3.5 overall!

I love a secluded cabin in the woods theme so I was definitely drawn to this one instantly. This book holds on to the suspense until the very end and it honestly has me guessing until the big reveal. I really enjoyed the multiple POVs and the Then timeline which really helped with the storyline. That twist too, my mind was blown.

I do think that this book could’ve been 100 pages shorter and not affected the story at all. I found it repetitive and a little boring at times and I just wanted a little more fast paced.

When She Was Me was a creepy, and addictive read. It was definitely a slow burn in the beginning but once everything started picking up I couldn’t put it down. I enjoyed the multiple POV's which made for an engaging read and since the narrator’s weren’t reliable you really didn’t know who to trust or whose point of view you were reading. I loved that! The past and the present timelines were also amazing and helped make the ending even more shocking.

This Is Marlee Bush’s debut novel and it was honestly fantastic. It’s probably my favorite read of 2024 so far! I can’t wait to read more from here.

I was not invested in the sisters lives and ended up stopping this book a few times before engaging again. While it did pick back up, it began much too slowly for me to want to keep coming back to it. I was slightly confused on the point of view and had to keep rereading to get it straight.

Identical twins, Lenora and Cassie, have been living in Cabin Two at an isolated campground in an effort to escape their past and “that night.” When the grounds come under new management, and the teenage daughter of a visiting family goes missing, Cassie and Lenora both start reliving the past and begin to question who they can trust.

WHEN SHE WAS ME by Marlee Bush is a really strong debut suspense novel!

The sisters were both intriguing characters with very interesting careers and the isolated campground setting was so so good!

The alternating past timeline kept the suspense up and also had me questioning everything I thought to be true.

This one is on the lengthier side, which I didn’t feel was completely necessary, but it still managed to be a quick read regardless.

I’m definitely curious to see where Marlee goes from here!

I listened to this one on audio and I will say that if you aren’t paying close attention you can easily get lost in the timeline and who is narrating.

This was a great mystery that kept me guessing until the very end and if I’m being fully honest I’m still not sure who is innocent and who is guilty.

I love a slow burn romance, but not so much a slow burn thriller. I need it to hook me from the get-go, or at least early on. I think I was around 40-45% of the way through before it started to grab me

It wasn't a bad thriller by any means, it just wasn't as fast paced as I enjoy

For readers who like a slower build up, by all means give it a go, Marlee has a nice writing style

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 stars

[ thank you @poisonedpenpress for the eARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own! ]

THOUGHTS:

Looking for a slow burn, psychological suspense novel to read? Check this one out!

I was hooked immediately when reading! I was sucked into this isolated campground setting. It was definitely creepy and had this eerie feeling.. I could totally picture it in my mind.

I loved the dual pov between the sisters — Cassie & Lenora. And the chapters with the mystery pov as well. I didn’t know what was the truth and what wasn’t. I was along for the ride and loved every minute of it.

I thought this was a great debut novel and I’ll be keeping my eye out for my books by this author in the future!

This was a slow one but if you keep with it the ending is a good payoff.

After a fateful night when they were younger, twins Lenora and Cassie have relied on each other. Currently living in a cabin on a secluded campground they live a pretty peaceful existence; at least from the outside world. After the passing of the owner of their campground a new woman has bought it and moved in. Then a couple and their teenage daughter come to stay for the weekend and all three of the cabins are occupied. When the teen goes missing and is soon found dead the twins start to suspect everyone that was there at the campground. They even start to suspect that each other knows more than they are sharing. Their peaceful cabin is now riddled with danger and they must figure out what's going on before one or both of them are next.

This book is very slow. Luckily the writing is good and it makes reading it enjoyable. I found both sisters to be frustrating but overall good characters and learning about them made reading it enjoyable as well. However, about halfway through I became frustrated. The story is told from the perspective of both Cassie and Lenora and also a third perspective that isn't revealed until the end. For the first half of the book I was collecting more and more questions and was not getting any answers which is why I was getting frustrated. Luckily I kept with it and by the last quarter of the book I got most of the questions I needed answers to. And the answers I didn't get weren't that pressing to the story. The twist was exciting and made sense which also made the payoff worth it.

I recommend but I'd go into this knowing that it's a slow build.

It was the book I never knew I needed so bad in my life until it popped up on my feed …

I am a sucker for thrillers, I mean let’s be real, I think we all are .

