*EYES FOR STARS...STARS FOR EYES? STARRY-EYED*
In 2024, one of my favorite reads of the year was one of the first books I read in the year, within the first couple of weeks of January...
Hello again, to that oh so familiar feeling - because WOW, this book is a stunner. Clocking in at 480 pages, this is my new favorite Winstead read, and will be difficult to be beat.
I was drawn in by this story from the start - and although this book is a marathon for me (hello, ADHD) - I found myself not losing interest (this says a lot, truly) and loved loved loved every turn this story took.
Mystery and/or thriller readers are not going to want to miss out on this book!
5 stars

This book had tons of twists and turns and literally had me staying up way past my bedtime to figure out *what is happening*? I was very much intrigued and invested the entire time. Hits on people of color/minority groups. It's pretty gore descriptive without completely "going there." I'm a little confused on the whole "this is a book to clear my name" thing; maybe would have been better as a blog post. Didn't want to put down. Highly recommend.

If you’re a fan of twisty mysteries, true crime podcasts, or armchair detective dramas, Ashley Winstead’s This Book Will Bury Me might already be on your radar. Known for her gripping storytelling in In My Dreams I Hold a Knife and Midnight is the Darkest Hour, Winstead delivers another thriller that’s compulsive, chilling, and darkly intriguing. But does it live up to the hype? Let’s dig in.


The story revolves around Jane Sharp, a college student grappling with the recent loss of her father. Seeking solace, she dives headfirst into the world of online true crime communities. When three shocking deaths rock the small town of Delphine, Idaho, Jane and her fellow amateur sleuths decide to crack the case themselves. But as they unravel the threads of this mystery, they find themselves entangled in a web far more dangerous than they anticipated.


Winstead excels at capturing the morbid fascination many of us have with true crime. Jane's evolution from grieving daughter to obsessive sleuth feels authentic and nuanced. Her online friendships mirror the camaraderie—and occasional toxicity—that can arise in internet subcultures. The novel’s framing device, with Jane recounting the events a year after the case’s shocking conclusion, adds tension and an air of foreboding.


However, despite its engrossing premise, This Book Will Bury Me stumbles in a few areas. As a legal professional and true crime enthusiast, I found some of the legal and procedural aspects distracting. For example, the repeated assertion that evidence discovered by civilians would automatically be inadmissible in court is simply incorrect. While mishandling evidence can diminish its credibility, the strict rules about constitutional violations (like the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine) apply to law enforcement, not private citizens. These inaccuracies pulled me out of the story and made me wish for a more thorough fact-checking process.


Another curious choice was the heavy use of footnotes. While this might have been intended to mimic the style of non-fiction true crime accounts, it felt out of place in a fictional thriller. The footnotes occasionally disrupted the narrative flow, making it harder to fully immerse myself in the story. Similarly, the inclusion of thinly veiled real-life figures, like a Nancy Grace doppelgänger dubbed “Nina Grace,” felt clunky and unnecessary.


Despite these flaws, there’s a lot to enjoy. The mystery surrounding the Delphine Massacres is genuinely compelling, and the interplay between Jane and her sleuthing friends provides plenty of drama and humor. Jane’s personal journey—grappling with grief, finding purpose, and ultimately confronting the consequences of her obsession—is relatable and engaging.


In the end, This Book Will Bury Me is an imperfect but gripping read. If you can overlook the occasional procedural misstep and quirky stylistic choices, you’ll find a chilling, thought-provoking story about grief, obsession, and the dark side of internet sleuthing.

First of all, I’ll praise Winstead’s ability to write about the grief of losing a father while in the throws of that grief herself; it was so incredibly vulnerable and relatable. Grief was a prevalent theme in this book, which I felt worked really well with the topic of true crime fascination. This book was layered — a tell-all book within a book, online forum transcripts, etc. But I found it worked well; it introduced a mystery about the MC Jane that kept me reading, and allowed not only the MC but other characters to be introduced and fleshed out in a way that kept me reading.

That being said, I do wish that the author had created a more fictionalized central crime in the book, rather than using the hyper specifics of a real life crime, especially one that still remains open. I felt like that detracted from the overall message and empathy of the story, and left me generally uneasy with the book and its intentions.

