I absolutely loved this book. What a great thriller…I loved the back and forth timelines and honestly couldn’t figure it out until the end! Thank for this excellent arc!

This book was well-written and had some unexpected twists and turns, especially towards the end. It started a little “slow” and took me a while to get into. I’ve enjoyed Julie Clark’s previous books, and would recommend this one as well.

I liked how this book unraveled. My theories about what really happened kept changing and I thought it was a strong ending. Very unique story. Thank you to NetGalley & sourcebooks for the ARC of this book.

𝔹𝕠𝕠𝕜 ℝ𝕖𝕧𝕚𝕖𝕨 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Read if you love:
🚨Dark Family Secrets
🚨 Multiple POVs
🚨 Dual Timelines
🚨 Slow burns

This story is about Olivia Dumont, a ghostwriter who needs a job badly. That's why when her father, legendary horror author Vincent Taylor, offers her a job writing his memoir, she decides to do it even though they are estranged. She hopes to uncover what really happened to her aunt and uncle who were brutally murdered in the 70’s, leaving her father as the main suspect. What she finds instead is a twisted family tale much darker than she imagined.

I loved the story and the idea of a daughter becoming a ghostwriter for her father, especially because he was a famous horror author. I really enjoyed the way the chapters jumped back to the past so the reader could get an idea of what happened back then.

This book was about family relationships, specifically a dysfunctional and strained relationship between Olivia and her dad. The story was a tense, slow-burn that kept me reading and was full of wonderful characters. The book delved into absent parents, sibling rivalry, and how well we know the people in our lives. I love the journey this book to me on and as much as I thought I saw the ending coming.. I was surprised!

Thank you NetGalley, the author, and publisher for the arc.

#bookstagram #bookrecommendations #thrillerbooks #thriller #newreleases

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for a copy provided for an honest review.

This story is told in first person by Olivia, a ghostwriter on the brink of financial ruin, who is offered a job ghostwriting her estranged father’s last book. Vincent Taylor is a successful horror author in failing health. During his childhood in 1975 Ojai, California, his siblings were found dead in their home, leaving a shadow of suspicion surrounding him for the rest of his life. As Olivia sifts through the remnants of her father’s writings and his memories, the past comes to life in the present and family secrets are slowly revealed.

The family tension in this book was fantastic. I was on the edge of my seat throughout this one. It was fast paced and compelling rather than suspenseful or thrilling. I eagerly awaited the next clue to the riddle of what happened to the Taylor family and how it all pieced together. It was one of those puzzles where I just couldn’t figure out how all the pieces fit, but my curiosity just wouldn’t let me stop trying.

Recommended to mystery readers that enjoy complex family relationships and developing theories as each clue materializes.

I am a sucker for a Julie Clark book! I just love her writing style and have loved her previous books.

This book had a very unique and interesting plot line. Yes we had a cold case murder mystery to solve but the reunited a father and daughter after years of estrangement kept the tensions high. I was hooked from the beginning of this book but felt like the middle lagged a bit. Then the ending had me scratching my head a bit.

Overall, I enjoyed it but not as much as her previous novels.

This is a complex, twisting, suspenseful read of a woman exploring the contradictory history of her family.

FMC is going through a slow patch in her career as a ghostwriter and when she gets the request from her estranged father to ghostwrite his next book, she has no choice but to agree.
Upon arrival, FMC sees her father in failing health both mentally and physically. Her father explains that he wants a memoir written that reveals the truth of what happened to his family when he was a teen - the murder of his siblings that while he wasn't convicted, many were convinced he committed.
As her father's mind continues to decline and recounting his story gets more difficult, FMC must dig through his memories and the memories of locals to uncover what actually happened.

This book's plot is deep and complex, making you think and guess at what the end result is. I loved forming my own guess at the series of events of the murder decades earlier. While I was able to guess a couple details, I wasn't even close for the main plot! Such a great read.

I’ve been a fan of Julie Clark and this book is another reason why! THE GHOSTWRITER was a gripping read and kept me glued. The execution of the plot was impeccable. Multiple POVs, fast paced, thriller — this is highly recommended! Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the ARC — all opinions are my own.

Wow. Just, wow!
I absolutely loved everything about this book. The characters, the storyline, and the flipping between timelines was top notch. I was intrigued from the first page to the last.

