Nicolena Reads

Read April 2026

I picked this one up for book club and honestly I had no idea what I was getting into. Did I vote for it? Yes! I knew it was a mystery/thriller, which is usually enough to get me to say “sure, why not?” and since I was going to get a chance to talk about it in a small group setting, I had a little extra motivation to get started.

What is it about? 

Lucy is accused of murdering her best friend, Savvy, after the two attend a wedding together and Lucy is found the next morning covered in Savvy’s blood. The problem? Lucy says she doesn’t remember what happened. She’s never been convicted, but the entire town has pretty much decided she did it. Her marriage falls apart, she leaves town, and she tries to move on with her life while carrying the very inconvenient reputation of possibly being a murderer.

Ben Owens, the host of a popular true crime podcast, decides to make Savvy’s murder the subject of his next season and brings Lucy back to town to interview her. Lucy is NOT thrilled about this. She also doesn’t exactly trust herself because she genuinely can’t remember what happened that night. Ben makes it clear he just wants to give Lucy a chance to share her side of the story, but Lucy can’t help but feel like he has evidence that she killed her best friend. Why else would he go through all this trouble and make an entire podcast about it?

What does it have?

• Small Town Gossip Mill
• Friendship, But Make It Complicated
• Podcast In a Book
• Wait, WHO’S Lying?

Our book club had a lot to say about this one, which is always a good sign. There were theories, accusations, people changing their minds, and the inevitable “WAIT, BUT WHAT ABOUT…” conversations. I also appreciated that the mystery felt like something I could actually try to solve rather than just sitting around waiting for the author to tell me what happened. There was a small section that lost us and we ended up revisiting it together. At this point, I forget if we ever sorted it out, but I do know it ended with most of us giving it a solid score.

Is it worth reading?

Oh yeah! This was easily one of my favorite book club picks so far this year. I love a good unreliable narrator. I mean, I did write my entire graduate thesis about unreliable narrators, so maybe I’m a bit biased, but with that point aside, I liked the book and you might too.