First 5 star read of the year! I was hooked instantly, may it be my own person interest in true crime, Winstead’s writing, or some combination (most likely). My go to genre is always mystery/thriller/murder and add a great cast of characters and facts from a real true crime case and I’m sold. Because I read some much of the genre, 8 out of 10 I am able to guess the endings of books. Though I will admit I was half right, I still thoroughly enjoyed and was still shocked at all the twists and turns I did NOT expect! I love that knowing the facts of the Idaho murders case in real life was almost a negative in this book, it led you to the wrong conclusion which will be a gut punch to readers. I truly cannot say enough positives about this book and hope this half mystery/thriller and half true crime retelling is a genre that will pick up lots of steam in the coming years.

I really liked her last book but, this one made me uncomfortable. If you are going to reference a very specific crime…. Refer to them by their name. This is just identical to the Idaho murders, with the names changed. Which honestly feels like a slap in the face to the victims.

If you want to write about a true - true crime, do it. This just didn’t hit the spot and feels wrong to profit off of the actions that occurred. It glorifies the murderer and doesn’t pay respect to the victims.

This isn’t it.

3.5 stars
I had mixed feelings about this book, true crime isn’t typical genre preference for me, so the fact that it was so closely tied to the Idaho college murders did not set well with me. It was also fairly predictable. I enjoyed the sleuthing team and the characters that we got to know throughout the novel. I struggled at times when she was dealing with the loss of her dad, I tried to push it off as some complex grief, but it was confusing at times and didn’t seem to add much to the story.
Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark who provided me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review

This Book Will Bury Me is about a group of web crime sleuths who get involved in a murder case they are trying to solve.
The main character is Jane, a 24 year old college student who has had some recent personal tragedy. As a way to cope, she gets sucked into the world of true crime sleuthing on the internet. She quickly feels like the others are a family to her and they become very close.
I thought the first half of the book was a little bit slow. It was mainly all about online conversations and not much action. However, in the second half it picked up so fast that it redeemed the first half. The main character was great and I could see her having a series. I definitely recommend this book to anybody who likes podcasts, true crime, and thrillers.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

This Book Will Bury Me was so entertaining. I did not want to put this book down. We follow the story of Jane who has recently lost her father. She tries to find a way to distract herself from her grief and turns to internet sleuthing. She ends up finding her way into a close knit group of online detectives when a three college girls are murdered in Delphine, Idaho. Jane and her new friends are determined to be the ones to solve this case, but things just keep going wrong. This book was unputdownable! I know what she read all of Ashley Winstead's backlog and this book will be finding a home in my little personal library.

I am appalled this book was written and published to be frank. Almost every detail is copied from a true crime case that hasn’t even received its verdict yet. Making money off of an actual horror story is disgusting.

Firstly, thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I wish that I had read some of the reviews prior to starting this book. While I couldn't put this book down for the first 50%, I love a book with something to say and I felt like this was really going to. When the 'investigation' in the second half began being unpicked I realised the author had used a very real true crime case and made it fictional. The morals behind this to me are icky. Whilst authors definitely draw inspiration from real life events I would like to think there is a certain respect for families when profiting off a fictional version of a real life case that is actually still being prosecuted.

I had such high hopes for this one. While I did find the majority of it to be interesting and exciting, I predicted a certain group member’s involvement on page 50, and spent the rest of the time watching my prediction come to pass. True crime is ubiquitous, and this book presents an interesting take on the insidious nature of obsession. That being said, I would’ve appreciated higher stakes and a more narrow focus. Three out of five.

I didn’t get very far into this book before I realized that the style it’s written in is just too confusing and jarring to me as a reader. There are references to a book that shall not be named. There are references to a case an it leaves me feeling lost as to these footnotes. Just wasn’t the style of writing I enjoyed and so I’m man to finish and give a full review. However, from what I can tell by other reviews, this is based on a recent case of college students murdered in Idaho. Seems in poor taste to create a fictional version of a true crime that hasn’t even gone to trial yet. The ick factor is high.

