Big thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks for the early copy of this book!

Split between now and then timelines, This Stays Between Us tells the tale of six college friends ten years ago and the fateful summer tragedy struck them in Australia. It's messy, full of obsession, guilt, and some of the best twists I've read in a book. It's fast paced and the characters are well-developed, unlikeable yet loveable all in the same breath. I'd recommend to anyone who loves a good past and present thriller.

I really enjoyed this book! It starts out fast paced and stayed that way throughout. I was constantly second guessing myself on what I thought I knew. Nothing is as it seems! I loved the twist at the end too! Just amazing!

This was a fun and gripping destination thriller. It had the same sinister tone as Ochs’s The Resor, and was dark, unsettling, and full of tension. It took me a while to get into, but by the second half I was well and truly hooked. It did find the large cast of characters initially overwhelming and hard to keep straight, but Ochs drew them out with great detail as the story progressed.

The outback of Australia offered an unforgiving, isolated, and harsh setting which was perfect for this group revisiting the scene of a crime from ten years ago. This was elevated by Och’s writing which was engaging, atmospheric, and emotive. There was a small element of the story I found pretty disappointing (and am pretending didn’t happen). Overall though, the twists were surprising enjoyable and satisfying.

I would recommend this read to anyone looking for a dark, atmospheric, and tense psychological thriller. Thank you to the publisher for the advance copy of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

This stays between us is a summer thriller perfect for the summer reading season. Taking place in alternating timelines and dual PoVs, we have Claire in the present. Claire is going back to a reunion of her study abroad group who traveled to Australia together when their friend. Phoebe went missing. When the novel opens, Claire has been carrying the secret that she has killed phoebe. However, when she gets called that phoebe body has been found, readers learn that Claire’s original confession was not quite that simple. Secrets are revealed between the members of the class and the jumps back in time to phoebes perspective unravel a twisted tale that leads to her disappeared and ultimate death.

This is a suspenseful, fast-paced read-but I don’t think it will add anything new to the genre or stand out necessarily. This is still an enjoyable time killer for pool chair!

Thanks to the publisher for providing the arc via NetGalley I. Exchange for an honest review.

"This Stays Between Us" is a twisty destination thriller. Ten years ago, six college students met while studying abroad together in Australia when one of the students, Phoebe, suddenly disappeared. Presuming she ran away, the group decided to pack up and head back to their respective homes. But ten years later, they each receive a call that Phoebe's body has been found. The police have questions, and the group is summoned back to Australia. It soon becomes clear that everyone is hiding something.

I really enjoyed Sara Ochs' debut novel, and I have been eagerly awaiting this one. "This Stays Between Us" was a fun summer thriller full of twists and turns. The story is told from the perspectives of Phoebe's former study abroad roommate, Claire, in the present and Phoebe in the past. I liked this format because it built so much tension and suspense, and I loved having Phoebe's POV knowing from the outset that she would go missing. The characters were so messy and flawed but very well-written. I truly had no idea who to trust, and I think at one point or another I suspected each of them. I thought I had figured it all out, but I was wrong. The story has kind of a slow burn feel, but the well-executed twists kept it fast-paced. Needless to say, I finished this book quickly because I was dying to find out what happened. I loved the Australian setting, and Ochs is becoming a fave author for destination thrillers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a quick, entertaining read! I enjoyed the suspense and while I was able to guess where the story was going I still had an enjoyable time reading.

3.5 stars. This book follows two perspectives, Claire and Phoebe. Claire is going back 10 years later to Australia, where she did a study abroad program, after the body of her friend, Phoebe, was found in an abandoned mine. When Claire arrives, secrets between all the other members of the study abroad group start to come out and Claire is on a missions to figure out who killed Phoebe. This also follows Phoebe from the past and her perspective leading up to the night she was murdered.
This book had drama, intrigue, an interesting setting, and a big twist.
Thank you to Netgalley and Source book Landmark for the ARC of this book. This book is out now.

