Wow! One heck of a debut novel for Ashley Tate! enjoyed this book and I was hooked the whole time. I kept waiting for some big WOW moment (because I just knew there had to be some twist), and I got it at the end! 4/5 stars! Thank you to the author and NetGalley for the ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review

The opening of this book pulled me right in! I was definitely curious to find out why Phoebe's brother waited twenty-seven minutes to call an ambulance after the accident. It was a slow burn to get there, and I feel that the book could have been a bit shorter. The writing was good, and I liked the multiple POVs, although the characters all acted like they were still in high school, so there was a bit of a YA feel. I think the author did a good job of showing the trauma and grief that Phoebe's family and friends were going through. The twist at the end was surprising as I didn't expect it.

This is the author's debut novel, and I'll be looking forward to reading her next book!

Thank you, @netgalley and @poisonedpenpress, for the #gifted e-arc of this book!

This book was a dark, twisty, slow burn thriller and I did not see the final twist coming. Ashley Tate was masterful in capturing a variety of dark and complex emotions in the characters in the story.

Phoebe Dean died ten years ago in a tragic car accident and the mystery of the night she was killed hangs over the community. Her brother and best friend, Grant, was driving and took 27 minutes to seek help…an amount of time that potentially cost Phoebe her life. Their mother has decided to host a 10-year memorial for Phoebe and that has the whole town stirred up.
The story is told from multiple perspectives aside from Grant’s. There’s Becca who is a bit unstable and was a friend or possibly secret girlfriend to Grant and who was also in the vehicle that night. We also hear from June who recently lost her mother to cancer and whose brother Wyatt mysteriously disappeared the night of the crash. Wyatt shows up out of the blue after their mother’s passing and we hear his perspective as well.

Throughout the book, we see the interweaving of these characters’ lives and the slow unraveling of their stories. The story starts a bit slow then picks up pace until a crazy ending that I didn’t fully see coming. The author’s ability to capture dark emotion is impeccable and as was the mastery of weaving this story together. I really enjoyed this book and look forward to her next work.

Thank you so much to Netgalley & the publisher for this review copy! I am so looking forward to this and to writing a full review on my social media when I am able! Thanks again!

The prologue to this one was brilliant. So clever.

Unfortunately, it ended up being a DNF for me. It pains me, as I want to support Canadian women authors. I wish Ashley Tate all the best with this one!

Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for this ARC!

Told between alternating points of view as well as dueling timelines, Twenty-Seven Minutes unfolds in a slow and methodical way, giving you bits and pieces of the story at a time.  The trouble is, after all this time, who can you trust to tell you the truth?  As it turns out, you can't trust anyone.

The characters are all very complicated people.  And, to be quite honest, most of them are very unlikable for various reasons.  However, as I delved deeper into the story, the effects of grief and time start to show through the cracks.  Grant I had the most animosity for due to his attitude and the way he seemed to interact with everyone around him.  Losing his sister took a serious toll on him and it showed.  Wyatt confused me, I was concerned for him, but also wary, wondering why he'd returned after so long.  On the other hand, I felt for both Becca and June.  Neither were great people, but their trauma was raw and on display from the very start.  

Twenty-Seven Seconds was a rollercoaster ride of lies, secrets, and surprises.  I had figured out an aspect or two of what had happened that night, ten years ago.  But there were things that I hadn't expected and was shocked when they were revealed.  This is very much a slow burn mystery, with things being revealed at a relaxed pace.  However, I found myself invested, needing to know the truth of what happened that night.  Have to say, I was also rooting for everyone to find peace at the end, too.  I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys a slower paced mystery with unreliable characters.

Twenty Seven Minutes by Ashley Tate
★★★ 3/5 stars

✦ Synopsis
A small town is still reeling from a car accident that killed star student Phoebe Dean. Her brother, Grant, was driving.
27 minutes to call for help. A secret kept for 10 years. Only 3 days until everyone knows.
He could & have saved her life. So why did he wait?

✦ My Thoughts
This was our February book club pick! The blurb for this one really grabbed my attention, but it wasn’t as great as I hoped. There was lots of small town drama, high school baggage, & a bit of a supernatural element that I didn’t expect (or enjoy very much🙈) I just struggled to really get into it.
Lots of characters, POVs, & timeline jumps were hard for me to keep straight.

✦ Read if you like :
-Slow burn mysteries
-Cold cases
-Small town secrets
-Unlikeable & unreliable characters
-Only if You’re Lucky by Stacey Willingham
-Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
-The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf

thank you to Netgalley + Poisoned Pen Press for the opportunity to read this ARC ◡̈

It's the 10th anniversary of a tragic accident that left one girl dead and her brother distraught. In fact the whole town is in an uproar about tearing down the bridge where the accident happened. Many lives have been affected.

When a book has this many unlikeable characters, it can be a hard sell for me and, unfortunately, this one missed the mark. The story itself, although very slow moving, was enough to keep me engaged until the end, but only to wrap up the loose ends and not because I necessarily cared about anyone involved. In hindsight, I should have seen the ending coming, but I'm not one of those readers that spends a lot of time trying to figure things out before hand; I just tend to go along for the ride. I did predict the relationship between two of the characters, so was proud of myself for that, but other than that, the ending came as a surprise. I found I was more interested in the story leading up to Phoebe's death than I was in the story leading up to her memorial.

This book has grief and trauma etched on every page, so reader beware.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the eARC! The beginning of this was very intriguing, starting right in the action before skipping ahead to “present day”.

Unfortunately, the book became slow and was difficult for me to pay attention to - waiting for things to start coming together and amp up. I wasn’t overly impressed with this one and it didn’t standout to me.

