I really wanted to like this. The blurb sounded amazing, but this book was a train wreck.

50% in and literally nothing had happened but setting up the backstory and the characters. A Snoozefest. Then all hell broke loose. I feel like the rest of the book was just checking off a list.

THANK YOU, NetGalley and Atria for the opportunity to review one of my most anticipated reads!! I buddy-read this one with a group of 5 and it was a GREAT book to read with friends. Lots of twists, turns, and theories to discuss!!

What I loved: I absolutely loved just how BONKERS this book was. Lots of crazy twists, sinister plotting, betrayal, lies, impersonation, murder... the whole nine yards. I loved the highly unsettling mood established throughout the whole novel. I could feel it from the moment Alex entered the mansion. The "locked room" setting really made me second guess every single character's actions and motivations. The moment it was revealed that the retreat would be a competition, I called it that at least one of the attendees wouldn't make it to the end of the month. Figuring out who was all involved in the scheme was definitely a surprising twist. I loved that we got to read snippets of the book that Alex was writing throughout the retreat (and I really want to read that book).

A couple things hit me when I finished reading... What happened to creepy-editor-Ian? Did Roza get him too? How on EARTH would Keira have survived getting shot in the shoulder long enough to have the strength to live in a frozen garage for several days, then get up, find everyone, and club Taylor over the head? I know Chitra was taking care of her but I highly doubt she could've managed a gunshot wound??

Overall I really enjoyed this one and I'd definitely recommend to anyone looking for a high-stakes, "real danger," spooky psychological thriller.

Dark, twisty and at times extremely strange. The imagery was fantastic. I felt like I had a clear picture of Blackbriar in my head throughout. Characters were interesting and well developed. The lengths people will go to for fame and fortune…

I gave this book a 4.5 stars!
The beginning was a bit slow for me and I feel I didn't need as much context but once it got going, about 20% in, I was hooked.
This book had the shinning vibes with the big mansion in the middle of nowhere and a writer trying to finish a book.
I loved how we were never sure what was real or not as the main character was also questioning her sanity throughout the retreat. I did not expect to see the story to end that way and I was shocked quite a few times.
I loved that there was a supernatural aspect to it which added to the story in ways I can't say because that would spoil part of the story.
Overall, this was a really fun read. Highly recommend if you're in a reading slump!
If you love:
-Thrillers
-Lost in the middle of nowhere vibes
-The shining vibes
-A little bit of drama
You will love this book!!

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC copy of this book.

Alex is stuck in her writing career. So when she gets invited to a writing retreat run by her favorite, elusive writer, she jumps at the chance. But weird things start happening.

This book should have been exciting but it just wasn't. The pace was sooooo slow and the suspense didn't feel very suspenseful. I skimmed the last 15% because I was just done with the book. The writing also felt like too much, which does fit with the pretentious nature of the characters.

Buckle your seatbelts, because you are in for a <I>CRAZY</I> ride.

Alex is a struggling writer who needs a little bit of luck, and when she gets inviting to a very hush hush writing retreat held by her favorite author, she knows this is her last chance to be taken seriously. Along with the retreat comes the promise of being published and most likely becoming a best-selling author. Why wouldn't Alex want to go.

Except Alex's ex-best friend is along for the ride, and very quickly Alex starts to wonder if this retreat is all that meets the eye.

This book was absolutely bananas. Although I found Alex a little whiny, I also found this entire concept to be absolutely delicious. A small retreat in the middle of nowhere, an eccentric author who makes demands that, if not met, will result in the attendees being cut, and an ex-best friend who very obviously doesn't want to be anywhere near Alex. The mansion itself adds to the very creepy atmosphere, and then Alex gets inspired by her surroundings.

This novel is told entirely from Alex's point of view, and you get to read her novel as she writes it as well. Although the ending was ever so slightly ridiculous, it completely fit with the rest of the premise and I found myself very satisfied with the way everything shook out.

If you're looking for something creepy and totally atmospheric, this is the book for you!

A non-stop page turner with a shocking ending? Sign me up! Will definitely be recommending to a friend. Thank you netgalley!

I really wanted to love this book. Unfortunately, it was just not the book for me.

The book took so many weird and dark turns. Normally, I enjoy being surprised in a thriller. But I found that I was being surprised in a bad way.

I didn't really like any of the characters. Even the main character was hard to love. And her conflict/grudge against her best friend just made me annoyed.

