This book was a win for me, and though the story was heartbreaking in so many ways, it was also a testament to the beautiful strength of love. If you enjoy a good family drama with a twisty side of mystery, put this one on your reading list! (read my full review here)

In this GMA Book Club pick (March 2022), we meet Emma, Leo, and their young daughter Ruby. All seems perfect in this happy little family, until Leo learns that almost everything Emma has told him is a lie. Leo is an obituary writer, Emma a well-known marine biologist with a serious illness. When Leo is assigned to write her stock obituary “just in case,” he begins to uncover the darkest secrets of her past. Now she must convince him that she really is the woman he knows and loves, but first she has to tell him the truth about her past — and the other love of her life.

this domestic thriller transported me through time with Jen. I experienced her confusion and pain, and ultimately her revelation. Put on your time-traveling shoes and hunker down for a wild ride with this Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick (August 2022)!

Standing at her window late one night, Jen watches in horror as her son suddenly and inexplicably kills a man right in front of their home. In an instant, her entire world crumbles before her. How could he commit such a terrible act, and why? Just as importantly, how could she not have seen this coming and stopped it? These are the desperate questions on her mind as she falls asleep that night. But when she wakes…it’s the day before yesterday. And the next morning it’s the day before that. As Jen travels back through time, she frantically combs the details of her past for the one thing that can change her son’s future.

a mystery that kept me flipping pages and wondering whom to hate! when it comes to domestic thriller who-done-its, this one gives you all the suspects.

Isabelle Drake’s life changed forever one year ago. Her toddler son, Mason, was taken out of his crib in the middle of the night while she and her husband were asleep in the next room. With little evidence and few leads for the police to chase, the case quickly went cold. However, Isabelle cannot rest until Mason is returned to her — literally. Except for the occasional catnap or small blackout where she loses track of time, she hasn’t slept in a year. Isabelle’s entire existence now revolves around finding him, but she knows she can’t go on this way forever. She agrees to be interviewed by a true-crime podcaster — but his incessant questioning about her past, paired with her severe insomnia, has brought up uncomfortable memories. Now Isabelle is doubting her recollection of the night of Mason’s disappearance, as well as second-guessing who she can trust… including herself.

The only book in this list i’ve not yet read, this family drama has been sitting on my coffee table for weeks. it’s A GMA Book club pick and award winning novel, and i can’t wait to dig in!

“We didn’t call the police right away.” Those are the electric first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing. Twenty-year-old Mia isn’t initially concerned when her 14-year-old brother, who has Angelman syndrome and cannot speak, returns home from his daily hike without their father. What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. More than a missing-person story, it’s a story of a family who must go to remarkable lengths to truly understand one another.

This was my first book by Clare Makintosh and I was NOT disappointed — nor was I prepared for the ending!

A mother’s life is shattered one rainy afternoon as her son slips from her grip and runs into the street… Jenna Gray moves to a ramshackle cottage on the remote Welsh coast, trying to escape the memory of the car accident that plays again and again in her mind and desperate to heal from the loss of her child and the rest of her painful past. At the same time, the novel tracks the pair of Bristol police investigators trying to get to the bottom of this hit-and-run. As they chase down one hopeless lead after another, they find themselves as drawn to each other as they are to the frustrating, twist-filled case before them.

Lisa Jewell is known for her twisted characters, and this one is pretty pretzeled! 🥨 it hooked me from the beginning and kept me glued to the end — my favorite by this author!

Alix is a popular London podcaster who meets her “birthday twin” Josie while they’re each out celebrating. Josie convinces Alix she would be a perfect guest for her podcast because Josie has her own “woman-makes-a-big-change” story.

But Josie quickly worms herself deep into Alix’s life even as Alix begins to think there is something very, very wrong with her story. Soon Alix finds her podcast has morphed into a true crime production, and she is the star…

I’ve read several of Mary Kubica’s novels, but I’m yet to see the ending coming! I guess that’s one reason many consider her to be the Queen of Domestic Suspense.

People don’t just disappear without a trace… Shelby Tebow is the first to go missing. Not long after, Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanish just blocks away from where Shelby was last seen, striking fear into their once-peaceful community. Are these incidents connected? After an elusive search that yields more questions than answers, the case eventually goes cold. Now, eleven years later, Delilah shockingly returns. Everyone wants to know what happened to her, but no one is prepared for what they’ll find…

Two sisters, a little boy, and the contemporary IRA — this one was a ride! More than a crime thriller, this book is about sister bonds, motherhood, and life in a deeply divided society.

A producer at the BBC and mother to a new baby, Tessa is at work in Belfast one day when the news of another IRA raid comes on the air. Security footage of the robbery reveals Tessa’s sister, Marian, pulling a black ski mask over her face. The police believe Marian has joined the IRA, but Tessa is convinced she must have been abducted or coerced; the sisters have always opposed the violence enacted in the name of uniting Ireland. Tessa faces impossible choices that test the limits of her ideals, the bonds of her family, her notions of right and wrong, and her identity as a sister and a mother. Walking an increasingly perilous road, she wants nothing more than to protect the one person she loves more fiercely than her sister: her infant son, Finn.

“CREEPY!” That’s the first word that comes to mind when I think of this book. Did it keep me glued to the pages (or in this case, the earbuds)? Yes. Did the ending make me wonder if I liked it? A year after reading it, I’m still trying to decide. Alice Feeney is another master of domestic suspense — and the brilliant surprise ending!

Daisy Darker was born with a broken heart… After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in her crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. When the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. But at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows… Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide goes out and all is revealed.