I thought this book was very good! I would recommend to others to pick this one out and read it. If you enjoys mysteries or thrillers this is the right book for you.

📚 Review: This Book Will Bury Me 📘
I really loved this book! It was so good. I really enjoyed it. Whenever I wasn’t reading it, I was talking about it or thinking about it. It was crazy. During my time reading this book it was all consuming.
I feel like @ashleywinsteadbooks really hit it out of the park with this one.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with this book, it is about a young woman named Jane Sharp. Her father just recently died and to get her mind off her grief she becomes involved in an online group of true crime sleuths who have been working together to solve cold cases. Well Jane joins them in their quests. And just as they are solving one case, another case even bigger than the first happens. The group even starts working with the FBI to help solve this next one. Jane becomes a key person in solving this crime. What she discovers is more than she or her group of sleuths would have ever imagined. I really don’t want to say much more in fear that I would give too much away. Just know that book gets crazier and crazier as the storyline unfolds. When I say it consumed me it really did. Again, I loved this one. If you are a fan of true crime, you will definitely want to check this one out. This was a true ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars for me!

Thank you to @netgalley and @bookmarked for this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Pub Date: March 25, 2025

Have you read this one yet? What were your thoughts?

I love Ashley Winstead's writing. It is like Riley Sager's, descriptive without being drawn out. Entertaining and easy to get through. However, I just felt like that one was drawn-out too much for me. I felt like a lot was going on with the characters but the plot was taking forever to move on. Again, probably a good pace for most, but I found myself wanting to get through it quicker and it just wasn't happening. I DNF.

i went back and forth between rating this 3 or 4 stars and ultimately settled on 3, because like many other reviewers, i take issue with the setting and details of the "fictional" crime this book primarily focuses on. while i loved Winstead's writing and the overall plot, i did not appreciate that the crime being investigated in this book was so heavily influenced by a very real and very recent crime. i was shocked how many parallels and even exact details were pulled from real life. many of these details could have been changed without impacting the story - the easiest of all being the state the crime took place in. idaho, really??? is the author trying to be intentionally controversial because...seriously, WHY? i feel so conflicted about this one because if a lot of these details had been changed, this could have been a 5 star book for me. i really loved everything else about it and was engrossed in the story every time i actually picked it up, but it took me a month to finish because i never wanted to pick it up. if it weren't an ARC, i probably would have DNF'd it.

thank you to netgalley and sourcebooks landmark for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I finished This Book Will Bury Me last week and let me tell you, it's a rollercoaster of a ride! This fast paced crime thriller dives into the world of internet sleuthing and had me glued to the pages from start to finish. Jane, the main character, is dealing with the sudden loss of her father and finds herself caught up in an online true crime website. Things quickly escalate as she becomes deeply involved in solving crimes with her online group, even if it means doing some questionable things. The story is eerily similar to a real life crime and the author's exploration of the world of true crime had me hooked. Though I did figure out the big twist early on, it didn't take away from the thrill of the story. Overall, a well written and binge-worthy thriller.

**** Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks landmark for an ARC of Ashley Winstead’s newest upcoming novel releasing March 25, 2025 ****

Sometimes trauma brings people to weird and random places. So when a family emergency lands college student Jane back in her childhood home and needing an escape - she finds herself on some True Crime chat rooms. It wasn’t her plan to becoming an armchair detective but the need to go a little too far gives Jane the answers she’s looking for in solving crimes and figuring out her battles at home. Along the way she meets other sleuths which special skills that might not be legal but they help her grieve her past and become her lifeline. As the book goes on they team up to solve cases that not even the local cops or FBI can solve when it comes to a serial killer taking victims in an Idaho college town.

This Book will Bury Me is my 3rd read from this author and honestly, I will keep coming back to read more and more going forward. Was the beginning a slow start for me? Yes. Did it take me a few times to fully get invested? Yes. But thankfully about 15/20% into the book I was finally pulled in and staying up for hours just to read that typical cliche of one more chapter. I will say that Ashley Winstead’s 2021 release In My Dreams I Hold a Knife will probably always be my favorite by her and I wasn’t the biggest fan of her 2022 release The Last Housewife but This Book Will Bury Me has pulled me back in and wanting to read more from this author.

