Julie Clark's The Ghostwriter is one great read! This twisty psychological thriller hooked me from the beginning and kept me engrossed through the last page. With an intricate and wonderfully executed plot, multiple POVs, dual timelines, memorable characters, and a ticking clock that no one can stop, this is a story that gets in your head and stays there. I love the many layers in this complex novel. I didn't want it to end!

My sincere thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark for allowing me to access a DRC of this novel via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own and are freely given.

For Fans Of: Lisa Jewell, Ruth Ware
Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌘
Genre: 🔪 Thriller
Violence: 🪓🪓🪓
Triggers: Death of child, family estrangement, assault

Synopsis: After ghostwriter Olivia gets cancelled for her intemperate—if true—comments about another writer, she reluctantly accepts a commission for an aging horror novelist. The twist: the client is her estranged father, Vincent, & the book is a memoir about his siblings’ murder. Which locals believe he committed.

Thoughts: This novel is a page-turner from its 1st sentence. A family drama in 2 parts, it intermingles the story of Vincent and his siblings with that of present-day Olivia, as she attempts to write a memoir for a father who has never been forthcoming about his past. Clark skillfully interweaves past and present through revelations about the 50-year-old murders as well as the tumultuous backstory between Olivia and father Vincent. While this makes for complex storytelling, the author avoids bogging the reader down in details through judicious unveiling of clues and introduction of characters. Olivia is a well-developed protagonist with Vincent as a solid 2nd chair. But all the characters in this book take on life without stealing focus. Overall, I found The Ghostwriter a satisfyingly twisty mystery, an evocative exploration of childhood and memory, and a poignant look at the imperfections of parenthood. Julie Clark definitely has a new fan in me.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark & NetGalley for a gifted book in exchange for an honest review.

This woman sure can tell a tale!! I love Julie Clark and was SO excited to read this ARC! I loved this book! It is a bit different from her previous two. We have Olivia who has been asked by her father to ghostwrite his memoir. Well, turns out Dear Ol' Dad may have slaughtered his brother and sister some 50 years back. Oops. He may or may not set the record straight or confess. What follows is an atmospheric tale filled with family secrets, twists and turns and great characterization as Olivia tries to dig her way to the truth. I can't recommend this book, and her previous two, enough!

Thank you to #NetGalley, Julie Clark and Sourcebooks/Landmark for this much appreciated ARC. All opinions are my own.

I will post my review to Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other retail and social media sites upon publication day of June 3rd.

Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has long lived in the shadow of her estranged father, Vincent Taylor, a successful horror author. When she accepts a new job, she is shocked to find herself reunited with her dad and being tasked to finally help him tell the true story of what happened when his brother and sister were brutally murdered in their home as teenagers.

It's a clever set-up, and the failing mental health of Vincent only makes it less clear how accurate the story is that Olivia is being asked to write. Overall, this was an enjoyable read, and there are enough clever twists and turns in this book to keep even the seasoned thriller reader entertained. Definitely a great option for a satisfying summer read.

Olivia is a ghostwriter and is deep in debt with a reputation that needs to be salvaged. These are the reasons she reluctantly takes on a new assignment, to ghostwrite the memoir of a controversial horror author. Who happens to be her father. From whom she happens to be actively estranged. Who has always been suspected in the deaths of his siblings when they were teenagers. It's complicated! [This is all in the blurb!]

The setup was intriguing, the setting evocative. The vibe of 1970s Ojai (up in the mountains above Ventura in Southern California) felt genuine.

As Olivia goes to work, the layered mystery reveals itself. Part shocking, part confusing (now where is this information coming from?!?), a whole lot of digging up the past from a myriad of perspectives and sources. It did take her a frustratingly long time to put the pieces together though and this could have been a little tighter.

My thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the Advance Reader Copy. (pub date 6/3/2025)

Olivia is a ghostwriter, who has gotten into some trouble for speaking the truth about another author, and is now on the verge of financial ruin. Then a request comes from her father, famous horror author Vincent, to ghostwrite his last book. Olivia left her father and her old life behind long ago, not wanting to deal with a father accused of murdering his sister and brother back in the 70s, and a mother who walked out on her. When she realizes her father wants to write about the past, all of the old ghosts come rushing back, and Olivia has to figure out what really happened on the day both her aunt and uncle were killed. This was so dark, twisted, suspenseful, and just really good! Julie Clark is quickly rising to the top of today's suspense writer's and I am here for it!