I don’t know why I had low expectations going into this book but I ended up loving it. The twists, the setting, the flashbacks - just so well done.

The epilogue though 😒 I won’t say anymore but it definitely made a few parts not make sense looking back on them.

I was sucked in from the first chapter and flew through the book. I can’t wait to go back and read Sara Ochs last book, The Resort. Very twisty and fun! Definitely a perfect beach/vacation read.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

I wanted to give Sara Ochs a second chance after <i>The Resort</i>, and, OK, I see what the hype is about now.

The idea of a destination thriller (or whatever we're calling Ochs's genre of thrillers that prominently feature travel themes) is a fun one, and <i>This Stays Between Us</i> really demonstrates its potential. The characters' interaction with Australia is a major element of the book, and it's fun to see the country through their eyes (specifically, the eyes of party-focused college kids more focused on the local bars than the local sights). Ochs really captures that vibe well, and I'll be interested to see if she continues that focus in her next books.

What I was most impressed by was how well the book kept me hooked from chapter to chapter. I shamelessly dropped the other books I was reading after picking this book up, and that says a lot! Unfortunately, though, I didn't feel that the book quite stuck the landing. If you go into the book expecting it to be about the journey, not the destination, though (fitting for a travel, book, amirite), you'll be very pleased!

(Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC of this book! All opinions are, of course, my own.)

Thanks to SOURCEBOOKS Landmark | Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley for providing me with a copy to read and review.

A slow burn, twisty mystery/thriller that also has a destination setting? Count me in. I really enjoyed the slow reveal of all the layers of this novel. And in true Ochs fashion, an epilogue with a final surprise.

One of them knows what happened all those years ago, but they will do anything to keep the truth buried.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 (3.5/5)

Ten years ago, a group of students go on a study abroad program like no other: a month-long trip of education and adventure, exploring everything Australia has to offer. And at first, it’s everything the group expects: sunshine, whirlwind romance, and all-night parties. But it isn’t long before cracks begin to form within the group. Ones that lead to Phoebe’s disappearance.

Now, Claire, Phoebe’s old roommate, gets a call that Phoebe’s remains have been found. It’s time to return, for her and the others to go back to Australia. But as Claire retraces their steps and tries to piece together exactly what happened to her best friend all those years ago, it quickly becomes clear everyone in the group has secrets.

First off, I enjoyed the past vs present POVs along with the POVs of Phoebe and Claire. The book did keep you guessing “who dun it” as one chapter you’re convinced of one person’s guilt, and the next they’re cleared. It felt as though the ending came out of left field and just “happened.” The little twist of the last chapter though is what got me rating this 3.5 ⭐️ vs 3. It was a very quick read and overall entertaining!

Didn't like this book because it had confusing shifts between povs and phoebe became acceptable after loosing weight.

Six study abroad friends return to Australia 10 years later when their friend Phoebe’s body is discovered in a mine near where they were staying all those years ago. This story is tense, and it is hard to know who to believe in this destination thriller! I loved the past and present timelines. It really helped me get the whole picture about what happened and how the characters got where they are. This is a great summer read!