While I do personally feel that the initial murders after the one our Main Charater investigates to get into the crime network and her circle of investigators is way to close to the Idaho murders and that happened in 2022 I believe this author has used them as a stepping point and expanded into other events in the book that definitely didn’t happen to make a really good story. I really wish she would have used something else though.
This Book Will Bury Me is basically our main character writing a book telling us of events that happened and is a confession of all the events that transpired in her life that led up to one of the most famous and popular cases that was ever going to happen in her lifetime.
Being called by her mother telling her that they needed prayers and she needed to come home because her father was on the way to a hospital and then that her father had died, Jane has found herself inconsolable, and that she cannot return to college. Instead, she now has gotten a huge interest in true crime and a website called the true crime network and forums. When a murder happens right down the road from her that sparks her interest she starts helping the other sleuth investigate.
I really do like the idea of the book. I really liked the execution of the book and the writing was very good. Like I said in the beginning, I really wish she used a different case after the initial case that they close up to spark the main story line of the book. But that is something that definitely cannot be changed. Ashley’s last book was more on the paranormal mystery thriller vibe and I found that my true crime side really prefers this type of story over that, through I really enjoyed it as well. And really hope she writes another one similar to this style. I just really hope if she does it is not similar to an actual case and tragedy that happens

The "amateur sleuth podcast/book" trope has become more prevalent in books lately, what with rise of the true crime phenomenon, but what makes this book stand out is the added layer of emotional and personal stakes the main character Jane has in the investigation, and by extension, the author, Ashley Winstead. The death of Jane's father and the resulting emotional spiral that follows plays a big factor in her decision making throughout the story. Similarly, the death of Winstead's father was partly the impetus for her writing this book and choosing this topic (which I'll get into later in this review, I have <b>THOUGHTS</b>).

the <b>GOOD</b>: What starts as a distraction from Jane's grief morphs into an obsession, then turns again into a meditation on death, legacy, and the effect of a death on surviving relatives, and through it, emotional release and acceptance. I want to believe that Winstead had the best intentions writing about this, showing the real stages of grief, which include anger; anger at the injustice of an unsolved crime, the main motivation for our amateur sleuths, or anger at a parent for their personal negligence towards their health that resulted in a premature death. Winstead did a great job of relating the two; it added a new element to keep the book from being just another murder mystery.

the <b>I'M CONFLICTED...??</b>: My rating is based off my enjoyment of the plot, the writing, the thoughtful themes I just mentioned, <b>HOWEVER</b>, there is a thorn on my side that gets harder to ignore the more I think about it: is Winstead critiquing or capitalizing off crime stories? Or both? Because her author's note says she wanted to talk about the sensationalism of crime reporting, the callousness of turning tragedy into entertainment...but isn't she doing that with this book? She chose to model the plot off a real crime, and not some distant year either; the University of Idaho killings occurred in 2022. It's one thing to indulge in our instinctive need for answers through a fictional story, which is why mystery is a popular genre, it's another to write about real people, real deaths, but just change a few names or details and making money off of it (I'm pretty sure none of her book sales are going towards the victim's families or the foundations they created in their honor).

Why didn't Winstead just make up her own fictional plot? It wouldn't have impacted the other lovely and poignant themes she explored in the book. Other than that, no one is as surprised as I am that I'm giving this book a 5 star, since Winstead's last book was a complete dud for me. The difference this time is that the plot is more focused, the twists and red herrings made sense / not a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" type of situation as her previous book. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this.

Not my favorite Ashley Winstead but it was still enjoyable. Kinda predictable but addictive. Steer clear if you are triggered by fiction that is heavily inspired by real, currently active murder cases.

“This Book Will Bury Me” is a great book for true crime fans. As Ashley Winstead mentions in her authors note, this book is drawn from real life cases such as the University of Idaho murders and the internet sleuths in the aftermath of the crimes. I really enjoyed the authors writing style and was hooked from the beginning. The middle part of the story felt a bit slow but overall this was a great read as a fan of true crime.

After the death of her father, college student Jane Sharp distracts herself from her grief with a true crime obsession. She finds community as an armchair detective with other online sleuths. When 3 college girls in Idaho are brutally murdered, she and her fellow sleuths team up to solve the murder the whole country is talking about. However, things are not what they seem.