Olivia is a Ghostwriter and has a family secret that she has been trying to hide all her life. Her life is suffering some roadblocks in her life. She is given the opportunity to ghostwrite a book. The problem is that the book is her father's last book. For years she tried hide the fact that she is her father's daughter. Her father is a famous horror writer that has a dark past. He was the only survivor of the elimination of his family. He used that notoriety to help him become successful. Soon Olivia will discover her family's secret and find out the truth. A brilliantly clever suspenseful book. An engrossing plot and witty writing. The author does a great job at grabbing the reader's attention and keep the reader immersed in the story.

Disclaimer: Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for a review copy of this book and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

📚 #BOOKREVIEW 📚
The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / Pages: 359 / Genre: Murder Mystery
Release Date: June 3, 2025
🥳#HappyPubDay!🎉

In 1975, the unspeakable happened. Fourteen-year-old Poppy and her seventeen-year-old brother were found stabbed to death in their home. Everyone suspected their sixteen-year-old brother Vince, who was known for his erratic and volatile temper. Fifty years later, Vince is a famous novelist and is battling Lewy body dementia. He’s finally ready to reveal what really happened, but due to his illness, he’s unable to write his own story so he hires his estranged daughter to ghostwrite his memoir.

The unreliable narrative led to so many twists and the haunting dread of what you know is to come made this such a deliciously creepy murder mystery. So good!

Thank you, @JulieClarkAuthor and @Bookmarked for my free advanced copy.

I really enjoyed the mystery in this one and the way the story unfolded, through first person point of view, along with flashbacks from two other characters. There’s also an unreliable narrator, which added plenty of red herrings. As I read, I kept forming theories, but none of them turned out to be right.

The story also explores dysfunctional families, especially the dynamics of sibling rivalry, jealousy, and absentee parents. These elements added depth to the plot and showed how these relationships influenced the perception of certain details.

Olivia Dumont is a previously successful ghostwriter facing cancellation after publicly confronting a powerful colleague. When the only job she can get is the one she doesn’t want, she faces a vexing proposition—Ghostwrite the last book of legendary horror writer, Vincent Taylor, or face financial ruin. The problem? Taylor is her long estranged father who is believed to have murdered his teenage siblings in 1975.

This begins the unraveling of closely held family secrets. The process is complicated by Taylor’s recent diagnosis which affects his cognitive abilities. Olivia must differentiate between the ramblings of a diminished man and clues to the truth.

Julie Clark’s latest novel is a slow burn told across dual timelines. While I found Olivia’s journey through her family’s past to be interesting, it was Poppy’s voice that was most compelling. Clark builds the tension bit by bit until the final section of the book when the dominoes fall in quick succession and the payoff is worth the wait.

If you like your thrillers twisty until the very end. THE GHOSTWRITER should be on your radar.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the advance copy. All opinions are my own.

THE GHOSTWRITER is a story about a family with secrets and a cold case that has stumped police for fifty years. One summer evening, Poppy and Danny Taylor were found dead in their childhood home, and their volatile brother seems like the obvious suspect, but it is never proven. Now, years later, Vincent, the surviving brother and an acclaimed horror writer, has rapidly advancing dementia. He hires his estranged daughter, Olivia, a ghostwriter, to help him tell the story of what really happened.

The unreliable narrator piece of this story was so compelling. Vincent has his reasons to keep what happened in the past a secret, and that level of reticence is compounded by his deteriorating mind. The pacing of this novel is excellent, revealing one tantalizing detail at a time until I found myself discarding my responsibilities to race towards the end.

You don't have to be a writer to enjoy THE GHOSTWRITER, but I found the literary atmosphere a definite plus. Working on deadline, dealing with publishers, and the added pressure Olivia faces of working within the parameters of the ghostwriting contract were a fascinating peek into the literary world that kept me engaged.

This would be a great vacation read--it moves quickly and keeps the reader engaged without sacrificing tight, propulsive writing.

