This was absolutely RIVETING! I could not stop reading once I started. It's the exact kind of thrilling beach read we all love to consume in the summer months, but to my endless delight, it features gay characters and relationships! Much like Jonathan Parks-Ramage's forthcoming "Yes, Daddy," P.J. Vernon exposes a dark underbelly in gay culture (hookup culture, controlling May-December/kept boy relationships, and more) through the familiar lens of the unreliable narrator, domestic suspense novel.

I could not get enough. Highly recommend.

4.5 stars

This was a fast-paced, anxiety-inducing, roller-coaster ride of a book and I loved every minute of it. It's a book you will want to binge read, and it will give you a large book hangover when you're done.

Bath Haus follows Oliver, a recovered addict, and his "husband", Nathan, a wealthy and older trauma surgeon. When Nathan is out of town, Oliver visits a gay bathhouse, and barely escapes with his life. In order to preserve his relationship, Oliver lies about his injuries and what happened - but the lies, and his life, quickly spiral out of control.

I could not put this book down. Vernon knows how to build suspense and keep the pages turning. This is marketed as a thriller -- and it's an extremely effective thriller -- but the story also creates emotional connection and made me care about the outcome for the characters.

The narration is wickedly smart - the perspective shifts between Oliver and Nathan as Oliver tries to keep his lies straight and Nathan tries to uncover the truth. We don't see the true genius of the narrative style until the reveals at the very end, when moments that felt like slips in the plot and character motivations suddenly make sense. The final chapters highlight what we know, what we thought we knew, and the truth in a stunning and deft finale that surprised me without feeling like a gimmick.

There was one side plot (likely in as a red herring) that I thought was a bit underdeveloped and didn't serve any true purpose, but at the end I wasn't too bothered by that as the payoff of the story was well worth it.

Overall, this book was an easy, fun, and thrilling read. It was a highly anticipated release for me, and it did not disappoint. Many thanks to P.J. Vernon and Doubleday Books for the advanced review copy!

This book was absolutely GRIPPING. It was a page-turner from the very first sentence. I knew when I saw it on NetGalley I had to try and get this book. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advanced copy of this book for an honest review.

Oliver seemingly has the perfect life; a doctor husband (Nathan) who loves him, a gorgeous house in Georgetown, and their dog Tilly. But so often things aren’t always what they appear to be on the surface behind closed doors. Oliver is a recovering addict from Tyre, Indiana where his mired past still comes back to haunt him from time to time. With their love life turning stale Oliver takes it upon himself to visit a bathhouse (Haus) while Nathan is away for a conference in New York.

Oliver’s world is turned upside down after he is assaulted at a Haus by a mystery man named Kristian. After he narrowly escapes he must now decide whether he risk everything and tell his husband the truth, or cover it up so as not to alert Nathan of his indiscretions. As the pressure builds, the lies become too much, and Oliver begins to fold under the pressure.

Will the web of betrayal be too much for Oliver to come back from?

I absolutely loved this psychological thriller. The way in which P.J. Vernon immerses the reader into the setting of this steamy thriller was positively scintillating. I enjoyed that each chapter flipped between Oliver and Nathan. It made the story move very quickly and kept me holding my breath. I could not put this book down from the second I picked it up, the twists and turns it took me on kept me at the edge of my seat for the entirety of the story. It definitely lives up to its runaway train narrative and Gone Girl meets Grindr feel. I 100% absolutely recommend this thriller by P.J. Vernon and cannot wait to read more from him.

Bath Haus really took me by surprise. Vernon quickly brings the reader into this thriller with an early mishap (to put it lightly) that sets the story in motion. Told through the voices of husbands (or, so one of them thinks) Oliver and Nathan, this story is unique in clearly setting Oliver as a protagonist while still placing the reader in this other narrative's head. This asymmetry in information is used to amazing effect by Vernon in the final chapters of the novel. Picture me, mouth agape, as the deft third act reveal played out and all the pieces clicked in my head.

