aspect of the novel is Ashley Tate's skillful handling of the concept of time. The use of twenty-seven minutes as a central theme adds a layer of intrigue, creating a sense of urgency and anticipation throughout the story. The author weaves together timelines and perspectives, offering readers a multi-faceted view of the characters and their interconnected lives.

Tate's writing style is evocative and immersive, drawing readers into the emotional depth of the characters and their experiences. The novel's structure, with its shifting timelines and perspectives, adds a dynamic quality, keeping the narrative engaging. The exploration of relationships and the ripple effects of decisions is both poignant and thought-provoking.

However, some readers may find the non-linear structure challenging to follow, and it might require careful attention to piece together the timeline of events. While the complexity adds depth to the storytelling, a more straightforward narrative could potentially make the novel more accessible to a broader audience.

In conclusion, "Twenty-Seven Minutes" is a compelling novel that delves into the intricacies of time and human connections. Ashley Tate's innovative narrative approach and rich character development make the book a thought-provoking read for those seeking a unique exploration of life-altering moments. While the non-linear structure may pose a challenge for some readers, the novel's thematic depth and emotional resonance contribute to its overall impact as a compelling literary work.

This book starts off with Pheobe Dean dying in the road after a car accident. There are suspicious events surrounding the accident and death which have you questioning what really happened. It switches than to 10 years later and follows several people from town and how their lives have been impacted by her death. Throughout the book you get flashbacks from that night in time chunks helping you to uncover exactly what happened. Pretty early in the book I had the what, where, and why figured out. The who was throwing me though. My initial instinct on this turned out to be correct in the end, it was just a matter of how to piece it together. Although I enjoyed the story of the book, I didn’t like how certain characters were portrayed in the book. I won’t say more than that as to not spoil it if you plan to read it. But that aspect was a bit of a let down for me personally.

You will really want to dig deep into this one and find out why you only have 27 minutes. This was a great book that you will not want to put down! Highly recommend

This book was enjoyable, and it really pulled me in from the beginning: the middle was kind of eh, too much fluff that we just didn’t need. I didn’t like the characters at all, but that happens! Overall a decent read.

I received a free copy from NetGalley. None of the narrators are reliable, which makes me wondering if I should even trust the ending.

Twenty-Seven Minutes was a book that held small-town secrets. Ten years ago, Phoebe Dean was killed in a horrific car accident and her brother Grant was driving. There has been a lot of mystery surrounding the accident. The town has been suspended in grief and unanswered questions about that night.

The story is told in alternating voices of those impacted by the accident. There were also flashbacks of the night the accident happened. I was invested in discovering the real story but this book dragged on and on. The end of the story was anti-climactic for me. There was a letdown after so much build-up. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

Initially this book pulled me in. The first few chapters really had me wanting to know what happened and how each POV was involved. Then the pace began to slow and not one of the four main characters was enjoyable. I found them all to be one dimensional, unrelatable and annoying at times. The premise of the story was great and the writing was good and easy to follow but it just wasn’t for me. The ending was a surprise I didn’t expect but the delivery felt rushed and left me with unanswered questions.
Overall, it was not a bad book, it was just lacking depth and character development for me. The author did well expressing how different people handle grief but I wish I could’ve liked at least one character!
Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the ARC of Twenty Seven Minutes.

📚: Twenty-Seven Minutes by Ashley Tate
⭐️: 3.5/5 (rounding down on #goodreads)

Are you into co-dependent relationships? Unreliable narrators? Gaslighting? Obsessive sibling dynamics? Small town secrets? If so, this book may be for you.

Ashley Tate's debut novel, Twenty-Seven Minutes, starts out with a bang (literally) - and out the gate, I thought we may have a dark horse five-star read on our hands. I was hooked from the prologue and excited to read ahead. Unfortunately, pacing issues started pretty quickly thereafter, bringing this could-be-unputdownable premise to a bit of a lag. The core characters felt somewhat interchangeable, and even with the reveal at the end, questions still linger, leaving larger plot gaps than preferred.

Thanks to @poisonedpenpress via @netgalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. Twenty-Seven Minutes is out later this month on January 30th!

This book started out really strong and hooked me right away but then it just didn't go anywhere for the longest time and I felt like nothing was really happening until the end. The pacing was really off and it slowed down way too much and I found myself just wanting to see how it would end. I didn't care about any of the characters and wasn't expecting so much grief throughout the story. It just wasn't for me.

