Book Description 

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.

My Review 

I enjoyed reading Clark’s The Lies I Tell, so I was excited about the opportunity to read this newest novel. The premise intrigued me: not only must the ghostwriter protagonist uncover the mystery of a 50-year old murder, but she is also the estranged daughter of her latest client– a job she is only taking out of desperation and not a genuine desire for reconciliation. 

The narrative shifts between the present day and 1975, the latter of which sheds light on the mystery surrounding the Taylor siblings’ brutal murder. Vincent Taylor proves to be somewhat of an unreliable narrator, which raises the question: is he being deliberately misleading or are his recollections affected by his recent diagnosis of Lewy body dementia? 

Protagonist Olivia must balance her non-existent relationship with her father and the truth about who murdered her aunt and uncle fifty years ago. Her father has always been suspected of the crime, but there was never enough evidence to charge him. Is his book supposed to be the Actual Truth or one last attempt to avoid taking responsibility for the slayings? 

I’m usually pretty good at figuring out mysteries but this book kept me guessing the whole time. My theories were constantly shifting as new evidence appeared, rendering old evidence moot or obsolete. 

I would absolutely recommend The Ghostwriter. This is an engaging novel from start to finish. Every new revelation led to three new questions, pushing both Olivia and the reader farther away from the truth rather than closer to it. 

I received a digital ARC of this book from Sourcebooks/NetGalley.