This was fine and entertaining enough but I can’t say it was an unputdownable mystery/thriller for me. By the time I got to the reveal, I had figured out a lot of the pieces of what actually happened but not necessarily how everything was connected. It was an interesting set up with the estranged daughter reconnecting with her father to ghostwrite a memoir about his childhood and the murder of his siblings. However, I just always have a hard time with these mysteries where somehow the crime is never solved by the police through multiple investigations but an amateur just magically stumbles on every piece of the story. I get that she had access to the truth through her father but I feel like a lot of this could have been solved in a thorough police investigation. So, it was an easy, light read but not one I adored.

For Olivia, family secrets run deeper, and darker, than she was prepared for. But when her estranged father, long shrouded in mystery, reaches out with a final request for her to ghostwrite his last book, she must decide whether unearthing his secrets is worth exposing her own.
While I understand the premise of Olivia being a ghostwriter was meant to emphasize her need for anonymity, it ended up feeling a bit disconnected from the rest of the story. I think the narrative might have been stronger if she had simply been portrayed as a writer, without the vague explanations about why her identity had to remain hidden.
That said, I really enjoyed the concept that Olivia had to unravel the mystery that has haunted her to finally move on in her personal life. And through her process of writing her father’s book, Olivia is forced to confront the truth about her family and what really happened to the aunt and uncle she never knew, and whether her father is the killer everyone believes him to be.

*Thank you to Julie Clark, Sourcebooks Landmark and Netgalley for the ARC copy. I am freely leaving my honest review.

"That's how it started. How I discovered the dark secret that lived at the center of my family."

Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont is facing financial ruin after being torn down by another writer. When she gets asked to write a book for her estranged father (a legendary horror writer and also the prime suspect in the killing of his siblings as a teenager), she sees no other way forward than to accept the job. The truth will finally come out and it's up to her and her father to face it.

THE GHOSTWRITER by Julie Clark sucked me in right from the beginning. The premise of this book is so unique and I loved how Clark wasn't afraid to dive into darker subject matter in order to really flesh out this story and the characters who are at the core of it.

This story alternates between two timelines, 1975 and 2025 (loved loved loved!) and rotates through perspectives as well, which really helped sell the book within a book concept!

There were so many layers - within the story and the characters themselves - and I really enjoyed living in this world and being pulled into the mystery!

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the early copy for review - out today!

An absolutely thrilling read that will leave you hungry for more.

Struggling to remain afloat after a career misstep, ghostwriter Olivia Dumont will do just about anything to crawl out of the hole she's dug for herself. Even if it means taking a job ghostwriting for the last person on Earth that she would want to ghostwrite for: her father. She's spent decades of her life pretending to be anyone other than the daughter of famed horror novelist Vincent Taylor, having cut her father out of her life completely when she graduated high school. Not just because he was a drug and alcohol obsessed writer who shipped her off to boarding school, but also because the shadow of a now fifty year old murder has always been in his wake. And now, as her father is finally ready to tell all, Olivia will be forced to reckon with the past and the tragic event that has shaped their family since 1975. And when the truth finally surfaces, it's a revelation no one will be ready for.

I cannot describe to you just how brilliant this book was. The alternating past and present, multi-pov narrative that is at the heart of this story is everything a reader could want and more. Our main pov is Olivia, the estranged daughter and struggling writer. It is Olivia that this story hinges on, even more so than her father Vince. We also see an alternating of the 1975 POVs of Vince and Poppy, rounding the story out and giving glimpses of the truth as Olivia begins to put the events of that fateful June night together. These three voices weave together into a beautifully intricate mystery that can only be unraveled if you're able to follow the thread.

In particular, I really enjoyed the parallels between Olivia's lies and her father's. We see a girl who has done her very best to cut herself off from the father she felt abandoned by, to rewrite her narrative without him in it. Willing to live a lie because it's not as messy as the truth. The way that Vince's own life mirrors that, without Olivia even realizing it, is perfection. There is a lot of play on perspectives in this story, about the reliability of human narrators and the mind. The contrast that is made when some form of hard evidence is introduced that either contradicts or bolsters a story. Ultimately it's a tale about those perspectives, about unreliable narrators, and about the damage that secrets can cause, the ripples that reach out far further than we ever could have imagined.

