My inner gremlin poked her head out this week and I got a bit jealous ! Whoa! I would love to say this is unlike me but who am I kidding. I can be a jealous brat 🤗

So, I read the description for Where They Lie and my palms instantly got sweaty, “this book is totally my speed”, I thought. Mark my words, this book is going to break the internet.

I hit the request button and sat back to wait…

Cue the magic little ding dong to my inbox!!! My big ole eyes got wide as I stared at my approval ! Yay ! I’m still a cool kid !

This book right here is way more than just a thriller. It deals with some hard topics, historical fiction, mystery, and suspense. I was in over my head and I didn’t know if I would ever be able to check back in to reality.

This is a book with characters you love and some you love to hate! Filled with twists and turns at every corner the amount of suspense kept me on edge the entire time ! I flippin’ loved this book!

Five Stars ! 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Teaser :

An immersive, literary thriller set in 1960s Dublin about an ambitious young female journalist whose investigation of a long missing actress will take her through misty streets and the tangled underworld—and force her to confront the long buried secrets of her own past.

Some stories demand to be told. They keep coming back, echoing down through the decades, until they find a teller . . .

Dublin, 1943. Actress Julia Bridges disappears. She was last seen entering the house of Gloria Fitzpatrick, who is later put on trial for the murder of a woman whose abortion she facilitated. But it’s never proved that Gloria had a hand in Julia’s death—and Julia’s body has never been found. Gloria, however, is sentenced to life in an institution for the criminally insane, where she’s found dead a few years later from an apparent suicide, and the truth of what happened to Julia Bridges dies with her.

Until . . .

Dublin, 1968. Nicoletta Sarto is an ambitious junior reporter for the Irish Sentinel when the bones of Julia Bridges are discovered in the garden of a house on the outskirts of the city. Drawn into investigating the 25-year-old mystery of Julia’s disappearance and her link to the notorious Gloria Fitzpatrick, Nicoletta becomes immersed in the tangled underworld of the illegal abortion industry, stirring up long-buried secrets from her own past.

A beautifully atmospheric, timely thriller, Where They Lie uses a murder mystery as a lens to focus on the long struggle of women fighting to achieve autonomy and succeed in a man’s world.

Thank you to Harper Perennial and netgalley for access to Where They Lie by Claire Coughlan. This thriller gave you all the thrills. I really enjoyed it.

Struggled to connect with the characters. Not a bad book, just not great for me personally. I hope it finds its audience. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read it.

I probably shouldn't have requested this novel in the first place because I'm not big on mysteries, but it sounded interesting and it was praised by no less than John Banville, so I figured I'd take a chance. And the storyline was in fact interesting, with a young woman reporter in 1968 Dublin looking into the discovery of the remains of an actress who disappeared some twenty years earlier. And lo, as the reporter’s investigation proceeds and in the way of such novels, she comes to find connections with her own life, including the details of her birth. Which isn't really giving away too much, because the truth is involved enough to defy easy guessing as to what's going on, though it also makes for my chief complaint about mysteries, that they can be convoluted enough, as this one is, to have you constantly paging back to refresh yourself on salient points. Still, as I say, the mystery is interesting, particularly for me with its look at attitudes about abortion at the time, both in the 1960s and 1940s. Evocative it was for me in that regard of the movie "Vera Drake," and indeed an exchange between the reporter and an abortionist was the most interesting thing for me about the novel – that and a heated exchange between the reporter and her mother about the daughter’s chosen profession. Easily interesting enough both were that they could have stood on their own as arresting domestic drama and not required the trappings of a mystery. Also, the writing is top drawer enough to make the novel more literary fiction than the standard mystery.

As much a murder mystery story as a look at a young woman’s struggle to succeed in a man’s world, Where They Lie is a beautifully atmospheric debut that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

Very creepy and atmospheric. Well done.

Heart pounding thriller that left me on the edge of my seat. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one. Definitely one of the best books this year.

This book felt very...basic. Easy read, straightforward, but I felt like it lacked atmosphere and tension that thrillers greatly benefit from.

There really wasn't anything overtly wrong with this book, but it just felt very formulaic. I just could not really connect with the characters.

The story flowed well and the characters were well developed. I recommend this book and look forward to more from this author.


****Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review****

Thank you to the publisher for the arc!


This was an okay read, although I do believe it will resonate with a lot of people considering what’s going on in society today. However for me it just was kind of boring and the pacing was all over the place with a few plot holes