To start out with I'm giving this 3.5 stars. I'm confused as to round down to 3 or up to 4 tho. The premise of this book was fire; why did it take Grant twenty seven minutes to call for help for his sister Phoebe after an auto accident? What really happened in that time? Could Phoebe have been saved if help had come sooner?
Where my doubt comes from is the execution of this story. It was alot of fluff in the middle. This could've shortened the book by 1/3 and been so much more suspenseful and thrilling! I couldn't stand any of these characters! Luckily I don't have to enjoy the characters to enjoy the story. Unlikable characters can be a real draw for me. I think we were supposed to have liked June and towards to the end I did, but I would have appreciated her role more in the story had I the opportunity to relate to her sooner. So like I said before, great story line, just too slow in the middle.
Decided to round down to 3 stars.

I feel like this book was trying too hard to be suspenseful and surprising. It took me a lot longer than I care to admit to get through.

Thank you to @netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the ARC.

𝐌𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬
Unfortunately I pretty much dnfed this around 250 pages in. I skimmed the last few pages to get a sense of the ending, but it didn’t hold my attention. It’s actually put me in a bit of a reading slump because I found it very hard to finish.

This is a multi POV story of 4 characters which is set 10 years after a horrific road accident where one of the character’s (Grant) sister (Phoebe) died. There is a lot of back and forth in the timeline, flash backs to the days leading up to the accident. But it was just too much of a slow burn for me.

I didn’t like any of the characters, most of them were super annoying and nothing really happened. I kept expecting it to take off and get good, but it didn’t. It was more mystery than thriller. I did read the twist at the end, it was unexpected but not enough to turn it around.

I am not sure I've ever read another book where I disliked so many characters.
As the 10 year anniversary of a tragic accident approaches for the tiny town of West Wilmer, we meet 4 people who are doing their best to cope, in very different ways. We get flashbacks of the terrible night from long ago and 4 different perspectives of what happens now. As we get closer to the truth, it's hard to feel sorry for anyone in the town because only 2 people know what happened that night and one of them is lying. None of the characters have much credibility because they all have various mental conditions and altered states of reality.

It was a pretty good story for a debut! The ending took me by surprise! I really loved June.

I just wish there was more action, there wasn't much happening for the first half of the book.

Twenty is even minutes? Why did it take so long to contact authorities after they're accident? Did Phoebe have to die? Grant and Becca know more than they are saying, but each for their own reasons. This is a thrilling tale of secrets and life changes due to twenty a seven minutes.

Imagine driving the car that crashed and killed your younger sister. That is what happened 10 years ago to Grant. Phoebe was considered the perfect child by their mother, who has always treated Grant as a second-class citizen.
Even all these years later, somehow, they still live together, though every interaction is torturous at best. The biggest mystery is why Grant took 27 minutes to call for help for his dying sister. As the chapters unfold, we learn about Grant, Phoebe, Becca, June, and Wyatt in the then and the now.
For the most part, I was immersed in these characters lives. Honestly, none of them were particularly likable, though I felt the most for June. When the truth about the night of Phoebe’s death came out, well, let’s just say, I was surprised. While I didn’t wind up really changing my opinions about these characters, they did become more fleshed out, and I could see how the past had shaped their futures.

Twenty-Seven Minutes....
A lot can happen in twenty-seven minutes. A car can wreck, a life can be lost, a family can change... anything can happen.
The question is, what really happened in these 27 minutes?
I loved the craft of this novel. I loved getting small pieces and slowly putting them together to figure it all out. It was a little too predictable for my taste and there was rougher language than I prefer. There were moments it seemed slow, but overall was a quick, mildly suspenseful read.
Rating:
Thank you NetGalley, Ashley Tate, and Poisoned Pen Press for this Advanced Readers Copy in exchange for my honest review.