There were just enough characters to get a dynamic story without things getting confusing. The characters were beautifully developed. Clark made them come alive in these pages. We came to experience their experiences and feel their feelings.

I loved how we met Olivia and were briefly introduced to members of her family and then slowly got to know each one of them individually through the timeline flips between past and present. My feelings on Olivia’s father really changed throughout the story the more I came to know about him. It was interesting how pieces of Olivia’s childhood were intertwined in his interactions with her as an adult.

I wish I could read this one again for the first time. To immerse myself in the Taylor family’s drama and get to meet all of the characters for the first time all over again.

BRB… going to find my next Julie Clark read!

I normally hate unreliable narrators, but I guess since the dad wasn't the main narrator, I didn't mind so much. I thought this was good at keeping me guessing till the end.

Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she's offered a job to ghostwrite her father's last book. What she doesn't know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies. Because it's not another horror novel he wants her to write. It is the story of his family and the murders that occurred. Will he tell her the truth? Can she find the answers to the long ago murders? Fast paced and so well written.

Thank you to Sourcebooks for the digital copy to review.

I am a fan of Julie Clark, have loved all her books, including her newest, The Ghostwriter. This was on the slow and steady side, but I honestly did not mind it, as I thought it worked well here. I was vested in the ghostwriting process overall, but also this plot was absolutely fascinating and I was riveted from the start. The audio was fantastic, and the multiple POVs helped as I was trying to guess what really happened and I was way off when all was revealed. I loved the concept of writing down your story before you pass, especially with a memory illness, which therefore inherently makes you an unreliable storyteller. I loved how Olivia had to really work to piece together what her father Vincent was telling her, knowing when he had clarity to talk and when she needed to back off, what her perceptions were of the past, what were way off base, and who was able to provide the final pieces she needed the most surprised me the most.

Compared to many thrillers, I found this one realistic. You follow Olivia as she's trying to save herself from financial ruin and she's asked to ghost write for her father, who has long been suspected of murdering his siblings.

This felt very honest as someone that has dealt with family members with dementia. There was an underlying tension here that brought the reader along for the ride and the flashbacks actually worked well here to add perspective and more to the story.

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

Special thanks to @julieclark @bookmarked & @netgalley for the #gifted eARC.

👉🏼 swipe for synopsis ➡️

𝙈𝙔 𝙍𝙀𝙑𝙄𝙀𝙒:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This one has been getting so much praise, I couldn't wait to check it out. It is my first @julieclark and im now intrigued by what her back list has in store.

This book follows a woman who ghost writes and is asked to do so for her father who is a long standing fiction writing with a now debilitating disease.
She's asked to write his memoir, subsequently clearing his name of his brother and sisters murders from 1975.

The way this slow burn evolved in the last third really had me captivated. The little breadcrumbs throughout and the multiple POVs told in current and past timelines was great. Some parts were quite slow for me but the ending made up for that during the big revelation.

𝙋𝙐𝘽 𝘿𝘼𝙔:
June 3, 2025

ℚ𝕆𝕋𝔻❓️⁉️❓️
If you could write a novel, what genre would you pick? What would it be about?

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#mysteryandthrills #thrillersandsuspense #thrillerfriendsunite #thrillerlover #thrilleraddict #thrillerjunkie #thrillergirlie #bookbuzz #julieclark #netgalley #sourcebookslandmarked #sourcebookspartner #theghostwriter
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Thank you Netgalley, author , Sourcebooks Landmark for the ARC.

Olivia Dumont is a struggling author whose career is derailed by controversy, leaving her broke and blacklisted in the publishing world. Desperate, she reluctantly agrees to ghostwrite the final novel of acclaimed writer Vincent Taylor — a man with strict conditions for how the story should be told.
What the world doesn’t know? Vincent is Olivia’s estranged father. And the book he wants her to write? It’s about the darkest chapter of his past — the unsolved murder of his teenage siblings back in 1975.
Now, Olivia must keep their connection a secret, suppress her childhood trauma, and write a story that may finally reveal whether her father was a grieving brother… or something far worse.

I've loved Julie Clark’s books in the past, so I was excited to get an early peek at this one! Told in dual timelines — the present with Olivia grappling with her complicated relationship with her father and the past through the eyes of the murdered teen siblings — this is a slow-burn mystery full of buried secrets and emotional tension.