Not a fan of this book for several reasons. Let's start with the obvious: this "work of fiction" is centered around the very real 2022 stabbings of four University of Idaho students and subsequent mismanagement of information and interference by internet sleuths. The author couldn't even change the state. How tasteless to monetize a horrifying, violent tragedy for the consumption and entertainment of the masses. But I guess that's true crime? I do not find this clever, witty, edgy, or whatever the author was going for here.

This book reads like a bad Netflix movie. There's barely any narrative and you spend most of the time reading the banter on the true crime message board. The narrative reads like a YA novel and lacks any character depth. And why are footnotes necessary? They cheapen the already cringe worthy story.

I liked Midnight is the Darkest Hour. I DNFed In My Dreams I Hold a Knife. I DNFed this one at 30% when I wanted to do so much sooner and skimmed through the rest to see if anything got better. It didn't. I wonder if the 5 star reviewers and I read the same book, but I suppose there are very different forms of entertainment for very different people. This one made me feel for the real victims and their families, and disgust for the author, publisher, and anyone else who finds this entertainment. I do not recommend.

Read further than I would usually because it was an ARC from NetGalley. I’ve liked other books from this author. This one just missed the mark on characters, writing, plot, and a storyline copied from the headlines.

Ok. This books seems to be surrounded by a bit of controversy.
Yes, it is based on the Idaho murders in 2022.
Does it seem soon? I suppose.
Did Winstead do a stellar job at sharing the story, bringing it down to earth and humanizing it? Yes.
She brilliantly wrote characters people could connect to and then connected them to this tragic event we all watched from our homes.
Somehow she made it more then a new story, and more about the victims and their families.
I was completely enthralled by the book. It was so different from the standard thriller out there right now, which I always find so refreshing.
Winstead has a strong literary voice, and I am so impressed by the way she can develop characters so well. I feel like it’s rare to have deep character development in a thriller.
I enjoyed this read. I have some of her backlist to delve into, and I can’t wait.
Thank you netgalley for the ARC.

This was my first Ashley Winstead read, but I can say with certainty that it won't be my last. This Book Will Bury Me was a fast-paced read that I looked forward to diving into every day.
After the loss of her father, Janeway Sharp is lost in her grief. She channels that grief into an online True Crime community where she meets 4 other like-minded individuals. Together they research crime scenes and murders, working with the police by turning in tips. What starts as a shared obsession quickly spirals into something dangerous and hits closer to home than they realize.
Ashley Winstead delivers a dark, twisty thriller that explores the blurry line between justice and obsession. It’s perfect for anyone who loves unsolved mysteries, internet drama, and a plot that keeps you guessing until the last page.
Thank you to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Landmark | Sourcebooks Landmark for allowing me to read this spectacular ARC. Look for it when it comes out on March 25, 2025 because EVERYONE is going to be talking about it!

I despise true crime because of the way that it sensationalizes tragic events and makes them into entertainment. What I hate even more than that is a book that takes a true crime case and changes just enough of it to be able to market it as fiction to make a profit off of other people’s trauma. This book is almost an exact replica of the Moscow Murders from 2022, a case so recent that the person arrested for it hasn’t even gone to trial yet.

I know this is going to be a popular book and people are gonna be hyping it up but just think about the real life families that are still living through a nightmare.

This is an author I have read from before and really enjoyed books from but I can’t support something like this.

Holy Carp!!! That his book had a grip on me from page one and wouldn’t let go until I put it down. I missed meetings and phone calls and possibly even a date but this book WOW. If I could use emojis it would be the fear one and then the mind blown one and then the edge of my seat one. I didn’t have a clue where this would end and I was surprised at every twist and turn.

A mystery thriller (and a bit of an adventure story as well). A group of give true crime enthusiasts set out to solve a mystery in middle america. I loved that this book was set almost in a found footage way of the character telling the story a year after everything happened.

I thought the twists were well placed and impactful without feeling like the author is trying to mislead you for the sake of it. I enjoyed the main character and thought their little group of sleuths are a compelling group. I would definitely read another book by this author.