This book right here will forever haunt me. My world has been thrown off kilter and I’ll be sleeping with the lights on for the foreseeable future.

When She Was Me

This is the exact kind of book I love to read ! I want my world shaken up, I want to be scared! Make me check under the bed before hopping in!

This book sure does deliver! Every expectation I set was exceeded. Gosh dang it, I sure do love Marlee Bush.

How the heck is this a debut?

Before I slip up and spoil the big twist, check out this teaser:

There's only one way out of these woods…

Ever since that night, twin sisters Cassie and Lenora have been inseparable. As the sole permanent residents of Cabin Two, their refuge on an isolated Tennessee campground, they manage to stay away from prying eyes, probing questions, and true crime junkies. Just the two of them, Cassie and Lenora against the world. The peace and quiet is almost enough to make them forget what happened all those years ago. Almost.

Until a teenage girl camping at the neighboring cabin goes missing, and the memories come rushing back. As the crime becomes ever more recognizable―they know better than anyone that so-called 'happy families' can be anything but―each sister suspects the other knows more than she's letting on….

Trapped in the isolating, claustrophobic wilderness, Cassie and Lenora must piece together the truth of what happened―and the sinister truth lurking in their own pasts―before it's too late.

This is the debut novel by Marlee Bush. I thank Sourcebooks for providing me with an ARC of this book.

Leonora and Cassie are twin sisters who prefer to live in isolation. The story goes back to their childhood and the events that led them to reside in a secluded cottage away from society. The book is a thriller, and I found it hard to follow at times and a bit confusing. However, I felt the mood and descriptions were great, and the plot was interesting. If you enjoy reading books about twins and exploring their relationships and dynamics, this one will likely appeal to you a great deal.

I hoped that when all the plot lines tied together, I would feel satisfied, but it didn’t quite get there. I recognize that this is a debut novel. It is a slow burn, and I generally do enjoy reading slow-burn books. I would rate this a 3 out of 5, and I look forward to reading her next book.

I really really loved this. It has one of the best unreliable narrators I've ever read and I don't think I've read a thriller this unputdownable in a long time. The first 30% or so was a little slow and took me awhile to get into, but the last two thirds totally made up for it. It was very well written with juicy and incredibly rendered characters. It gave me Woman in the Window vibes, but it was darker and twistier, and less predictable. And I was thrilled to find out this was a debut because holy cow this woman can write. And I honestly did not see the ending coming which doesn't usually happen to me (if I'm being honest, it might have been the first time I didn't guess ANYTHING right).

This is how you do it. This is how you write unreliable narrators. This is how you write a fast paced and suspenseful thriller. This is how you create a cult following. This is how you show these dime-a-dozen authors what real originality is.

I loved this one. 4.5 stars.

I enjoyed this book, though at times I found myself a bit distracted and confused while reading. However, sticking with it was worthwhile, and now that I know the ending, I'm tempted to give it another read. It's a solid debut from the author, and I'm excited to see what they write next.

Eerie creepy book with twins, in which one is not quite right…Cassie and Leonora are living in a remote campground in the woods. A teenage visitor to the campground goes missing and no one is quite sure about the people around them. The details seem so familiar to Cassie and Leonora. The sisters have quite a strange dynamic, so reliant on one another that I almost believed that one must have been a ghost or even made up. Something happened to them in their past that really messed them up for life, hence almost hiding away at this campground. Cassie has a social media show about the victims of true crime, it has helped her to work through the trauma they experienced all those years back.
The book is definitely a slow burn. You have alternating view points between the sisters, then and now, and an almost rehashing of events by both. There were times where I was so frustrated by the choices of the main character, like in a scary movie :Don’t go in the basement!
Good debut by Marlee Bush. Thank you so much to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for the ARC.

“When She Was Me” by Marlee Bush follows twin sisters living at a campsite in a cabin. One sister is trapped inside the cabin by fears, the other feels trapped by her need to keep the other safe. When a girl goes missing from the neighboring cabin, each sister realizes that the other is keeping secrets- and that those secrets could be dangerous.
This book read a little slow for me. We do a lot of jumping between timelines and even when I thought I knew what was going on, I didn’t really have a clue. Which I guess made for a good twist at the end, but I wanted a little more hinting towards the big twist so I at least had a shot at guessing the ending.
Overall, this felt like a solid 3 star read for me. It was interesting and kept me guessing, but it didn’t grip me the way I want a thriller to.
Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book is out now!