This book starts off with a shocking scene. Then it backs us up. It's a dual timeline between then and now and that builds the suspense for me. Multiple POV, which is a favorite for me because you see the story for many angles, and it makes it more twisty.

Most of these characters were pretty unlikeable, but I'm good with that too. It fit the storyline.

The big secret is finally revealed, and I maybe would have wanted a little more in the end, but overall a solid read and kept me engaged throughout.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Twenty-Seven Minutes
by Ashley Tate

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A car crash takes the life of a promising student in a small town. The community is ripped apart when they learn the two survivors waited before calling for help in Twenty-Seven Minutes, a hypnotic debut mystery by Ashley Tate.

Becca and siblings Phoebe and Grant were on their way home from a party. Grant swerved to avoid something in the road and crashed through a guardrail. Phoebe gets the worst of it: she's thrown from the vehicle upon impact. Twenty-seven minutes pass before the other two call for help. Neither Becca nor Grant can explain why they waited. The cops know Phoebe died because of the inaction of the other two, but they don't fully investigate.

Ten years pass. The town has tried to move on from the tragedy, despite the unspoken grudges and rumors that still linger among the locals. Then Grant's mother decides to hold a memorial for her beloved daughter. Attention-seeking Becca decides she's done covering for ungrateful Grant, who is haunted by Phoebe. Out of nowhere, another teenager--someone who disappeared the same night as the crash that took Phoebe's life--appears in town, threatening to tell everyone what really happened during those missing 27 minutes.

Tate so perfectly captures the dynamics of small-town life that it is hard to believe that she grew up in downtown Toronto. She presents all the heartache and disappointment of dashed hopes and unfulfilled dreams in this story of how multiple lives can be ruined in a manner of minutes. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer

I tried. Really, I did.

There may be decent fiction story in there, but it was all jumbled up in people, places, and times that took forever to gel.

We aren't introduced to the main characters in a way that makes us care about them, and we find that most of them are unlikeable at their core anyway. The big mystery wasn't all that, certainly nothing compelling. As the truth of what happened unfolded, I wasn't even a little excited to find out.

This story had a pretty big build up as the story moved toward the memorial, and since there were a few perspectives, I was kind of waiting to hear something from Phoebe’s perspective.

I felt that she would have added a lot to the sense of urgency surrounding her death, especially because the story dabbled in the past and what had happened, but I never really felt like I got a feel for who Phoebe was, other than through other people’s opinions of her—and I was never quite sure what to trust.

Overall, this was a pretty quick read, and I’m glad I picked it up!

3.5 stars - The story is about a small town where Phoebe died in a car crash ten years ago on a bridge. Her brother was driving the car and her friend Becca was also in the car. The title of the book comes from the fact that Grant waited twenty-seven minutes before calling for help. Ten years later, another person died on the same bridge and the town is now debating whether to take it down. Also, the town has planned a memorial for the tenth anniversary of Phoebe's passing.

The story is told from multiple points of view, which can be confusing and frustrating for some readers. Each character is given a lot of attention, which makes the story feel long. However, the book is still entertaining at times and kept me wanting to read on. The ending plot twist was surprising and unexpected. I did not guess it at all.

Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for honesty feedback. I also read a physical finished copy of this book. I think this was an alright mysterious suspense. The opening chapter was brilliant. I was actually surprised because I went right to Goodreads to see if the author had any other books and was shocked to see this was a debut. However, I did think it was a bit confusing with too many POV characters, especially at first, which didn’t have much to stand them apart from one another. I really wish sometimes that books would not rely so much on so many POVs to tell these stories because it can be a lot to keep up with if not done masterfully. Anyway, the writing style was fine — the opening chapter was really what grabbed my interest. The “twist” or mystery bit was predictable but nevertheless I thought it was an overall good start at a promising career for this new author.

Twenty Seven Minutes by Ashley Tate was not initially what I was expecting. The story centers around a small town that struggles to move on from a tragic accident that happened a decade ago with plot points being told in both time lines. Right off the bat this story does a good job of developing characters who are almost all immediately unlikable and you quickly conclude that the truth of the night of the accident is still buried. While this story drug on for me in parts the last 25% or so really gripped me. I admire how Tate is able to write two characters (Becca and June) who can be so out of touch with reality at times and how she managed to make the dark realms of grief a character of its own in the story.

Loved the super short chapters and multiple POV’s. I really wanted to like this more than I did, but I struggled with engagement and I wasn’t invested in the story. I’ll definitely try another book from this author in the future. I just don’t think this one was for me.

This was a rollercoaster of emotions that flipped between the last and present as we look at happened to Phoebe and the accident at the bridge and the events leading up to it. There grieving, guilt, blackmailing and symbolism and a cast of unreliable characters that you didn’t know really why truly happened until the end. Each of the characters were wrapped into their own cloud of guilt and grief, but also tangled so intricately into one another’s.

There are so many things to like about this book. The multiple POV and short chapters kept me interested even when I hated the characters. Some you hate because you can tell they're just terrible people and others you hate because you feel so much pity for them. But you're also wondering how all of these people are connected to Phoebe's death? Let me tell you...when I figured it out (which was not until like 93%) I legit gasped out loud. It was so well done.

The way these characters' lives are weaved together makes the fact that this is a debut novel so impressive to me. When I read books like this, I always wonder how the heck authors plan the book out and keep everything organized.

𝙏𝙬𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙮-𝙎𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙈𝙞𝙣𝙪𝙩𝙚𝙨 is a fast-paced thriller that leaves you wondering what happened in those 27 minutes up until the very end. It's definitely a mystery/thriller I'll be recommending to everyone.