Thank you so much to RB Books for the gifted audiobook!

I know a lot of books claim to hook you immediately, but this one REALLY did! Esme is on her way back to her hometown after ending a long-term relationship. Upon her arrival to her childhood home where her brother lives to take care of her dying father, she is greeted by police and the news that a body was discovered in the woods by her house!

This story is told in breakneck speed alternating perspectives between Esme and Rita, a detective determined to unearth the secrets of the small town of Graybridge. I love stories with an elderly person with a failing memory and deathbed confessions, so I ate this one up!

There were couple elements/scenes in this one that were super creepy and really look this one to the next level! The pacing was great, I was never bored, and didn't see the ending coming at all!

This was my second book by Terri Parlato and I can't wait to read what she writes next!

This book is narrated by Christina Moore and Leah Horowitz! Christina Moore also was a narrator on All the Dark Places, Terri's latest! I like that it is done with two narrators as it helps easily track whose point of view you are listening to in the alternating chapters!

This book is out now!

Man, this book was slow – not a slow burn, just slow. I loved the first one and remember it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. This one, not so much. Esme is naïve and somewhat unlikeable; the rest of the characters are not much better. Rita, herself, is smarter but other than that, kind of dull; I just couldn’t connect with her (or anyone, really) in this one. The pacing is off and makes it less of a thriller and more of a mystery. Not giving up on the series or the author but this one was a miss for me.

Yay! I'm glad to see Detective Rita Myers again. Although this is the second book, it'll be fine as a standalone.

Esmé Foster returns to Graybridge, Mass. to help her brother care for their ailing father. Her professional ballerina dream is no more after an injury and she's starting over doing whatever she could. Once home she learns about an old high school friend murdered in the woods near her home.

Two PoVs alternating by Rita and Esmé, What Waits in the Woods is a whodunit police procedural, murder mystery, and family drama. We get to know Esmé through her chapters and she had quite a traumatic childhood life.

There's a bit of misdirection before the reveal but I remained firm with my prediction. I thought I had it in the bag, but boy was I wrong. 😅

The audio narrators Christina Moore and Leah Horowitz are both terrific and make a very enjoyable listening experience. Thank you Recorded Books and Netgalley for the ALC.

Esmé left the suburbs in Boston to pursue her dream of becoming a professional ballerina but eleven years later, she’s injured and needs to return home. On the day of her return, her high school friend Kara is found dead in the woods behind her childhood home. Meanwhile, Esmé is still processing trauma from her past.

What Waits in the Woods drew me in with such a gorgeous cover and when I saw it was a thriller, I knew I wanted to read it! I received this book as an ALC through NetGalley and found it to be an easy listen. It was quick, entertaining, and enjoyable. The narrators did a great job keeping my focus as there was a lot going on and if I was reading it I might have become lost a time or two. So they did a great job really keeping my attention. I didn’t realize when I requested it that it was a police procedural but even though it’s not normally my cup of tea, It kept my attention all the way through and I didn’t want to stop listening once. This is the second book in the Detective Rita Myers series but this could definitely be read as a stand-alone. Overall I enjoys the book and the narrators and would recommend it to others.

Thank you so much NetGalley and RB Media for my advanced copy and giving me the chance to review it honestly!

Happy reading

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this new release. I unfortunately did not enjoy reading this one as much as I would have hoped. I had a hard time connecting to the story as it jumps between Detective Rita’s pov and Esme’s (the homicide victim’s best friend) pov. I would much rather prefer it be from one person’s perspective. I was more invested in Esme’s point of view than the detective’s. When it was Rita’s pov I was uninterested as I was not invested in the cops perspective. I didn’t even bother to connect the dots or try to figure out who did it. I found myself bored at times. The plot twist was what really saved the book for me. Other than that I don’t think I would have continued to read.

I loved the first book by Terri Parlato and this one was even better. I was never bored or thought the book moved too slow. If you love a good mystery/thriller book then you need to read the two books by Terri Parlato. You will not be disappointed.

Esme is a professional ballerina who has to return to her hometown after a devastating injury. She's shocked to find a grisly crime scene upon her return, which leads to revealing of secrets in her old high-school friend group.

The strength of this book is the police detective Rita Myers, who is a bit of a Marge-from-Fargo. She's a middle aged woman who uses common sense and life experience to inform her decision making. I enjoy a detective who is not gritty, nor lives for the job, but feels like a real person. I'd read about Rita again.

However, I was less interested in Esme. I picked this book because I find the fraught world of professional ballet fascinating, and I wanted to read about someone having to build after such an elite and intense career . However, there is also no content about Esme's adult life in the book. Lots of flashbacks to school days. This is mostly a story of a millennial returning home and dealing with old friend dynamics, resentments and disappointments. The characters were realistic and well drawn, but also mostly ... about as interesting as any set of people who never left hometown. It is well written on a sentence level but not particularly riveting to read about.