My only real quibble with Bath Haus was a bit of an issue with two-dimensionality amongst its secondary characters. While both Detective Henning and Tom are given good treatments, both Kristian and Hector leave me wanting more. I finished the book understanding little to nothing about the latter two's motives or seeing any real reason why one of them was included except as a red herring.

Beyond this issue, I found Vernon's writing to be exceedingly pleasing to read. This is a page-turner that really pays off. Four well-earned steamy stars.

An intensely thrilling story from beginning to end, Bath Haus by PJ Vernon is one of the best thrillers I have ever read. 

Buckle up, friends, because Bath Haus is about to rock your world. This story grabs you from the very beginning, takes you on a twisty ride, and doesn't let go until the jaw-dropping, stunning ending. Whew! My blood pressure spiked just thinking about this book.

The story begins with Oliver cheating on his partner, Nathan, at a bathhouse. But his encounter goes deadly wrong and he barely escapes with his life. We follow Oliver as he builds a tower of lies to cover his indiscretion. Nathan, a successful surgeon, is a caring fixer who will do anything to help Oliver. But he has secrets of his own that require him to lie as well.

Told from two different POVs, the reader gets to know both Oliver and Nathan, their secrets, and the motivation behind their actions. I found myself liking both characters for very different reasons. 

It takes a talented writer to keep the reader engaged throughout the entire story, but that is exactly what Vernon did. His outstanding writing is seamless and will completely whisk you away. 

I'm calling it now, this will be the summer sizzler of 2021.

This book has everything you could ever want in a thriller.

It’s falling down the hole in Alice and Wonderland and being transported to Oliver and Nathan’s world.

This book hit exactly what I expected it to.

You need to read this suspenseful thriller. It never stops!

I’ve been dying to read this book ever since I saw it pitched as Gone Girl meets Grindr. Happy to report that it’s all of that and more! BATH HAUS begins with Oliver intending to cheat on his partner Nathan. But when the anonymous hookup turns into a near fatal encounter, Oliver must lie to Nathan (and eventually the police) about the cause of the injuries he suffered that night. The lie keeps coming back to haunt him when he realizes that the events—and person—from that terrible night will not let him go, and soon his life, and everything he holds dear, is threatened yet again. This book is a non-stop, buckle-your-seatbelt thrill ride. Malicious and suspicious characters abound, even as one remains in the spotlight as the most terrifying. Oliver himself is a really great character; since he starts the book actively trying to be unfaithful, it’s surprising to me how much, and how immediately, I came to care about him, even as I wanted him to make different choices throughout the story. The prose in this novel is often simultaneously gorgeous and gut-wrenching, with PJ Vernon expertly cranking up the tension with every single page. I found myself staying up much later than I intended in order to keep reading, constantly playing the “one more chapter” game because each chapter added another jaw-dropping turn to this already unpredictable story. Among other important themes that I don’t want to highlight here for fear of spoiling the book’s excellent reveals, BATH HAUS is about the ways our past sneaks up on us and ends up shaping our present, for better or worse. I predict you are going to be seeing this incredible cover everywhere this summer—and hearing lots of chatter about this brilliant thriller.

Oliver seemingly has it all. His husband Nathan, is a gorgeous, well esteemed doctor. They live in a renovated historic home in the Georgetown neighborhood in Washington D.C. Even their dog Tilly, is perfection.

Originally from Indiana, Oliver is a recovering addict, an addiction started with his abusive ex-boyfriend Hector. These past traumas lead Oliver to feel emotionally detached in his current life. Though he tries to be the picture perfect partner to Nathan, he secretly messages other men on MeatLocker- an app he keeps hidden on his phone. It also leads him to Haus, an all men bath house where anything goes.

Here he meets Kristian, their encounter goes awry when Kristian strangles him, with Oliver narrowly escaping with his life. Though he tries to cover his tracks, Oliver’s lies to everyone- his husband, his friends, his boss, and even the police. The lies becomes so convoluted, Oliver can no longer stay ahead of them.

