In a Nutshell: A contemporary suspense-drama about a dysfunctional family and its secrets. (So what’s new, right?) Interesting characters and plot, but somehow, this doesn’t deliver on the ‘wow’ factor. I wasn’t bored, but I also wasn’t too invested. Recommended, but not a must-read.

Plot Preview:
Forty-four-year-old Olivia Dumont had a successful career as a ghostwriter until one day, she put her foot in her mouth and sabotaged her future. So when her agent calls her for a ghostwriting assignment for the famous horror author Vincent Taylor, Olivia knows she has no choice but to accept the job.
Everyone knows that Vincent is infamous for being the prime suspect in the murder of his two siblings Danny and Poppy fifty years ago. But what no one, including Olivia’s agent, knows is that Vincent is Olivia’s estranged father. Now that he has summoned Olivia to ghostwrite his final book, is he finally ready to reveal the truth about the past?
The story comes to us in Olivia’s first-person POV from the contemporary timeline, and from two other character’s first-person perspectives from the 1970s timeline.

I have read only one other book by Julia Clark: ‘The Lies I Tell’. Though not a favourite, it was good enough for me to want to try another novel by her. Just like ‘The Lies I Tell’, this is not a fast-paced mystery-thriller. Most of it feels more like a domestic suspense. The storyline was interesting enough, but the execution was a bit too repetitive and slow.

Bookish Yays:
🎥 Poppy – such a fabulous character! She does feel older than her age, but given that her arc is set in the 1970s when kids were probably more mature, I will give her age-appropriateness the benefit of the doubt.
🎥 Tom – has a relatively minor role, but I liked him for being a positive male character, a rarity in this genre. I love how he stood up for his principles. Wish we had had more of him in the story. Then again, I am glad we didn’t because a greater focus on him would have turned the book into a romantic suspense.
🎥 The portrayal of the 1970s in the setting of Ojai, California – feels utterly realistic.
🎥 All the reveals about ghostwriting – wow! I knew the process wouldn’t be easy, but this story actually details the tricky intricacies involved in stringing someone else’s thoughts into a cohesive book.
🎥 The unreliable narrator trope pops up thanks to Vincent’s diagnosis. However, the medical condition makes the lack of reliability a convincing one, and it is even used fairly well to add to the tension.

Bookish Mixed Bags:
🎞 This book is a great example of the author’s plotting skills, but despite the regular surprises it throws our way, it also feels fairly straightforward. I was never bored at any point, but I also never felt compelled to read ‘one more chapter.’ Luckily, I was prepared for a domestic drama because it never delivers as a ‘thriller’.
🎞 Olivia mostly acts her age, and is often a sensible character. This is why a couple of her decisions and actions feel contrived. Like how she doesn’t visit her mother until the plot is ready for her to finally do it and create the next big reveal.
🎞 Most of the characters except Poppy have their greys. So they are nicely complex and suitable for this genre. However, the character development is somewhat surface-level and hazy; we don’t know why certain characters behave that way.
🎞 The dual timeline with clear time indicators for the back-and-forth jumps. The idea and most of the implementation of the flashbacks was excellent. One of the scenes was especially poignant. However, some of the reveals come to us readers much before Olivia learns the truth, if ever she does. It is trickier to know more than the lead character in a mystery as we then have to wait patiently for her to catch up.
🎞 The first half is understandably slow due to the build-up, but the second half goes even slower as there are too many reveals from the historical timeline to fill in the explanations. These feel somewhat repetitive as well. I wish the reveals had been more staggered throughout the plot.
🎞 With a limited number of characters, it is not too tricky to figure out the villain of the story so there’s not much suspense in the ‘who’. However, the ‘how’ and ‘why’ aren’t so easy to guess. There are certain surprising twists even within this predictability.

Bookish Nays:
📽 So much of secret-keeping and misleading! No one says anything directly! This has become a hallmark of this genre and regular suspense drama readers might have more patience with all the prevarication. But as I am not a big fan of this genre, my patience was tested to its limits.
📽 Too much of convenience in the “investigation”. Whatever has not been found for almost half a century is suddenly discovered by Olivia on her very first attempt. I wish there had been a more realistic portrayal of her challenges. Cold cases can hardly be resolved so smoothly!
📽 The rationale for the distancing of Olivia mother – not at all convincing. Considering how she was a key character, this feels like an important gap.

Overall, while I am not blown away with the book, I am also not disappointed. It entertained me enough while it lasted, and except for the extensive secret-keeping, nothing else bugged me much.

Recommended to fans of domestic dramas and complex characters.

3.5 stars, rounding down for the overdose of the hush-hush behaviour.

My thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark for providing the DRC of “The Ghostwriter” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a little backlogged with my ARCs but working diligently to get caught up. I really enjoyed the premise of this story and find ghostwriters jobs so mysterious and intriguing! I love how it centers around a daughter long estranged from her father, stepping in to be his ghostwriter and finally unlocking the mysteries of his tragic past. There were lots of twist I didn’t see coming! I would definitely recommend to anyone who likes psychological thrillers and mysteries!

A decades-old family mystery with an unreliable survivor and great plot twists. I liked how we got a narrator from 1975, plus diary entries, plus home movies, all filling out the time period. The father-daughter relationship was an interesting device along with his illness causing hallucinations. A missing mother seemed like an obvious place to start investigating, but Clark takes us on loads of other paths, through Ojai and those who knew the family.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark.

Julie Clark delivers a gripping and emotional page-turner filled with secrets, deception, and the blurred lines between truth and fiction. The premise is instantly intriguing—a ghostwriter brought in to tell someone else’s story—yet the layers of mystery and the personal stakes make it so much more.

Clark’s writing is sharp, immersive, and perfectly paced, with tension that builds steadily until the explosive conclusion. The characters are complex and flawed in ways that make them feel incredibly real, and the emotional undercurrents add depth to the suspense.

This is a smart, twisty, and unforgettable novel that keeps you guessing until the very end. The Ghostwriter proves once again why Julie Clark is a must-read author in the suspense genre. Highly recommended.

Julie Clark is one of my favorite thriller authors before reading this book, and after reading it she is in my top 3. This was phenomenal and so well done. It was mapped out really well so it felt multilayered and had a lot of depth. Loved it!

This book sounded like it would be a really fun thriller. It started off strong for me, but my attention drifted as it went on and I found myself skimming a lot. I think the plot just moved too slowly for my liking. It had an interesting premise though and it did keep me guessing. There was a definite sense of dread throughout - in a good way.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All comments are my own.

When down on her luck writer Olivia is contacted by her estranged father to ghost write his memoir, she knows this is not going to be easy or normal. However, Olivia is determined to answer the question: did her father kill his siblings? Everyone thinks he did, but no one has any proof. Told through a series of flashbacks and alternating narrators, this one is a suspenseful, twisty ride. I loved every second of it. Highly recommended.

An intriguing plot that unfortunately takes a while to build. The story and characters are well-developed, and the story will draw you in. Like I said, it takes some time to build, but it was worth the wait. A great story and one to read!

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Family secrets that have caused generations of trauma. While trying to find the truth on what happened on a tragic night her father experienced while working against time of a degenerative disease she must find the truth hidden among the cryptic way her father tells his story. Coming back home to Ghostwrite for her father was never in her plans but life happens. There are multiple time lines flashing back to the time period of the tragedy and leading up to it. What really happened that night? Did it have to tear a family apart for generations? Julie Clark never misses after my first book by her "The Lies I Tell" I knew I would always read her books. Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the opportunity to review "The Ghostwriter"

After years of escaping the unanswered questions and difficult childhood, our protagonist, facing mounting debt and occupational blacklisting, is reunited with her ailing father to tell the story of his shattered childhood and murdered siblings, that lies at the roots of their troubled history. Brilliantly written, well developed, and and there are plenty of lessons shared. Freedom of youth, nostalgic childhood memories, and the long term damage that can come from stealing the innocence of our children

In the summer of 1975, Vincent Taylor's two siblings, older brother Danny and younger sister Poppy, were brutally murdered, and despite the lack of evidence suggesting so, the entire town remains convinced Vincent was the guilty party.

In the present day, ghostwriter Olivia Dumont (née Taylor) has spent her entire adult life hiding from family secrets and her own identity. When horror author Vincent Taylor, Olivia's estranged father, pegs her to help him with his memoir, Olivia must figure out how to confront her own past, as well as her father's — as they work their way through reconstructing his worst days.

And these may be his final days. Her father is suffering from Lewy body dementia, unable to write his own memoir. Olivia, who had never heard of this debilitating brain disorder before now, very quickly transforms into a sort of Luke Skywalker scoffing at Han — "You don't believe in the Force, do you?" — when Luke literally just found out about it himself. It was almost amusing, though I don't think it was meant to be a funny bit of characterization for Olivia.

Clark has written a propulsive thriller packed with all the right ingredients for a compelling story. From the beginning, though, I struggled with this one because of the use of present tense throughout — not only is it in the present-day timeline but it's in the 1975 timeline. And, to top off my frustrations with the style, by Clark simply interspersing timely flashbacks, the tension in the story felt manipulated rather than organic to the work Olivia was putting into finding out what really happened the night her aunt and uncle were killed. You could almost predict the 1975 peek that was coming next.