Also, the cover/title/description made this sound like a twisty, fast paced thriller, and it's not. It's more of a realistic slow burn mystery with police procedural elements.

I had the audio-book and enjoyed the performances, especially Christina Moore as Detective Rita Myers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for providing me with an ARC to review.

Many thanks to NetGalley and RB Media Recorded Books for the free audiobook in exchange for my honest review. This was narrated by Christina Moore and Leah Horowitz, both of whom do an excellent job! I highly recommend the audio version if you like audiobooks.

Esme Foster is returning home after a career ending injury and a failed relationship. Her brother is taking care of their dying father, and she decides its time to return home. When she was 16, Esme's mother died in a car accident. Her father was driving, and he subsequently became an alcoholic, now dying of cirrhosis. She is haunted by the accident and a strange mystery man at the scene.

A friend of Esme is killed in the woods behind her home the day before she arrives home, and Rita is the investigating detective. Rita has an alcoholic brother and is a workaholic that avoids relationships.

The story alternates between Esme and Rita. The plot and mystery were intriguing and I did want to continue reading. I found Esme a bit annoying but really loved Rita. I would have loved more development of Rita as I found her way more interesting than Esme.

I have read other books in this series and really enjoy the police procedure, Rita's character, and the interesting cases she solves. I would have liked Rita to have had a bigger role in the story and felt that Esme took up too much space.

However, this is a solid mystery read and very enjoyable. 3.5 stars rounded up.

This was one of my most anticipated reads/listens of the year after absolutely loving Rita in Parlato's debut. While it wasn't quite as enjoyable to me as her first book, I did enjoy it. I just didn't REALLY enjoy it. It felt a little lackluster and ultimately I ended up just finding it to be an average whodunit read. I didn't ever really connect with any of the characters, including Rita, who I adored last book.

There was a lot of extra information and side stories that I wasn't particularly drawn too., but that also made it so I wasn't completely sure who was guilty and how the book would end, I guess that's a bit of a double-edge sword, but I do think I ultimately would have enjoyed the book more without all the extra fluff . Some chapters seemed to end abruptly which wasn't so bad when I was reading the physical book, but it did leave me a little confused when listening to the audio version. The narrators were fine to listen too though and overall, it was easy to follow to listen at an increased speed.

Thank you NetGalley, RB Media, and Kensington Books for my ARC/ALC!

Premise - Esme, a former dancer, returns to her hometown just as her childhood best friend, Kara, turns up dead in the woods. A mysterious man at the site of her mother’s death years ago threatened to kill her. Now she wonders: was Kara’s murder meant to be her own?

The story is told in a split perspective, alternating between anxious Esme and to-the-point Rita, a tough detective. Of the two, Rita’s perspective was more engaging, but Esme’s voice was also well developed and delivered new insights. The stuff with Mr. York was so creepy!

At times the pacing dragged a bit and I didn’t end up really caring for any of the characters, but it was an enjoyable read and a solid pick for an atmospheric mystery. I got the audiobook and the narrator did a great job!

Thanks, NetGalley and RB Media, for the gifted audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 Stars
A slow burn mystery

*Can be read as a standalone.*

After a career-ending injury, Esmé Foster realized it was time to return to her hometown of Graybridge and support her brother in caring for their ailing father. However, the very day she arrived home, a shocking discovery unfolded behind her family's house - the lifeless body of her beloved high school best friend. Now, Esmé finds herself plunged into a perplexing mystery as she grapples with the question of who would want to end her friend's life. Is there a connection to the enigmatic figure she once spotted years ago, lurking at the scene of her mother's tragic car accident?

I was hoping for more excitement and thrill. Overall, I found the story to be just average. However, if you are a fan of slow-burn mysteries, then this book is suitable for you.

***Thank you to NetGalley, Terri Parlato, and RB Media for graciously sending me the audiobook to review. As always, all thoughts are my own.***

I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. Overall, I wasn't a fan of this book. the ending felt weak, and it felt like one of those where we got all the information up until the end. This is my opinion on this book and others could feel differently about it. Overall, I gave this book 1 out 5 stars.

The main word I would use to describe this book is tepid.

It will be an excellent gift (in paperback) to the easily offended boomer aunt in your life. There is no sex, no gore, no intrigue.

1. The "alcoholism" is wild. A man is dying because he drinks 3=6 beers a day? He never escalated to anything harder? Great. Another character is just a drinker, a glass of brandy in his hand when he gets off work. The narrator is like, "He will soon be a shambling, dying mess." It's nuts. I have relatives who have died from their alcoholism and it looked nothing like that.
2. The killer is never foreshadowed or hinted at. When the killer is revealed, it feels random.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with a brain.