Can Oliver overcome this incident with his relationship still intact?

This thriller was steamy. And raw. I loved the full cast of different queer men who were all so varied. So often the LGBT community becomes a stereotype in contemporary fiction. To see a realistic representation of amazing men in this crazy, suspenseful thriller was so refreshing! Kudos to PJ Vernon!

The best thriller of 2021- definitely read Bath Haus by PJ Vernon!

I can't wait to share a review for this book on my blog and Youtube channel. It is such a unique thriller unlike any other I've read before. It will keep you on the edge of your seat (or book) wanting to hurry up and read more to see what happens and how it all ends... and it will keep you guessing until the very end. It's a true page-turning thriller - just the way I like my books!

This book was absolutely PHENOMENAL. Everything you would want in a great thriller, Bath Haus has. Oliver's life is flipped upside down after he visits a gay bathhouse when his partner Nathan is out of town. Now, he's trying to navigate his life with lies and deceit while just trying to stay alive. I love how P.J. Vernon gave us background on each of the characters and really allowed us to get to know them. Even so, I could not have predicted the twist that happens at the end. I devoured this book in one sitting and seriously could not put it down. It's a fantastic thriller. The way P.J. Vernon writes is absolutely captivating. This thriller had some steam and romance mixed into a chilling story that surprised me in the best way. I can't wait to see what he comes out with next! 100% recommend!

This is probably one of the most interesting & sharp thrillers I’ve ever read. There were several times that I thought I knew exactly what was going to play out but then I would be completely thrown off by what happened next.

It was sexy, fast-paced & a brilliant reminder that relationships work much better when you are open & honest with your spouse. As the web of lies & deception got more & more tangled, I knew that this would be one of the best books on my list of 2021. Thank you for this amazing ARC!

Totally unputdownable, dark and Creeptastic thriller! This riveting, fast-paced, and chilling novel, with more twists than Chubby Checker will have you riveted to your reading spot! I read this in one sitting and then let out a huge breath ad I was holding it at the end. Wowza! Blown away. One of the best thrillers I've read in years! 5 stars.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my copy. All thoughts are my own.

((The link for my blog review will go live on 04/29/2021.))

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an advanced copy of this book. I am providing a voluntary review. All thoughts and views are my own.

Typically, I try to write my reviews within 24 hours of finishing a book. That way, my thoughts and feelings are fresh, and I can write an accurate depiction of how the book affected me. However, this is one of those stories where I couldn’t fathom trying to write a review until I’d taken some time to process. And process, I did.

Hooo buddy. Bath Haus is a roller coaster ride and a half. I’ve been trying to branch into new genres because far too much of what I read is pure romance (which, hi, it’s also what I write, so that’ll never be something I quit reading. Romance is Life, y’all. 🥰😅) However, I’ve tried several thrillers/psychological thrillers in the past and been… disappointed, to say the least. Bath Haus has officially made me a convert to the genre. It’s made me realize that, just as with romance, there are thriller authors and then there are thriller authors. And J.P. Vernon is one of the latter.

I love how this story is written in dual POV, so we can see both Oliver and Nathan’s side of things. Amazingly, it’s even written in first-person present, which is my least favorite POV and tense, yet I forgot almost immediately because I became so completely immersed in the well-crafted world and story. I digitally turned pages like a rabid, hangry readerly beast… I couldn’t engorge myself on the words fast enough. I needed more, more, more with every swipe of the screen.

Vernon has some impressive skills when it comes to building tension and leaving you wondering what could possibly come next. There were twists and turns and unexpected events that left me breathless and antsy and made it downright impossible to read this book in bed. I needed the freedom to pace and pull at my hair and whine into the abyss when some new injustice or moment of oh-my-god-no left me reeling.

Sure, both of the main characters make some stupid mistakes throughout the book that made me cringe and want to scream at my Kindle as I might do the TV during one of those cliche movie scenes where a character is just making everything worse when the answer seems so simple. But at the end of the day, isn’t that what we do as humans? We can wax poetic all we want about how we would never do “the thing” a character is doing that is actively making their life a living hell, but… aren’t we all guilty of similar life-altering idiocy from time to time? Even the smartest human makes mistakes. It’s in our nature.