From the beginning of the book, we know something terrible goes wrong.

The book is written as a the main character’s tell-all book, reliving the events of one year ago, when Jane, the “author,” was an internet true crime buff, part of a group that worked to investigate crimes and help police solve them, a la “Serial” podcasters and fans, etc. But as I said, Jane often breaks the fourth wall in her book and we know that during her big investigation something goes terribly wrong and she is publicly shamed, possibly even prosecuted. We don’t know what happens yet.

I don’t want yo give away details, but I was really into this one. It starts off telling how Jane gets involved in the true crime world, leaving little crumbs, like I said, that she gets involved in something sinister. I was absolutely dyyinggggg to find out what it was! (Hint: the “big case” is mirrored after a very famous one you’ll recognize, but don’t count on it being a mirror image.)

And thus story has twists upon twists upon twists. There’s plenty going on, but the author is good at leaving little tidbits in there that will eventually make you go “ahhh! It makes sense now!” I enjoyed seeing all these little pieces come together and create the larger picture.

However, my only “meh,” moment came when I guessed pretty early on what one of the MAJOR twists was going to be. I thought it was pretty obvious. And at a certain point I just wanted it revealed. Because it was just really obvious. But like I said, there were other twists in there that kept things up to a four-star read. I wasn’t disappointed overall.

If you’re a fan - or heck, even not a fan - of the true crime genre trend, thus will be a good one for you. It’s also incredibly suspenseful and full of twists that keep coming, even if you see some of them.

I definitely recommend it!

I could not put this book down. It’s almost 500 pages but I read it in a single day. The story of a young woman looking back on how she got wrapped up in a true crime case that went off the rails was super fascinating. The book has a lot of commentary about true crime enthusiasts or amateur sleuths in addition to providing a compelling mystery that Jane and her group of sleuths are trying to solve.

The book is presented as Jane writing her own events of what went down after everything had been misrepresented by others in the press and on social media. I like that perspective in books where the main character is looking back and peppers in comments like “if only we knew at that point what we’d learn later” and things like that. It adds a lot of dramatic tension and intrigue. I also enjoyed the use of footnotes and ways it was trying to make the book feel like a memoir.

This isn’t the most fast paced mystery/thriller on the planet. A lot of time is spent introducing Jane and the other amateur sleuths she meets. We get to see them working together and just existing as friends or a found family unit before things really kick into high gear in the plot. Near the end of the book the tension is increased and it becomes pretty fast paced, but don’t go into the book expecting the whole thing to fly from plot twist to plot twist.

Outside of the mystery plot I appreciated all of the time spent dealing with Jane’s grief over losing her father and feeling like she had to create some sort of legacy for him and herself. I felt like Ashley Winstead did a great job at showing how it made sense for Jane to become so obsessed with spending all of her time on true crime cases.

Definitely add this one to your TBR if you’re interested in complex characters, fascinating mysteries, and true crime commentary!

Dang, this book was good.

The style of writing kept me absolutely hooked. Short chapters are always a plus in my book. The crime junkie, internet sleuth community perspective and review boards made the story even more interesting. It felt like you were solving crime alongside Searcher and her friends.

I loved the POV of the main character, and how her journey as it relates to her dad was braided throughout the narrative. The character development was just want you want it to be (shout out Mistress!).

I really couldn’t put this book down.

This is my first read by this author, and I’m so glad I was approved for this ARC.

Highly recommend - especially for folks who like writing/stories similar to Verity or mysteries by Ruth Ware.

This book is written from the perspective of a young woman who got caught up in the world of true crime and armchair sleuthing and who did something wrong in order to get answers, and she's telling us her side of the story retrospectively. I was immediately hooked by this premise and by the mystery of what our main character did that has gotten her into so much trouble. As a true crime media consumer, this was right up my alley - I recognized the real-life people and cases that were alluded to, and I also really related to the struggle between being interested in true crime and reckoning with the real-life consequences that come from true crime media. This was a super fast read and kept me interested until the very end!