To Ms. Clark I say, brava! I'm definitely going to be reading more of her books in the future.

Julie Clark does it again! She is an excellent storyteller and The Ghostwriter is no different.

Olivia Dumont is a talented ghostwriter who is down on her luck professionally, financially, and socially after a very public altercation with another author. She has been out of work since the incident and in major debt. When her agent lets her know that aging, acclaimed author Vince Taylor would like to hire Olivia to ghostwrite his memoir, her immediate internal reaction is no, despite her dire financial situation, due to the infamy surrounding Vincent Taylor. In 1975, his teenage brother and sister were found murdered in the family home and he was and is the #1 suspect. Although he had a solid alibiand was never arrested or convicted, he has remained under suspicion. He would like to set the record straight and wants Olivia to come to his home to be his ghostwriter. Seems like a great opportunity, however, he happens to be her estranged father that no one knows about because she has cut all ties from him, including her last name. Curiosity, debt, and lack of options prevail and she arrives back in Ojai, California to her childhood home to get it over with.

As she revisits the past through his guidance and going through old items, she learns things she doesn't necessarily want to know about her father, his brother, his sister and what really happened to all of them. Did he do it? Is he innocent? Who killed them? Why? All these questions and more are explored, answered, and re-answered in a story told from Olivia's view in the present day and through young Vincent's and his sister, Poppy's voices in the past.

This one kept me reading and guessing until the end. The ultimate reveal of what happened is gut wrenching but the ending is satisfying and realistic. Definitely recommend this one!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

I was a big fan of Olivia. Her journey through the book was fascinating and well written. The story is told in two different time periods in a seamless manner. The mystery was compelling, and will keep the reader glued to the pages of the book.

My review is voluntary and all comments and opinions are my own.

3.75🌟

Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has attempted to conceal the fact that she is the daughter of renowned author Vincent Taylor. Back in 1975, Vince became the prime suspect in the violent murders of his brother and sister. Trying to raise Olivia on his own became difficult, and he shipped her off to an international boarding school, leading to their lifelong estranged relationship.

Now, her father is sick and writing his memoir. With few other options, Olivia has agreed to be the ghostwriter for the book. Back in her hometown, she is trying to figure out who is telling the truth about what happened that fateful day.

I enjoyed this. It kept me interested, and I finished it quickly. The chapters alternated between Olivia's current POV and the different siblings in 1975. It's hard to tell where things will go and if her dad is actually telling the truth, which made me want to know more. I would definitely read another book by Julie Clark.

Recommended for readers who enjoy alternating POVs, mysteries, and family drama.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the ARC.

✍️ Book Review ✍️

Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for an arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

Publication: June 3, 2025

Rating: I enjoyed it!

I wasn’t a huge fan of Clark’s first book but this was way different! I was sucked right in and found myself flipping pages late in the night! Overall, a fun gripping mystery!

For fans of:
🖊️ First person POV
📖 Multiple POVs
🖊️ Dual timeline (present & 1975)
📖 Cold case
🖊️ Dysfunctional family
📖 Slow burn
🖊️ Red Herrings

THE GHOSTWRITER
Julie Clark

The summer thrillers are here, and I want to start with an excellent one.

Olivia is a ghostwriter. One day, she receives a request from her agent. Her father, Vincent, would like her to ghostwrite his latest project.

She reluctantly agrees.

If you’ve seen the publisher synopsis, you know my hands are tied. So, I’ll leave it there.

No Spoilers Here!

I enjoyed my time reading THE GHOSTWRITER. There are two storylines. The main one is fully fleshed out and explored. The secondary storyline felt a bit rushed, which was my only complaint.

The characters are constructed well, the writing is great, and the pacing is pitch-perfect. This would make an excellent Father’s Day gift for someone who is stuck in a thriller rut.

THE GHOSTWRITER instantly reminded me of the show HAPPY FACE. If you like that show and the dynamics it presents, I would recommend checking out THE GHOSTWRITER.

Thanks to Netgalley and SOURCEBOOKS Landmark | Sourcebooks Landmark for the advanced copy!

THE GHOSTWRITER…⭐⭐⭐⭐