Twisty and turning-but maybe a bit much. There are too many characters and a duel narration, that works mostly. The story is complicated, with many red herring, honestly too many. The writing is nice and the author keeps the characters straight and overly detailed at times. Final twist wasn't as satisfying as I thought with level of back stories of so many characters that turned out to be unnecessary. Bottom line less is more. Well written just too much going on and an ending needed to be more tied into the larger story. But definitely worth a read.

No more holiday books for me - I've overdosed on them this year. Sharing with you today this gem that I devoured at rapid speed. Such an entertaining book, simply brilliant on audio too. There was a lot of suspense as we followed Esme, a former ballerina who returns to her hometown to find her best friend has been murdered. This was a real page turner that had me on the edge of my seat throughout.

Get your copy soon - it publishes on 26th December.

Thank you to RB Media, Recorded Books, and NetGallery for allowing me to read and review this advanced copy of What Waits in the Woods!

I really enjoyed the dual narration of both Christina Moore and Leah Horowitz. Since this is an addition to the Detective Rita Myers series, Christina Moore took the cake. This is my first audiobook and I can say that this book was enjoyable to listen to due to the narration. I don't know how to explain it but Christina Moore sounds exactly how I imagine a small-town/suburbian detective to sound like haha.

The pacing of this book varied based on what was happening in the story. For more intense scenes, the plot was fast, while atmosphere-building/background information tended to be slower. I feel that this may be an issue for those who prefer fast-paced thrillers, rather than those who give you a lot of information throughout so you can try to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

One of the potential pitfalls of this book will be the amount of subplots that it contains. This goes hand-in-hand with the pacing. Within this book, there are many subplots (i.e., Mr. York's attic adventures, Wendy and the Pond, the Foster family car accident, and Esmé's mystery man). As someone who reads a lot of thriller novels, I have gotten used to (and quite enjoy) having multiple subplots to explore in a novel, especially if the final reveal is predictable. In terms of the subplots in this book, I feel that they all intertwined very well by the end of the book. All aspects of this story allow for more understanding of why Esmé left Graybridge and finds herself struggling to find her place eleven years later.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I am excited to read All the Dark Places and dive more into Detective Rita Myers and her work. There were many potential suspects, and all of my guesses ended up being wrong. So it definitely keeps the reader guessing until the end.

Esme’s career as a professional ballerina comes to a crushing halt when she’s injured. With nothing left to lose, she returns home to help her brother care for their ailing father. At the same time, one of her high school friends is found dead in the local forest. It puts Esme in mind of the man who showed up at her mother’s fatal car accident, the man who told Esme she would be his next victim. No one believed her at the time, but she can’t overlook the fact that she and her dead friend looked very much alike. The book has a slow start, the high point is detective Rita Myers. I would have liked more of her and less of Esme

Thus book just wasn't for me! I found it slow and just nothing to look forward to.

The narrator wasn't too exciting either. Not sure I will be reading more from this author.

I did finish but wish I had DNF.

Thanks NetGalley for letting me read and review

What Waits in the Woods (Detective Rita Myers #2)
By Terri Parlato, narrated by Christina Moore, Leah Horowitz

When I listened to the first book in this series, I liked Detective Rita Myers and her audiobook narrator so much that I wanted to get to see/hear Rita and her narrator again. And I got my wish! Rita and her narrator, Christina Moore, are back with Leah Horowitz narrating things from the POV of former ballerina, Esmé Foster.

Esmé has come home to her brother and her father, still living in their family home in Graybridge. After a career ending injury and a live in relationship that wasn't working, Esmé is facing up to the guilt she feels for abandoning her family and friends when her ballet career was the most important thing in her life. Now she feels like she's crawling home with her tail between her legs, a failure. But she really doesn't have any time to focus on how she feels about herself when she drives up to her old family home to find there has been a body found behind the family home. With this stressful homecoming and a dad dying from a life of abusing alcohol, life just gets more stressful and confusing by the day.

Detective Rita Myers is in charge of the investigation and there are a lot of moving parts with this one. Several people aren't telling all they know, some people might be involved in shady shenanigans, weird and deadly things happened in the past that might be connected to the present, and Esmé drove me bonkers by walking or running madly through the woods time and time again. Who does that when someone has just been murdered in those very woods? Still, Rita and her narrator didn't let me down and Esmé's narrator was good, too. I hope to see Rita again in the future. She may be about sixty years old but she's a long way from being finished getting crimes solved.

Thank you to RB Media, Recorded Books, and NetGalley for this ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for a chance to read this book.
I am giving this thriller a 3/5 stars due to it really not being very unique. The plot is one that is overdone and the ending really just fell flat for me. I really wanted more of the main character to be trapped and forced to do ballet but it went a total different direction which was just meh.