3.5 stars

When Claire has the chance to go to Australia for a month of adventurous trips and sight-seeing, she has no idea that ten years later the things that happened that month will still haunt her. Told through two timelines and two perspectives, This Stays Between Us is chock-full of teenage drama and adult drama, that twists and turns itself towards an ending which unfortunately annoyed me a little. Thanks to SOURCEBOOK Landmarks and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This paragraph might threaten to get a little spoiler-y, if you read between my lines, so if you'd like to retain all possible tension for This Stays Between Us, skip to the next one. As the blurb of the novel promises, Claire is stressed about the discovery of Phoebe's remains because she is the one who killed her. I love that as a premise, because girl drama turned into woman drama is ripe for tension and we don't get to see women actually kill out of petty reasons all that often. Not that I am pro-murder, but female characters usually kill because they have been wronged and therefore there is a justification for their actions which leans into the moral. I support women's rights, but I also support women's wrongs, by which I mean that women can be just as irrational, evil, and destructive as men and this too should find its reflection in literature. What annoys me, therefore, is that This Stays Between Us lures me in with the promise of complicated female friendships and murder and then actually keeps turning this on its head, to the point that Claire's guilt remains an eternal question mark until the last page, at which point I was over it. I appreciate that the publishing industry most likely is pushing authors to have as many twists as possible and to retain an element of Gotcha for the last page, so this is a complaint to them as well. I love a reveal in the last few pages, but I do want it to feel earned. If you're going to make me spend hundreds of pages in a character's head, and not make them an unreliable narrator, I shouldn't have to throw out most of those pages in order to appreciate the ending. This is not just an issue with This Stays Between Us, but with many thrillers I've read lately, so I think the idea of the unreliable narrator needs to either be more clearly defined or left to rest for a little.

This Stays Between Us is told through the perspective of Claire in the now and Phoebe's perspective ten years ago. I hadn't expected to get the past through Phoebe's POV but I appreciated it, because it allows us to see the characters through two different sets of eyes. Ten years ago, Phoebe and Claire, along with five others, took part in a study abroad programme through which they got to see all the sights and joys of Australia, from the Great Barrier Reef to the Outback. They are all fresh adults, which means that they are basically children, and so the drama between them is intensely petty. There is fun in that, but it does also get a bit boring to read about twenty-somethings drinking and sleeping with one another. In the "now", told through Claire's perspective, we're ten years later and Phoebe's body has been found. Now all adults, the group comes back together and I had honestly expected them all to be a little bit more mature. If I guess everyone is roughly twenty in the past, they're now thirty and I would honestly expect a little more maturity, especially from Claire. Since the blurb has given us an awareness that she carries some guilt, I'd expect her to be smarter in how she goes about figuring out what is going on. Especially in the last third of the novel, Claire felt like a headless chicken running around.

This is my first read by Sara Ochs and I enjoyed much of what she did. I like the time jump and the switching POVs and how it reveals the little cracks in the story each of them is telling. With both timelines working towards some kind of clarity, there is also a nice tension throughout the book. I did have issues with the characterisation, though, and especially how certain elements of Phoebe's backstory were employed. In the past storyline, there is a lot of partying, drinking, and sleeping around, which is absolutely fun, but at the same time there is some intense stuff in Phoebe's past which darkens much of this. I think thrillers can be an excellent place to address difficult themes, but here it didn't feel as if Ochs was entirely engaging with the darkness but rather let it serve as something of a shortcut towards letting us appreciate Phoebe's complexity as a character. It also ties into the resolution of the mystery in a way that I would have wished that maybe Ochs and her editor would have gone over it again to make sure it all comes across the way they intend. However, for a mystery thriller, This Stays Between Us largely does what it intends to do. The characters all serve their purpose and, like I said above, the structure of the novel itself is nicely plotted.

I did enjoy parts of This Stays Between Us, especially the nonsense of young adult energies truly released for the first time. We are our best and worst selves at those ages and Ochs runs full steam with those energies. However, in the end it felt a little over the top to me in many ways and Claire let me down as a main character.

Sara Ochs delivers a gripping psychological thriller with This Stays Between Us, a twisty, sun-drenched tale of friendship gone fatally wrong. Set between the carefree facade of a study abroad trip to Australia and the haunting aftermath a decade later, this novel expertly balances suspense, guilt, and the corrosive power of secrets.

Ten years ago, Claire and her best friend Phoebe embarked on the adventure of a lifetime—part travel fantasy, part college rite of passage. But what starts as beaches, booze, and bonding quickly curdles into something darker. Tensions simmer, friendships fracture, and then—Phoebe vanishes. Now, with her remains finally discovered, Claire and the surviving members of their group are summoned back to the scene of their shared nightmare.