Olivia is not only battling professional ruin but also navigating a tangled family history and the haunting suspicion that her father might know more than he’s ever admitted. As she pieces together the fragments of what really happened in 1975, long-buried truths begin to surface, forcing her to question everything she thought she knew.

While the reveals weren’t explosive, there were a few well-placed surprises. The strength of this book lies in its layered characters, atmospheric pacing, and the slow, creeping dread that builds with each chapter.

It’s a 4/5 ⭐️ read for me. A haunting, dramatic slow-burn mystery that’s ripe for book club discussions.

3.5 rounded up

I loved Clark’s “The Lies I Tell” (I rated it 5⭐️s) and was stoked for this ARC from NetGalley! I found this to be a solid thriller but the predictability of some of the end twists made it lose some stars for me.

Olivia has made a career as a ghostwriter, all while keeping her dark family secret to herself: her father Vincent is long suspected of murdering his brother and sister when they were teenagers. Despite the rumors and lack of proof, Vincent has become a prominent author himself. He has hired Olivia to be his ghostwriter, bringing her back to her dark childhood home for the first time in over a decade. She needs the money so she takes the lifeline despite her apprehensions, and when she arrives she realizes there is so much about her father’s past that she didn’t know.

I love books with unreliable narrators and multiple POVs. I found the mystery around the truth of Vincent’s siblings deaths fascinating. But this plot itself was very “Dark Places” to me (and I think that thriller is much stronger.) I did love Poppy’s POV (Vincent’s sister), she was the heart of the book for me. I found Olivia kind of just….there? Solid thriller but not my fav. But I’ll read anything Julie Clark writes, I’m hooked.

✨Content Warnings: Murder, Child Death, Dementia, Alcoholism, Rape, Animal Death, Terminal Illness, Pregnancy, Adult/Minor Relationship, Medical Content

✨Themes: Unreliable Narrators, Generational Trauma, Family Secrets

✨You May Like This If You Enjoyed:
-Dark Places (Gillian Flynn)
-What Lies in the Woods (Kate Alice Marshall)

**Many thanks to NetGalley, SOURCEBOOKS Landmark, and Julie Clark for an ARC of this book!**



"No one grows up thinking they want to be a ghostwriter. No one plans on that job." - Hilary Liftin

Olivia Dumont wholeheartedly agrees with THAT statement...but yet, ghostwriting has become her life, her respite, and her chance at escape from the controversy that has surrounded her from a young age. As the only child of Vincent Taylor, it was in her best interest to try to live in the shadows: Vincent was the only child in his family that survived a murderous night in 1975 where both of his siblings, Poppy and Danny, were killed. Though he walks free, he has never been able to shake the accusations, the pointing, and the whispers, since many consider him to be the prime suspect. Despite this public scrutiny, Vincent was able to take his notoriety and spin it into a successful career...as a horror writer, no less.

But so many years later, he has one story left to tell...and it's a peek behind the curtain at that horrifying night so many years ago. Vincent can't trust just ANYONE with the painful and sordid details of that evening and all that came before it...and that's where Olivia comes in. Vincent decides it is none other than his daughter who should serve as his ghostwriter on this memoir and horror story all in one. Although Olivia has mixed emotions and a healthy amount of terror at hearing what REALLY happened to the aunt and uncle she never knew, financial desperation, curiosity, and a sense of familial loyalty take over and she agrees to pen the story. But when she learns that her father is suffering from Lewy Body Disease and his memories can't EXACTLY be trusted, she's forced to navigate those murky waters in a quest for the truth. With film taken by Poppy so many years ago and Poppy's diaries as Olivia's only other primary sources, will she have the details she needs to FINALLY expose the killer? Or will the truth about the murders make her question EVERYTHING she thought she could trust about her father...and confirm her darkest, most horrifying fear?

To say Julie Clark is an auto-buy author is an understatement: from time I slapped together the covers of the Last Flight (which I read ON A PLANE and practically in one flight's length, as it were!) she was CONFIRMED as one of my favorite female thriller writers I'd found in recent memory. The female distinction in this case is important because Julie so deftly weaves in women's issues and has SMART women at the center of her books each and every time, and I love that I can expect that from her. No boozy, flighty, pill-popping protagonists here: her characters are the type who could easily manipulate the aforementioned and have them slapped in cuffs or walking into a carefully laid trap while not breaking a sweat. Her standard thrill-a-minute narratives, complete with dueling female protagonist leads, are the kind of TWISTY psychological thrillers I crave, and when I saw this stunning cover and intriguing title pop up last year, this book FLEW to the top of my most anticipated 2025 reads list.