I enjoyed this book, however, I need to say up front my biggest issue with it. It's clear that the author stole the details of these "fictional" Idaho murders from the real life case of the 2022 University of Idaho students who were murdered in their off campus house. It's almost beat for beat identical to the real life killings. This is in very poor taste.

I will say I also did guess the killer in this book, so that always knocks the book down a peg for me, but there were other twists that I enjoyed along the way.

Thank you to net galley for an early copy of this book!

Fans of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife and Midnight is the Darkest Hour will not be surprised that Winstead has once again crafted a psychologically tortuous novel, with some nods to dark academia, that will feel like both a satire of and homage to true crime. On its surface, this is a story of an unsolved crime—the death of three college girls in Delphine, Idaho—and the true crime fans who take justice in their own hands. The compulsively readable story shows how things can be hidden in plain sight, even when the world is watching a crime unfold. Written with footnotes, narrative gaps, and a narrative voice that is unstable to say the least, the story spins in unpredictable ways that will keep readers guessing at every police misstep and each personal revelation along the way. VERDICT With some of the same cheeky humor as the show Only Murders in the Building along with the dark, psychological recasting of facts through fiction and memory that authors have explored since Gone Girl, this book breathes life into stories that, the narrator hints, might be better off dead and buried.

I wanted to love this book because I love The Last Housewife and In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, but this, as did Midnight is the Darkest Hour was a huge miss for me. The best way to describe how I felt while reading this book is I felt like I was walking thru quicksand trying to finish this. The author seemed to ramble on and on to the point where I wanted it to be over. I think this may be my last try with this author since her books seem to be getting worse in my opinion.

thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review!

damn. I feel weirdly torn about this book, like I think at heart it might just be the author trying to get out her guilty feelings of catharsis over being a true crime junkie or something (sorry Ashley Winstead for psychoanalyzing you if you are reading this). but also it is GRIPPING. like I have complained about 500-page thrillers before, but this one blazed by. I DID let myself get suckered in by the usual "if only I'd knew what would happen then, I would have never done that..."-type ominous foreshadowing, which didn't result in much, but the overall mystery really did keep me hooked. the protagonist is fascinating because I can't decide if I loved her or hated her, and I will make a grand statement here on January 3, a couple of the supporting characters here are still going to be some of my fave characters of the year by the time 2025 is over.

also there's a weird amount of fanfic in this book lol

WHAT A RIDE 🤯

If you’re a true crime junkie and love any kind of mystery/thriller - look no further. This book delivered! The events in this book are based on tragedies that have happened, but with significant differences and are from the POV of Jane, our FMC after the fact.

I will say, Winstead is one of my favorite authors so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to read this book. I always knew that forums for online sleuths existed (I’m an avid redditor, myself) but I guess I never imagined that people would take it as far as actually solving active murder cases.

I think the author did a great job of building up each character while driving the main storyline. I ate this book up! It had me on the edge of my seat the entire time and kept me wanting more. This was a quick read and a great way to start off the year. Definitely recommend!

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for an eARC of this book.

Following the death of her beloved father, Jane Sharp falls into the online world of true crime as a distraction from her grief. It turns out Jane has a knack for solving crimes and before long is welcomed into a tight-knit group of elite amateur sleuths. When they become embroiled in a high-profile case in Delphine, Idaho, they find themselves in the center of a case where nothing adds up and things keep getting progressively complicated and more dangerous.

This novel’s plot is so intricate and twisty, and I was captivated the entire time. Although this book is definitely a thriller first, it’s so much deeper than that, and that’s where it really shines. Winstead paints such a vivid picture of how a heartbroken Jane falls down the true crime rabbit hole and becomes obsessed with solving cases and chasing the high that come with it. It’s a searing examination of how a young woman’s grief leads her to cling to a found family even when it’s against her best interests and puts her in danger. It’s also a pointed commentary on the societal impact of the true crime community inserting themselves in cases and the fallout from that, especially when they get it wrong and innocent people’s lives are destroyed. Absolutely gutting and thought-provoking!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for providing me an advance copy of this book.