Okay, I had to DNF this at around 50%, which is so sad because it’s an eARC kindly gifted by NetGalley/the author, and I hate requesting books and not finishing them.

The vibes in this are spot on, super spooky, and it really made me feel uneasy, more than anything I’ve read. But I found myself slipping into a reading slump and kept grabbing my phone instead of focusing on the book, which I never do if the book grabs me.

I really liked the premise: two twins stranded in a cabin in the forest because of their past, and then a murder happens... could it be related? But at 50% in, literally nothing has happened. We don’t know anything about their past; they just keep hinting but don’t reveal anything. I can already tell the plot twist is going to be the twins swapping places at some point, past or present, which would be kinda... predictable.

This is a story about twin sisters and their battles with each other as well as their own battles coping with some of their decisions.

I really enjoyed Marlee's writing and how well her writing put perfect visions in my head of what was going on, without over detailing every description.

I read this book by emersion reading the ebook while listening to the audiobook. I did find the narrator of the audiobook enjoyable and would recommend the audiobook.

Unfortunately, I lost interest in the book about half way through. I didn't find this thriller to be as 'gripping' or 'twisty' as the other thrillers that I have enjoyed.

I am still very interested in reading Marlee in the future because I did love the writing and potential in this book.

I also believe that while this book didn't work out great for me personally, lots of other people will enjoy this book, and I will recommend it for the people I do believe will be able to have a better connection with the book than me.

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

Unfortunately, this thriller was a miss for me.
The plot was very interesting at first, but by the end it changed so much and I found it to be unrealistic.

I really enjoyed the Marlees writing, but the switch up between first and second POV was also confusing at times.

I’d recommend to fans of slow burn thrillers!

I actually gave this a ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 stars and overall I enjoyed this book. I liked the isolated cabin vibes and of course it’s a thriller . The POV from both twins was great and your able to experience each twin and I also enjoyed the past sections. The ending was great too and I was surprised by the twist didn’t see that coming so you may say why the 3 1/2 stars then… my issue was it was a slow read and it lost my interest for awhile. It seems a lot happens at the beginning then it just drags a bit too long before you get interested in the story. I still liked it but felt too long.

A stunning & suspenseful debut from Marlee Bush! The atmosphere created is ominous enough to keep you on the very edge of your seat, and you'll find yourself unable to be fully confident in any character's innocence. This beautiful, medium-paced thriller touches on the themes of familiar trauma and the unconditional love of sisterhood in a way that will likely appeal to fans of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. At times, the alternating narrators and timelines could be a bit confusing, and I'd find myself having to flip backwards a few pages to remind myself who was currently speaking. Aside from that one minor critique, I can find absolutely zero other faults with this novel and will be praising it for years to come.

Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press & NetGalley for the ARC! <3

When She Was Me is the debut psychological thriller from Marlee Bush.

Cassie and Lenora have moved to an isolated campground to heal from a traumatic event referred to as "that night." Bonded not only because they're twins, but also because of their shared trauma, Lenora has become agoraphobic and Cassie will do anything to protect her. After the owner of the campground passes away and a new owner moves in, a family comes to stay for a short visit in the cabin next door. Soon, the teenage daughter is missing, and her body is found a day later, which starts Lenora and Cassie spiraling. Can this really be happening again?

Told from three viewpoints, this is a character-driven thriller filled with shadows and secrets. We get to see things from Cassie and Lenora's point-of-view in the present, interspersed with chapters from "Then" with an unknown narrator. Is it Cassie? Lenora? Both? Neither? As the story moves along, we learn more about that night, what happened, and why Lenora can only leave the cabin to go to the bath-house. Cassie seems to barely be holding it together once Tilly's body is found, and she starts to wonder if Lenora did something to her while sleepwalking. She knows Lenora is keeping secrets from her, and as the puzzle pieces start falling into place, it's up to them to save themselves and protect each other.

All in all, this was an okay book for me. It was a slow burn, and I enjoy more plot-driven novels. For readers who enjoy a character study on trauma, strong bonds, and protecting your loved ones, this would be a great choice. If you enjoy Kiley Reid, then you should like this.

Thank you to @NetGalley and @PoisonedPenPress for a digital copy for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.