But the unfortunate thing about what goes up? It does, EVENTUALLY, come down...and this abrupt turn from twisty psych thriller to sort of an elevated traditional mystery with a possible unreliable narrator took this novel from the feeling of an exciting, nonstop ascent to a sort of boring, cruising speed...and much like a flight that suddenly started feeling very LONG and had me itchy to get off the plane.

Despite this departure from her first two thrillers, there WERE some Julie Clark Hallmarks that were still present here: the aforementioned cunning female protagonist, and a somewhat unique premise that had a bit of a cat and mouse flair to it. I was invested in Olivia's journey to get to know the man behind the mask, especially during the beginning half of the book, and felt the audience was being properly prepared for an unreliable narrator journey...and I was okay with that being the foundation for what I had HOPED would follow: all of the twists. Unfortunately, this sort of expectation started to fizzle and fade as the narrative wore on....and on...and ON. The last word I would have ever used to describe Clark's books prior to this one is 'meandering'....but somewhere along the way, that's exactly what this one became. Rather than being wrapped up in the relationship between father and daughter, we had to spend progressively more time in the past timeline...with a bunch of characters that were nowhere as intriguing to read...and this started feeling a lot more like YA than it needed to in order to get the point across.

This isn't a bad book by any means, and Clark's prose is mainly responsible for this: she keeps you just hooked enough to keep reading to get you from point A to B so you can get to the bottom of the secrets and finally get the FULL picture of what happened so many years ago. But the problem isn't the premise, or even the style of this one, although I'd argue it's far more of a mysterious cold case with sort of a thriller tinged plot than a psychological thriller. The main downfall of this read for me is that for the first time, a Julie Clark book reads more conventional than clever...and with such a sharp and intelligent author that in and of itself is a letdown. I didn't feel adequately 'got' by the ending and all of the sort of half-baked psych thriller twists I'd been cooking up in my head since early days (well, pages) didn't come to pass either...although in fairness, the true endings made a LOT more sense...for the conventional set, that is!

And while the premise of this novel focuses on Olivia as The Ghostwriter, I couldn't help but second guess if THIS novel was the one with a ghostwriter instead.

4 stars, rounded up from 3.5

4/4.5 ⭐️ Loved this cold case thriller - full of twists and suspense. Her writing style is so good and I really liked and empathized with the main character, Olivia despite a series of incredible circumstances in her childhood and work life as an adult that almost seem unbelievable but ultimately hang together. The mystery is solid and I also love the dual time period chapters format. Would absolutely recommend!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC - The Ghostwriter is available now.

The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark
Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark and Netgalley for the digital copy!

A journalist with a complicated past is hired to ghostwrite a memoir for a man with a decades-old secret—one that connects to a chilling crime no one has forgotten. The twist? The man is her estranged father, and the story they're unraveling is more personal than she ever expected.

I’d been seeing tons of buzz for this one and it absolutely delivered. The layered backstory and cold case elements pulled me in right away, and I loved how the flashbacks slowly built tension until everything clicked into place. It blended true crime, family drama, and emotion so seamlessly. The ending was perfectly done- surprising yet satisfying- and I flew through it in just a couple sittings. The ending tied things together in a really satisfying way... and high expectations held up!

I had TBR'd 2 other Julie Clark novels prior to The Ghostwriter, but his is the first of her novels that I have actually sat down and read and this was a great introduction! This novel was very suspenseful and fill of twists that genuinely kept me guessing until very close to the end. I finally put the pieces together of the real story around chapter 35!

I enjoyed the way the writer build up the background of the characters and slowly introduced the full story through the dual timeline narrative and I found each character likeable and multi-layered, which increased (in my opinon) how successful the twists were that were introduced to the story.

The mystery of the real happenings of that fateful night in 1975 was heartwrenching and I found myself totally sucked into this story by the end and really enjoyed the satisfying conclusion to the novel. This was a well-paced mystery with some really engaging characters and events that I really enjoyed reading!