Ochs excels at weaving dual timelines, teasing out the mystery with meticulous pacing. The “then” chapters shimmer with the reckless energy of youth, slowly giving way to a rising dread as the group’s dynamics shift and darken. The “now” chapters are more methodical and claustrophobic, filled with interrogations, flashbacks, and the slow unraveling of Claire’s carefully maintained lies.

And it’s Claire—our unreliable narrator—who holds the novel’s center with a chilling grip. Her guilt is palpable, her fear almost suffocating, and her need to keep the truth buried at any cost adds a sharp edge to every interaction. As she returns to the place where it all went wrong, the reader is pulled deeper into a psychological maze of deceit, self-preservation, and moral ambiguity. The tension lies not in whether Claire did it—we know that much from the start—but why, and what she’s willing to do now to keep it buried.

Fans of Lucy Foley, Ashley Elston, and Megan Miranda will find much to love here—secluded settings, fractured friendships, and buried truths with deadly consequences. But Ochs brings her own unique voice to the genre, particularly in how she juxtaposes the bright, carefree backdrop of Australia with the darkness of human nature and the damage of unresolved guilt.

📚: This Stays Between Us by Sara Ochs
⭐️: 3.5/5 (rounding up on #goodreads)

Ten years ago, a group of study abroad students in Australia find themselves navigating a month together with explosive dynamics amongst each other. At the end of the program, Phoebe has gone missing, and is assumed to have run away. Now, a decade after, the group plans a reunion, and - coincidentally - Phoebe’s body is found.

This was an unexpectedly quick read! Finished almost #inonesitting, this was more of a page ripper than I thought it would be going in. A bit of predictability in the ending — even with a final page twist. This was a solid 3.5 ⭐️ for me.

Thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark via @netgalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. This Stays Between Us is out now.

A terrific, well structured book which covers two points in time and explores what happened. I really loved the inclusion of the Australian trip and the author captured well the sense of mystery which regional areas of Australia can elicit. It’s the sort of book that sucks you in quickly so don’t expect to be able to set it aside and read bit by bit - you’re going to want to power through this one.

4.5* "Ten years later, they each receive a call. They've found Phoebe's body. And now it's time to return."
You know it will be a tense destination thriller when the cast must return 10 years later to resolve a murder. It is set in Australia with six students studying abroad. These are typical students with adventure in mind as well as alcohol, sex, tempers flaring and personality clashes. As the story is narrated by Claire, we know she admits to killing her friend Phoebe, but we don't know why or how it came to be, so the breakdown in past tense of Phoebe's story and Claire's present situation as the truth narrows and shifts some mind-blowing scenes. There are more than these two that are untrustworthy. All of the characters appear to be guilt ridden and responsible for the past as the blame shifts and the police call them back to be questioned. Not the ten year reunion they had quite hoped for. My biggest downfall in reading is if there are a lot of characters to define and organize into the murder scenes I lose the trail and must find my way back and this one was no exception. Well written as far as the scenes shifted and a well thought out process. This was a great beach read while vacationing on the beach so as the tensions rise so does the temperature.
Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

When Claire gets an invitation for a 10 year reunion in Australia with her exhange group her first instinct it to decline. She doesn’t want to relive those times even though the people were some of her closest friends. When the body of her best friend is discovered she decides to take the trip and try to figure out exactly what happened to her all those years ago. Not knowing whom she can trust Claire soon becomes part of a cat and mouse game that leads to a very satisfying ending.

This was such a good quick read for me that was very enjoyable to read. The characters were all so imperfect that it just added to the story and the ending was a nice twist.

Thank you to Netgalley and to the publishers for allowing me to read this advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.

Unfortunately, I had a hard time getting into this book. I did not like the main characters (although maybe I wasn't supposed to). So because of that it was hard for me to read this book. I still want to read more by Sara Ochs in the future, but this book wasn't my cup of tea.