One thing I did like about the book was the setting. I really like mysteries that take place in secluded cabins in the woods, cut off from civilization. I could have done without the prison in the basement though 😅

Overall, I was able to finish the book but I would not gravitate towards reading it again.

OMG! This book! I could not put it down. I did begrudgingly but once things started heating up, forget about it!

Alex gets an invitation to a writing retreat with her favorite author Roza Vallos, a writer of sapphic horror novels, on her secluded estate. There are five women invited, one being Alex's ex-best friend Wren. They have some issues to work out. Roza surprises them by telling them they are going to write a novel while they are there. She expects them to write 3,000 words a day and hand them to her every night where she will then discuss it with them. Roza likes to play games, as the ladies find out. When one of the girls go missing, things start to take on a devious twist. Is the mansion haunted as folklore says?

The atmosphere of the snowed in mansion with it's many rooms, creepy basement, no way in and no way out, just gives you the feeling of chills throughout the whole story. I am a nail-biter and I definitely was while reading.

You have to read this one, you will not be disappointed.

Thanks to Netgalley and Atria for an advance copy for review.

The overall plot of this book was intriguing and creative, but the characters and gratuitous sex scenes made it fall flat for me.

The characters are all just meh. I didn’t really care about any of them enough to get too invested in their experience on an emotional level. Roza in particular bothered me because she was written as this sexy, mysterious woman but then had dialogue like an old grandmother. I never felt like she was the character I was supposed to be getting.

As for the sex scenes, I understand there’s a time and a place for it. But there was a graphic sex dream and sex hallucination that didn’t feel necessary. The main character also hovers outside of someone’s door and gives readers a graphic play by play of the sounds, which also felt completely unnecessary to building the story. I’m not a fan of sex for the sake of sex, and that’s what the majority of it felt like to me.

This book was fine I overall, but not one I would recommend or read again.

I don’t even quite know how to put into words how I feel about this book…. It started out as a slow burn for me and had some really odd commentary that didn’t seem relevant to the story, and the characters didn’t seem all that relatable. Once I got past a certain point this book took me on a wiiiiild wild ride. I had to know how the retreat was going to end up! I’m still a little speechless and will have to come back to add more thoughts eventually. Overall I’d say this was a 3.5 rounded up to 4? Worth reading simply for the “wtf” factor. If you like a locked room thriller with some crazy twists, this will definitely suck you in!

Thank you NetGalley and atria books for my arc in exchange for my honest review

This was such an odd book, and I really am struggling to even gather my thoughts enough to write a review on it. Like… what did I just read?

I actually started off really enjoying this one, but something happened along the way and it lost me. There was just so much thrown in, and it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. It all felt very over the top and just way too much. The characters also all felt very immature and not relatable at all. I honestly don’t know how to even feel about this book, lol.

This book is bad. It’s been a long time since I have DNF’d a book, but I had to at 45% through. And that was way to long to have invested in this book. This book was painful to read. I tried reading it first and then listening to the audiobook, hoping that would help to improve the story. But it didn’t. It just got worse. Sadly, this story, which had incredible potential, was a huge miss.

After a devastating fight with her best friend Wren, Alex has writer’s block. She hasn’t been able to write a word on a blank page for the past year. Ready to give up on her dreams of becoming an author, Alex receives a letter from Roza Vallo, her favorite author, who is renowned in the writing world. Roza has sent an invitation to join her and four other young, talented writers at her remote estate home, Blackbriar. One of the participants is none other the estranged Wren. When the girls arrive, they are given their rooms, each with a necklace of 22-karat gold, each girl receiving a different animal with a diamond eye. They are also given Roza’s strict parameters: every participant must complete a novel in the next month of intensive writing sessions, with a minimum number of three thousand words due every day by midnight. The author of the winning novel will win a seven-figure book that will completely change that author’s life. Determined to win this impossible contest, Alex buckles down to her writing task while ignoring Roza’s increasingly bizarre behavior, Wren’s cold-blooded passive-aggressiveness, and the supposedly haunting of the mansion where they are all trapped by a snowstorm in a remote area with no outside communications. When one of the young writers completely disappears out in the snowstorm, it’s clear there is something evil happening. With their time running out, Alex must figure out how to discover what happened, because the same fate awaits her as well.

