the ONE thriller you can handle right now

or maybe just the one you want next

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve been off thrillers for a while. I choose them VERY warily, demanding that I’ll be completely engrossed but not utterly panicked. I cannot handle serial killers. I don’t want anyone to shoot a puppy. There are a few other plot tropes that I won’t even list here because they’re just too much (okay they involve airplanes and schools).

But I really do want to lose myself in a dying-to-know-what-happens plot!

If that’s you, too—or even if you want ALL THE THRILLERS NO MATTER HOW SCARY—I’ve got the book for you.

Look, if you know me you know Sarina’s my friend. But maybe you have also noticed (and I’m outing myself here) that I have never before sent you an email about a single book, not even if my mother wrote it. (She doesn’t write books. But still.)

This is a good book, y’all. It delivers on ever single promise it makes. If you like the things I recommend, and this even sounds a little intriguing, you’re going to like it. Here’s the scoop as found on the book flap:

Bestselling romance author Sarina Bowen’s debut thriller, about one woman’s search for the truth after receiving a text from her deceased ex.

She thought it was love. Then he vanished.

On an ordinary Monday morning, Ariel Cafferty's phone buzzes with a disturbing text message. Something’s happened. I need to see you. Meet me under the candelabra tree ASAP. The words would be jarring from anyone, but the sender is the only man she ever loved. And it's been several years since she learned he died.

Seeing Drew’s name pop up is heart-stopping. Ariel’s gut says it can’t be real. But she goes to the tree anyway. She has to.

Nobody shows. But the text upends everything she thought she knew about the day he left her. The more questions she asks, the more sinister the answers get. Only two things are clear: everything she was told five years ago is wrong, and someone is still lying to her. 

The truth has to be out there somewhere. To safeguard herself—and her son—she’ll have to find it before it finds her. And with it, the answer to what became of Drew. 

For fans of Laura Dave and Julie Clark, but with a heart-stopping romance that only Sarina Bowen can execute, The Five Year Lie is a page-turning, spine-tingling thriller that will have you guessing until the very end.

I really think you should buy this or reserve it at the library or whatever you like to do right now—and it’s a trade paperback!! So a bargain and also delightfully portable. With, I’m told, an excellent narrator if that’s what floats your boat.

Digital formats:

Amazon | Apple Books | Nook | Kobo | Google Play 

Audio (Great narrators!)

Paperbacks:

Amazon | Bookshop.org | Indigo | Target | Waterstones

That’s it from me this week! I have some The Chicken Sisters news that I am dying to share but I’m not allowed to, and I’m waiting for an editor to read what I hope will be my next book to send your way. Just sayin, if you loved The Chicken Sisters and want “more like that”—you really can’t do better than In Her Boots. It licks all the same popsicles.

Or something like that. Tons of readers tell me they honestly liked it even better! So maybe while you’re shopping you want to pick that up as well!

Playing the Witch Card is the witchiest and also has Tarot and a poodle.

The Chicken Sisters has dueling fried chicken restaurants and sisters and reality TV.

In Her Boots has bffs who will do anything for each other but probably shouldn’t have, and also literary fraud and a farm and mini-ponies.