Style and verb tense choice aside, there were several points where, despite the novel's easy readability, I was well aware of the author's role here — namely with teasing out points a little too long. But I think my main issue was the lack of any viable red herring, alongside the overwrought lack-of-communication trope, upon which the story heavily relied. Olivia was estranged from her father for a long time, but also her mother, who left when she was very young. I find it really hard to believe that as a 40-something woman and a writer herself, this unsolved murder which revolves solely around her father never piqued her interest. She was, before stepping in as his ghostwriter, completely separated from her identity as his daughter, with no one the wiser. She never questioned the idea that she may have been raised by a murderer? She was fine returning to write this memoir — so I struggle to even fathom that she actually thought it possible. Leaving the reveal (which had some disappointing elements in there too) feeling inevitable in its way.

I never can wait for a new book from Julie Clark and her latest doesn't disappoint!
The story was suspenseful and eerie but was mixed with the empathy of family loss. The intertwining of those features made it hard to put it down which means I couldn't put it down at all. The varying angles and perspectives of the characters made it an especially effective reading experience.

I’m definitely a fan of Julia Clark’s writing, and this book was no exception. It did start off slowly and I kept wondering when it would pick up, but thankfully it did, and the pace quickened. Actually I didn’t want to put it down then.

Olivia Dumont is the daughter of the famous writer Vincent Taylor, a fact that only a few very select people know. Her father wants to write his memoir and requests that she be his ghostwriter, after them being estranged for years. The story circles around the night that his brother Danny and sister Poppy were murdered. Vincent has Lewy body dementia, and isn’t always lucid, but he has made notes for her. It’s a pretty big family drama that gives us clues and also misleads us in trying to solve the mystery. We don’t know who murdered Danny and Poppy or why. What a family! And what a situation this is.

The story is expertly plotted and I didn’t want it to end. Olivia has her work cut out for her and even when the answers begin to show up, I wasn’t sure how they would all come together.

This gets 4.5 stars, rounded up!

I received a copy of the digital ARC via the publisher and NetGalley. My review is voluntary.

4 stars ✨ (was leaning 3.5, but the ending sealed the deal)

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for my gifted copy of The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark!

I really enjoyed this one. The formatting hooked me right away—multiple timelines, multiple POVs, diary entries, even film elements woven into the narrative. It made the story feel layered and immersive.

There were moments where I wasn’t sure what was real, with multiple potentially unreliable narratives in play. I usually love that device, but here I had mixed feelings—it kept me on my toes, but also left me questioning a little too much at times. Still, it absolutely kept me guessing.

By the end, I’d really grown to love Poppy—she was a total standout for me. And at its core, this was such a solid mystery. The conclusion tied everything together in a way that was both satisfying and memorable, which is what bumped my rating up.

Overall, I’d definitely recommend this one and will be picking up more from Julie Clark in the future.

DNF 30%. Glacially paced and, eventually, I gave up. Will work for others, but the pacing was way too slow for me.

4 stars! I'd love to see this book be brought to life on film and/or tv. This kept me guessing all the way to the end. Thank you netgalley & the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed reading this book and following Olivia's journey while she discovered her father's past. It was a quick read and just enough happened to keep me turning the pages but not so much that I got confused and had a hard time following the characters. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of this book. I already own another book from Julie Clark and look forward to reading it and others.

This was a twisty, deeply emotional story of a daughter, Olivia, traveling back to her father, a famous author, to be a ghostwriter for his memoir as he is suffering from Lewy Body dementia and cannot finish it. You get the emotions between those two, plus a whole bunch more as Olivia goes digging deep into the past with the murders of Poppy, and Danny, fifty years ago, never solved. This book has it all, twists, darkness, dysfunctional families, treasure hunts both in the past and present, and light shown into the past actions of people who have buried it so deeply they have forgotten the real past, or have had disease wipe it from their minds. I loved how it was slowly unraveled as Olivia wrote the book, Vincent being both a help and hindrance and her own journey with the trials of being a ghostwriter and standing up for truth, despite it costing her so much. I admired her and how the truth mattered the most, even if it might turn out to make her father a murderer. It does get pretty dark, with incidents that are awful and when it is all revealed, the truth is even worse than the rumors but it completes the story well. Woven in with it is the journey of Olivia, her struggles against a world determined to silence her and her reconnection with her father. Lots of emotions and a really good book!

I was hooked as soon as I read the synopsis of this latest thriller by author Julie Clark. It's about the daughter of a horror writer who, 50 years ago, was the only survivor of a brutal attack on his family. The daughter has spent her life hiding her familial connection to the tragedy. Then he asks her to ghostwrite his next book, which happens to be a tell-all about the events of 50 years ago. This was my first book by Julie Clark and now I need to go read her others because this was GOOD! The characters were so well written and the twists were exquisite. Highly recommend this one!

Fantastic. Julie Clark has never disappointed me. I was completely engrossed in this story the entire time and my theories NEVER stopped changing which I absolutely love.
It was a bit of a slower burn, but it totally works here-it only made me more invested in the characters and more eager to get to the reveal/conclusion. Ugh this was so good.