The malevolent atmosphere of this engrossing thriller is chilling, from the “too good to be true” contest offer and the idiosyncratic Roza, to the strangely doleful housekeeper and the bizarre art in the mansion, which has been completely renovated to replicate its history. The gothic novel about the previous owners and their bloody history that Alex is writing adds to the sinister, morose feeling. “The Writing Retreat” alternates between the present and snippets of her novel, which Alex imagines the former lady of the manor is somehow helping her write. The other contestants are not necessarily who they present themselves to be except for Wren, and the one-on-one meetings with Roza are full of psychological mind games, prying out the girls’ deepest secrets and appearing to know much more than they have actually shared with her. It was nearly impossible to put this book down until I finished it, and know it will stay with me for a very long time. I recommend reading this debut work from Julia Bartz if you are a fan of gothic tales, thrillers, even supernatural—there is plenty for readers of each genre to enjoy.

I’d like to thank NetGalley, Julia Bartz, and Atria Books/Emily Bestler Books for the opportunity to read and review this ARC

Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books/ Emily Bestler Books for a digital review copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinions!

It’s been awhile since I enjoyed a breakneck thriller read like I enjoyed The Writing Retreat. The struggling writer dealing with professional and personal envy was a great lens to view the story through, and more books should explore friend breakups (although this book viewed it through a decidedly sexier edge). Overall the story had great pacing with plot points and twists that kept me rapidly turning pages.

There was a strange tacked-on conversation between the retreat writers towards the beginning regarding pronouns and race that didn’t feel like it provided any good character insight and the themes and conversations never went anywhere. It felt like Bartz was trying to modernize the text but it ended up feeling awkward and pandering.

This is definitely a campier thriller, with some twists and situations you may have to suspend your disbelief for. But fortunately I was along for the ride, even when sexy demon dreams and snowmobile chases entered the mix.

The excerpts of the book Alex is writing got a bit repetitive and they interrupted the cadence of the story’s action. The fate of this story at the end of the novel felt dubious at best.

I haven’t had much luck with reading thrillers I’d truly recommend to friends but this one is superior than many I’ve read in the past year! For the right reader (okay with the zany, fond of books with a supernatural edge and fast-paced reads) this is a great book to pick up.

This book is something else! I was on the edge of my seat! It's been some time since I finished reading my advance copy and I still remember the characters, the storyline, and many of the scenes vividly - a challenge when one reads as much as I do. I have recommended this book many times over to other lovers of thrillers as well as other writers.

I went into this book with no real idea of what to expect. I knew it was a debut novel, I knew it was a psychological thriller, and I knew it was about writing a novel in the span of a month (hello, NaNoWriMo!). Considering the fact that I’ve been sitting on three separate ideas for a book for the last several years, this premise intrigued me. However, I was not expecting what I was eventually given, which was a roller coaster of events.

Overall, I rather enjoyed this book. I’ll stamp it with a solid 4 out of 5 stars. I don’t read a whole lot of psychological thrillers, so I was pleasantly surprised. It was also a quick read; good tempo and pacing. I didn’t feel like it dragged on too much except for maybe the last quarter or so, after the twist. But then closer to the end it revved up. I also liked how there were little clues sprinkled throughout that made you question almost everyone. At least I was suspicious of basically everyone. An enjoyable read for the genre, but didn’t blow me out of the water. I’ll probably read more from this author though!

Thanks to Atria/Emily Bestler Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book had a really interesting premise, however it did not get really going until about 60% in. Once I hit that point, I could not put it down because I had to know how the Writing Retreat would end!

I found most of the characters to be unlikeable and I wasn't rooting for any of them. Would prefer to read the book inside the book instead.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

This was very much a slow burn for me for the first 50%, but the last half was a wiiiild ride. Once the action picked up, I could *not* put this book down. The setting was wonderfully creepy and the storyline was refreshingly unique. Just wish we could have picked up the pacing a bit in the first half!

Thank you so much @AtriaBooks for giving me this ARC in exchange for my honest and unbiased review (Release Date | 21 February 2023)

SYNOPSIS | Alex is an aspiring writer but has had writers block for the past year ever since she fell out with her former best friend (Wren). Both of them have been invited to an exclusive month-long writers retreat at an isolated gothic mansion hosted by one of their favourite authors (Roza).

WHAT I LIKED:
- entertaining yet ludicrous plot where you're unlikely to predict the many twists & turns
- some interesting thoughts around sexuality & female empowerment

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
- the pacing felt uneven & slow for the majority of the story
- it felt like the story lacked focus & tried to cram in too many subplots
- it was part ghost story, part horror, part mystery & part erotica but it wasn't satisfying as any genre
- the last 20% gave me whiplash & was extremely over-the-top