A beautiful setting, a love story, an inter-class friendship, a story within a story and a secret from the past that is threatening to upend everything. Oh, and a missing protagonist. Katherine Wood’s LadyKiller is a domestic thriller with so much to recommend it.

When childhood friends, heiress Gia and working-class Abby, plan to meet at a remote luxury hotel in Sweden to check off a bucket-list item of seeing the Northern Lights, both are looking forward to reconnecting. Things turn harrowing when Abby begins receiving threatening texts right before her flight and Gia never shows up.

Abby, accompanied by Gia’s younger brother Benny, heads to the Greek island estate where Gia had been living with her handsome new husband Garrett to get some answers, but all that they find is the manuscript of a memoir written by Gia.

Full of twists and shocking turns, the story builds slowly with a dual point of view and timeline. Wood keeps you reading until the end.

The setting of this was amazing but unfortunately I was not a fan of the ending. Sometimes open endings are fun but this one fell a little flat for me. Overall, it was pretty solid.

Ladykiller grabs you slowly and keeps you on edge! The twists and turns have you guessing and just as you figure it out, you are mistaken!

After a whirlwind seduction, Gia brings her new husband, Garrett, to her secluded Greek island, where she has vacationed and lived a privileged life, devoid of responsibility, accountability and consequence. A perfect love story, until it isn’t.

Katherine Wood has crafted THE psychological thriller of the summer. This is the one you have been waiting to read. A story within a story, not sure what is real and what is not. It has all the elements: Family, friendship, loyalty, suspense, deception disfunction and drama.

I highly recommend Ladykiller for your enjoyment.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the complimentary eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book was so slow.
It’s painful to get through.
Unreliable narrator for one of the perspectives.

The mystery aspect of who’s sending Abby the emails is good. However, Gia being taken advantage of is so hard to read because it’s so obvious what’s happening. The twist at the end is predicable but still good.

Gia and Abby are childhood best friends with the opposite upbringing. Gia is a well known heiress, whereas Abby is the daughter of Gia's family cook. They were thick as thieves despite their different upbringing and their friendship was cemented after a shared tragedy in Greece when the women were 18. Told in alternative perspectives and through Gia's manuscript, Ladykiller tells the story of how Gia seemingly disappeared on the same Greek island twelve years after the original tragedy occurred. This was a fast-paced read that was very hard to put down. I was drawn-in by the varied cast of characters and the idyllic location in Greece. I know some disliked the ending; however, I was pleased with it and enjoyed some of the ambiguity. It seemed fitting for the characters involved.

Gone Girl meets Verity!

It’s rare to find a debut that weaves its prose and plot so seamlessly. I can easily see Katherine Wood becoming the next big name in thrillers.

This story follows long time best friends Gia Torres and Abby Cormac in dual POVs and timelines.
After a brief falling out following Gia’s rash decision to marry a man she barely knows, Gia invites Abby for a getaway with herself and her brother, Benny. But, when Abby and Benny arrive Gia is no where to be found. When concerning texts come through that lead them to believe something is wrong, they head to Gia’s home in Greece. With the house empty their only clue is a manuscript written by Gia chronicling the events leading to her disappearance.

The wild twists and turns were perfectly paired with the sweet romance between Abby and Benny. You get the perfect dose of love mixed in and I simultaneously loved watching Abby and Benny together and loved seeing Gia in all her unhinged glory.
Katherine Wood wrote such strong characters with a killer plot in Ladykiller and I can’t wait to read more from her in the future!

Thank you NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review

my favorite type of thriller books are girls trips gone wrong (bonus points if they’re set in a tropical location).

Katherine Wood/St. John is an auto-read author for me, so I was ecstatic to get approved for a NetGalley arc for Ladykiller.

This wasn’t my favorite of hers, but it was still good. I was pulled in right from start and I found myself not wanting to stop reading. My only real complaint is the ending; I felt it was lackluster.

Ladykiller is an extravagant, quick-paced, dual perspective psychological thriller that takes place on the Greek islands. When Gia, an heiress who has recently rushed into a hasty marriage, goes missing, her best friend from childhood, Abby, rushes to find her using clues left behind in a salacious manuscript. The two of them are bonded from a tragedy that occurred when they were teenagers. However, it's also an event that has created distance between them. When Gia disappears, though, the present and the past begin to unravel all kinds of secrets, surprises, and questions.

I love a good It Girl thriller, and this one took a different tack in that it forces readers to question the reliability of all the characters involved. Not only do you suspect Gia (who fits the It Girl archetype) of possibly being something more nefarious than she seems, with her cluelessness ringing both true and false, but you also can't help but question how Abby arrives at her reasonable conclusions. The challenge to decide what actually happens falls to the reader rather than to the characters. So, if ambiguous or open endings aren't your cup of tea you might not like this one. Personally, I liked not having a definitive answer. It's one of those endings that has you looking over your shoulder, just in case, you know?

Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for my review.

A captivating slow-burning mystery set in the Greek Islands..This psychological thriller kept me engaged and guessing until the very end. However I was disappointed in the lack of a definitive resolution. There is a complex web of secrets, hidden agendas, and subterfuge.
Many thanks to Random House and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc copy in exchange for an honest review.
I was flying through this book trying to piece together the tales being told between Gia and her friend Abby. I enjoy an unreliable narrator, but just as soon as you think all of the truths are about to be uncovered, the book ends. The author leaves it up to the reader to decide which truths they believe are real, and I didn’t love that aspect of the book.

4.5 stars, rounded down to 4.

Ladykiller begins telling Abby’s intriguing story, and then it continues with what initially seems like literary writing from her friend, Gia. This writing quickly turns, though, as it exposes things that really happened. Or did they? And that’s the crux of the book. Is anyone telling the truth? Is everyone against one character? Does the truth even matter?

