lilibetbombshell's reviews
2642 reviews

Fan-flipping-tastic. Absolutely everything I hoped it would be and more. Give me fifty million books just like this and I’ll be the happiest bookworm that ever existed. Absolutely no notes. 

Have you ever had one of your most-anticipated novels of the year not only live up to every expectation you had but surpass them? Yeah, that’s Victorian Psycho for me. This book is every gleefully macabre, disturbing, violent, and bloody fever dream I’ve ever had shaking hands with sardonic narrative, razor-sharp wit and tight, smart writing. 

Virginia Feito has made a grisly and hilarious masquerade of Winifred Notty, our protagonist, ostensibly a governess by trade but really just a criminally insane serial killer. Behind her staid grey dress and white wool stockings, Miss Notty not only knows she’s full of darkness that will one day lead her to the gallows, she relishes the idea. She revels in violence, darkness, death, and gore. She’s quite simply one of the most memorable main characters I’ve read in years and I love her all the more dearly for lacking anything one would consider humanity. 

This book is more than evocative or atmospheric; it’s immersive. No sense is spared, for good or for ill. Your sensitivities will not be considered and I’m the type of reader who loves the blunt force trauma of experiencing every event in all of its glory with the darkest main characters literature has to offer. So this Victorian horror comedy was good to the last chop (sorry, couldn’t resist).

I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Body Horror/Dark Comedy/Historical Horror/Horror/Horror Comedy/Serial Killer

I think this wants to be a why choose version of The Ritual or something but LORD it goes nowhere and does nothing. 

How long would you wait to get everything you ever wanted? How patient could you be? How tenacious do you think you are? If your one shot is only a nebulous gleam in your eye, how do you hold on?

Mackenzie Clyde didn’t come all the way from living a lonely and bullied childhood in Reno only to play tiddlywinks for some legal department in a Silicon Valley startup. She promised her mom she wouldn’t stop until she had it all. That doesn’t mean break the glass ceiling; that means invent a new one that’s better than the glass one. That means making herself feared and hated by Silicon Valley tech bros and a confidante of a powerful venture capitalist. She knows secrets, people, and money. That’s why her boss sends her in to assist the FBI with an investigation into the murder of a tech mogul who could’ve only been killed by one of the other members of his C-Suite. 

Dead Money is an absolutely fantastic thriller by debut author Jakob Kerr. I would say it was the best book in my batch of ARCs that were published in January. Kerr’s breakneck pacing reminds me of Alison Gaylin a little, the fabulous twists, turns, and betrayals remind me of Robert Dugoni, and the emotional weight reminds me a bit of one of my favorite thriller writers ever, Jordan Harper. 

I love a great technothriller and I love a great thriller about people who have more money than humanity. Dead Money meets somewhere in the middle of that, where the technology meets with the money and shakes hands. The problem is the money being in the hands of either the corrupt or the old, white, and privileged and the tech being in the hands of the young, naive, and hubristic. One plays the long con and the other has the attention span of a squirrel. Someone has to cover the middle ground. What does the middle ground do when no one’s looking?

I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Crime Thriller/Murder Thriller/Suspense Mystery/Suspense Thriller

Strike and Burn blurbs and gives cover like a romantic thriller, but it reads like an average dark romance with a nice comedic edge. I actually had some fun reading it until I got to the last 30% of the book, and then it just felt like the book was not only too long but it started to fall apart in almost every way. 

I knew almost from the beginning this wasn’t going to be the most well-written novel. That’s okay, you know? Sometimes you just want to read a diverting story and the plot for Strike and Burn definitely sounds diverting right now. I even had fun with the comedic bantering, to a certain extent. The main characters of this book, Honor and Strike, just couldn’t maintain consistency throughout the length of this book and it showed. 

I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. All reviews rated three stars or under will not appear on my social media. Thank you.

You ever just know you'll regret finishing a book if you push yourself to do it? Yeah, this is one of those books. 

In a month of middling reads, We Are Watching is not only a breath of fresh air but also stands out for being my first five star trad pub review of 2025. 

There was absolutely nothing about this book I didn’t like. I have no notes. 

This book asks you to think about something: What if you woke up one day and realized, seemingly out of nowhere, that your family was at the center of a conspiracy theory? 

I don’t know about you, but knowing what I know about conspiracy theories and the nutjobs who get really deep into them (like, Pizzagate deep), I’d be absolutely terrified. Once Meg and Lilly, the main protagonists in this book, figure out what’s going on, terrified is only one of the myriad emotions they feel as they try to figure out what exactly is going on as events spin more and more out of their control with every hour that passes. 

I love a good conspiracy thriller, but add in a strict time element and I’m going to be sucked in completely. This is a completely engrossing high stakes plot that combines grief, mental illness, family, paranoia, guilt, and parasocial relationships into a suspenseful tale of what happens when obsession grows into something contagious. 

I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Conspiracy Thriller/Crime Thriller/Cult Fiction/Psychological Thriller/Suspense Thriller

If I wanted to read Criminal Minds fanfic I'd go read Criminal Minds fanfic