Everyone idolizes Phoebe Dean. Smart, funny, charming, beautiful, precocious, destined to be.., homecoming queen, and everybody's friend. She was the best thing about West Wilmer, and  was going to put this town on the map.
Until her precious life was snuffed out at age 18 in a tragic car accident. The car was being driven by her brother Grant, the high school football star, who may or may not have hit a deer or just been black out drunk. 27 minutes passed between the accident and when the ambulance was called. What happened during this time? If it was called earlier, Phoebe could have been saved. But no one is talking.
Fast forward to 10 years later when the Dean family is hosting a memorial for Phoebe and some folks want the real truth to come out.
The book goes back and forth between present day and the night of the party 10 years ago, when the accident happened. We hear the perspective from 4 different characters: Phoebe, Dean's sister, who haunts him, and only wants the best for him, no matter the risk to others and herself.'crazy' Becca, who was obsessed with Dean, even though he was seeing someone else, and is convinced to lie for him in exchange for the promise of a relationship.Wyatt-June's brother who was also there that night, but disappears the day of the accidentJune-a friend of Becca's who just wants to know what happened to her brother and if anyone saw him that nightThis book is definitely a slow burn and takes a while to build up to the conclusion, which is indeed a surprising twist. That part is well done. But there are a few unlikeable characters along the way, especially Becca. How anyone could be so naive as to be convinced they have a 'secret relationship' in order to hide Grant's secret was ridiculous. She reminded me of the Glenn Close character in 'Fatal Attraction'. So she's quite a bit annoying. And Phoebe is so invested in Grants' success, to keep the pact they made as kids to leave West Wilmer together. Under pressure from her and his school mates, he starts drinking heavily. He doesn't meet up to Phoebe's perfect standards, and she won't have that. It was as if she was acting like his mother. Their relationship was very strange.
There are other ancillary characters throughout but these 4 make up the crux of the plotline, and when the big showdown happens at the end, all the secrets are revealed. June finally finds out what happened to her brother and what secrets everyone has been hiding. I felt that she was the only character that had any redeeming value. So a good twist, if you have the patience and time it takes to get there.

3.5 stars, actually.

Honestly, I don't think I've ever found so many unsavory characters in one book - much less in the same small town. They come in both sexes as well as different ages, sizes and backgrounds, but they share one thing in common: not a single one is a person I'd ever want to hang out with (even the official description calls the town "claustrophobic"). That they all have hung around this long is a mystery in and of itself. Add that to the constant chapter shuffles between time periods and character perspectives - many of which seemed more repetitive than revealing - and a rather abrupt ending, and the result was less than totally satisfying.

That said, what was happening was well-written enough to keep me flipping the pages of my e-reader and even taking it to bed to finish (an important point since that rarely happens). It begins interestingly enough; ten years earlier, a beautiful, talented and seemingly "perfect" young woman named Phoebe Dean met her death when the truck her older brother Grant was driving smashed into the guardrail of a dangerous bridge in the town. Now, 10 years down the road (so to speak), Phoebe's mother is holding a memorial ceremony for her daughter, and the townspeople soon will vote on whether or not to remove the bridge (why they waited so long to do that is beyond me, but hey).

At issue over the decade, too, is why Grant, who was seriously injured in the crash, waited so long to seek help; the 27-minute gap between the crash and his call meant the difference between life and death for Phoebe - for which many folks in the community still blame him. Another truck passenger, Grant's friend Becca Hoyt, was injured as well; but while she claims to have no memories of the accident beyond the initial crash, she knows Grant has a secret - one that she's been keeping all this time. The events of 10 years ago impacted other families as well, including that of June Delroy; her brother Wyatt, a friend of Grant's, left home the night of the crash and never returned. At the epicenter is a decade-old wild party and the unhealthy liaisons that were present even then that resurface as everyone comes together for Phoebe's memorial service.

All told, it's an intriguing read with a number of twists. I thank the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review a pre-release copy.

✨Book Review - Twenty-Seven Minutes✨

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️🌑

*I was provided this book free of charge by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

Lately I have been reading a lot of thriller and fantasy books. Can someone please write me a thriller fantasy book? Not sure what that would look like but I would devour it!

For some reason the last two books I’ve read have had some element of stalker-adjacent character so that’s an odd coincidence.

I think this book was really well written. I absolutely did not see the ending coming and I always appreciate a surprise ending.

I don’t know if Ashley Tate intended it, but I absolutely despised Grant and Becca. But I down know who I hated more- Grant for how he treated Becca or Becca for just being insufferable. I enjoyed the multiple points of view and while I say I hated Becca, I enjoyed all the of her Points of view because I felt like she was at least honest with the reader with what she knew- she was trying to figure out what happened as much as the reader. She really was only dishonest to herself and I felt bad for her.

I loved the characters of June and Wyatt and I do wish we could have seen a little more into their relationship but I love how Wyatt was portrayed and the similarities between him and their mom.

Overall, I would purchase this book. I think this would make a great Book of the Month!