Plus, those little moments—and, yes, sometimes big moments—of humanity we see in both Oliver and Nathan make the final twists and turns all the more harrowing.

Now, I’ll say this: There were some parts that stretched the boundaries of my suspension of disbelief. One side plot in particular had me scrunching my brow in consternation all the way up until the last page, when I found myself pausing in the midst of my mind-whirling holy-crapness to be like, “Why was that even there in the first place? What purpose did it serve?” But then, after processing, I realized it doesn’t really matter. I’m guessing it was there as a red herring, to make it harder to see the final twist, even though it didn’t achieve that goal for me. Still, who’s to say it won’t do exactly as the author planned for another reader? It didn’t detract enough from the story’s believableness to make me enjoy it any less, so I’m going to move past it with the inconsequential wave-off it deserves.

The story itself is, as I mentioned, a bit of a stretch on the “believable” scale, yet I feel it was handled well enough that I could step into the narrative and leave my real-world disbelief tucked up on a shelf at the back of my brain.

Needless to say, when I finished this book, and as I worked it through my mental processors, one of my first acts was to go straight to my bestie and demand she request a copy from NetGalley to review on her own blog. Because I suddenly found myself with a great need to discuss. When you read this book, it’s one that will serve you best if read in a group of at least two, because you will crave—at the very least—a partner to gush and splooge all over. Someone to dive into the depths of the story and help you pick apart the pieces, one cunningly written scene at a time.

I will definitely be reading this a second time to look for the clues I undoubtedly missed the first time around.

I can’t recommend this enough. Are thrillers for everyone? No. But if you’re like me and interested in branching out into new genres, this is one of the best examples of the thriller genre I’ve had the good fortune of stumbling across. I highly recommend the read.

Fair warning—spoilers ahead!—there are quite a few triggering topics depicted, including near-to-almost rape on-page; alcohol and drug use and abuse; death of a parent due to cancer; childhood physical abuse, domestic violence, infidelity, stalking, gaslighting, on-page violence, and murder.

A thriller focused around a gay couple shouldn’t be as rare as it is, but here we are....and I need more of them because I devoured this book! It’s a dark, sexy, and gritty story following Oliver who gets sexually assaulted at a bathhouse (if you’re unfamiliar with gay culture, google it) and tries to keep it a secret from his fiancée by disguising it as a simple mugging. But of course, in true thriller fashion, there is much more to the story and I feel like this one is best going into only knowing the bare minimum because of the surprises and turns this one takes.

I thought I knew where this book was heading but P.J. Vernon ripped the rug right from under me. Full of secrecy and lies, this book is well put together with many different twists and turns. It passes between two narrators with some flashbacks to Oliver's life before he met Nate.

Bath Haus is an extremely anxiety inducing wild ride through infidelity, lies, scandal, and threat of death. Vernon has captured the image of gay life in the less than glorious light it needs to be showed in to be realistic. The writing is gripping and thrilling - you can't put this down.

From the first chapter, I knew BATH HAUS was going to be a wild ride in the best possible way. Pitched as “Gone Girl with gays and Grindr,” which is a darn good description, this book dives deep into the tender psyche of its protagonists and picks apart the machinations of a relationship hanging by a strand. Even with all the deceptions and insane twists that kept me up well into the night, there’s a vulnerability to the characters that grounds the story and makes this one of my favorite reads in a long time. Vernon’s voice, as in his first book, comes through strong and secures his place as one of the best new writers in the genre.

What a thrill ride this book is! If everyone isn't talking about PJ Vernon's BATH HAUS in 2021--and for awards season in crime fiction!--I will be absolutely amazed. I was sucked in from the very beginning and can't wait to see what's next from Vernon. It lives up to its description: Gone Girl meets Grindr. So, so good.