Although I thought at first about DNF’ing this book, I’m really glad I didn’t. I became increasingly invested as time went on, and I loved the way the author unveiled the truth. One particular bombshell comes toward the end, and I had to stop and sit with it for a minute.

Because truth is all relative, though, this book won’t hand you an easy solution. I know this will bother some people, but it made me like it even more.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

In a somewhat predictable tale of lies and money, and the lengths people will go to protect themselves, Abby and Gia are childhood best friends from different backgrounds who are forever tied together by a fateful night 12 years earlier. So when Gia insists that Abby join her for a birthday getaway, along with Gias brother Benny, Abby can’t think of a reason good enough to not go. But what unfolds is a series of events, told through Abby’s perspective and Gias manuscript, that one finds hard to know who is telling the truth. As the story unfolds and the truth becomes muddled, it’s easy to figure out where the book is headed, but a fun read that has the reader dying to explore Greece while solving the mystery put forth by Gia and Abby.

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc copy in exchange for an honest review.*

This book sounded and looked so interesting. I was excited to finally get to the arc. However, it fell flat for me. I didn't like any of the characters. They were all people that I would never want to spend time with so I didn't particularly care about what happened to them.

The story did not flow well. The plot was interrupted constantly by Gia's manuscript. It felt like this was trying to be the next Verity, and while I appreciate the attempt, it didn't work. I did not enjoy the manuscript chapters much so the book felt so disjointed. I just wanted to get back to Abby's POV to see what was really going on.

This is one of those books that doesn't really resolve things. It left things pretty open to interpretation and I personally hate when books do that. I don't want to have to guess how things turned out, I want things to be figured out and tied up nicely.

I'm giving this 3 stars solely because I thought the premise was intriguing and the attempt to execute it wasn't terrible.

This was a new to me author and was not disappointed. The cover caught my eye and just said “beach read thriller” to me. This was a very fast paced read perfect to read in a weekend

What a beautiful cover! That and the synopsis totally grabbed me. A mystery set within the Greek islands? What's not to love?! The story was overall an easy read with good character development. I truly felt transported within the story, but towards the end of the book the plot started to feel flat for me. The ending wasn't my favorite. Overall, definitely worth reading.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC, all opinions are my own

I've been sitting on this review for awhile. Quite awhile. Probably too long.

I enjoy unrelatable narrator stories a lot. I enjoy wicked women. I enjoy endings that are left open, to where your brain keeps spinning and spinning like it's running Internet Explorer and has all the tabs open trying to play music.

But this is desperately unpleasant. We're dealing with two women, one of whom is far more unpleasant than the other. Gia is stupid rich, the kind of rich that can burn cash at the weekend bonfires and use Cristal as the accelerant.

Her bestie Abby is the daughter of the hired help. Her father took such a liking to her he paid for her to attend the same hoity toity private school, her safety from cruel peers guaranteed by the above mentioned stupid rich girl everyone loves.

Gia gets married to the lOvE of HEr LiFe after a month of knowing him, but he's definitely on the up and up. 20 something years of being stupid rich has absolutely taught her better than trusting that people like her for her personality and not her infinite bag of holding, definitely. She has to sell her beautiful home in Greece because Daddy Dear left all of his bajillions to charity instead of his children and she's rapidly running out of money.

But hey, let's have a summer together, bestie! Me and my brother and you, seeing Aurora Borealis together. I'll pay for your plane ticket! Let's doooooo it.

Gia never shows up, though. And things are super suspish. The only evidence of her is the manuscript she left behind of her second novel. The first detailed what happened when she and Abby were teenagers, and a man ended up dead.

You see what's happening, right? Half the story is told via manuscript. And the story is not typed on the Typewriter of Absolute Truth.

I can't even get any umph to write this review because I just found this entire story unpleasant. Neither Gia nor Abby are particularly interesting. Despite checking so many of my Plot boxes, this feels very flat. Gia's writing is the gross flowery prose of someone whose hands have never done a day's work unless it was for a photo op, and Abby is a cardboard character bestie.

There's an audience for this, but I'm not the one to recommend it.

OMG this was so good. I could not stop reading it. The twists were amazing, the storyline was fresh and unlike anything I had read previously. The story follows Abby, who as a young woman, became friends with a rich girl for whom her mother worked. From then on, they were inseparable. But the story did not end happily - she is attacked by her best friend's stalker. The story switches between present day, Gia's manuscript, and Abby's memories from the time when she was attacked. The story was so well thought out - so interesting and engaging. The characters were so amazingly crafted, the story was so fun, and I honestly could not stop reading this. It was reminiscent of Saltburn, and the Talented Mr. Ripley - and I honestly would rank this right up there with those [though Saltburn is not a book]. I would HIGHLY recommend this for a fun, enticing, engaging, and steamy THRILLING summer read.

This ebook was provided by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Abby and Gia have been friends since childhood. Abby's mom worked for Gia's family and she became one of them...somewhat. Gia and Abby's shared history makes it difficult to know who is telling the truth in this book.

Some of the chapters are from Abby's POV; some are from Gia's manuscript for her next book. Are any of them true? This one will keep you guessing until the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House-Ballantine for the review copy of this book.

How well do you know your bestie? This story goes from present to past quite a bit to unveil what you aren’t expecting. So many twists and turns that I truly didn’t see the end coming. A very good book, but I feel as though some women will be looking at their new husbands with a side eye hahaha

A psychological thriller set in Greece?! Yes please! I love books about intricate family problems and this one was fantastic!! I loved it!!