S. F. Prescott

Emotionally taut with twisty reveals.

Julie Clark is the New York Times bestselling author of The Ones We Choose and The Last Flight, which was also a #1 international bestseller and has been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and a golden doodle with poor impulse control.

I always enjoy Julie Clark’s books, so I was extra excited to receive an advanced copy of The Ghostwriter (publishing June 3rd). I loved reading a couple of her previous books, The Lies I tell and The Last Flight, both filled with palpable tension, alternating between a dual POV. If you want a story that’s psychologically tense but light enough to feel like a popcorn thriller, then pick up one of her books. I promise you won’t regret it.

This book met all my expectations and then some. It was smart, hooked me from page one, and held my interest until the end. I particularly enjoyed the tense relationship between the ghostwriter protagonist, Olivia, and her ailing horror writer father, Vincent. Including the dark past she’s been hired to write in his memoir. Learning about his childhood and his murdered siblings was a dark layer to the story I really enjoyed, giving it a lot more depth. Julie Clark did an amazing job at plotting, and creating an unreliable narrator in Vincent, while uncovering the truth through multiple POVs and past timelines. I thought the old Super 8 clips were an especially nice touch. The characters felt authentic, their arcs made sense, and kept me guessing. The ending felt very satisfying, and I loved the angle of Olivia (only daughter of suspected killer) returning to write her father’s memoir as marketing gold. The fact she didn’t realize being his daughter would create an advantage, and really push the book to be a bestseller was a little surprising, but perhaps the shame she felt toward her family overshadowed it. I was reminded of Sharp Objects when Camille returns to write about the murders in her home town.

A scene that sticks with me is when Olivia goes back to her father’s childhood home, where the murders took place, and finds the suspicious message carved into the wall above the doorframe in his handwriting. That was a great red herring!

For readers who enjoy suspense, stories about dysfunctional families, and a book within a book.

Synopsis:

June, 1975.  

The Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their own home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets. 

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. 

After fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk about what really happened that night in 1975.