Locked room thriller/horror?

Yes, please!!!!

This was my first book by Steph Nelson, but now that I have concluded The Final Scene, I downloaded both of her previous publications. The answer is yes, I like her that much!!

The Final Scene, had my pulse racing and heart throbbing. The suspense is ever present and will riddle you with anxiety throughout the entire book. There are so many twists, I swear Im suffering a bit of whip lash.

I binge read The Final Scene, and could not get to the next page fast enough.

Check out this teaser :

The cabin is unlocked, but there’s no escape.

When Brooke was kidnapped on her way home from work, she thought her life was over.

That was ten years ago.

She’s been held captive in an isolated cabin on the Oregon coast ever since, scrambling to follow her kidnappers’ twisted instructions to the letter. Because the price of a mistake is death.

But when a new victim shows up, everything changes. Including the rules. And this time, the only way to survive is to break them.

Title- The finale scene
Rating-⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The story turned out to be way beyond my expectations of an average kidnap narrative. Ten years ago, Brooke was kidnapped on her way home from work. For ten years she’s been kept in a cabin playing “ roles” of the kidnappers life with other victims that have been kidnapped by the same person for the same purpose. There’s rules that must be followed but when a new victim shows up the rules change…

I read this book in one sitting, it had my attention from the beginning, I loved all the characters. I do wish we were told more about the kidnappers storyline, I’ll leave it at that as I don’t want to spoil anything.

If you are looking for a fast read, this one is for you.

This book will be available on kindle unlimited and for purchase on February 27th. Add to your tbr now, as it’s right around the corner.



Thank you, #NetGalley and #TickingClockPress, for the opportunity to read this advanced copy.

Thank you, #NetGalley and #TickingClockPress, for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

A woman was abducted as she went home from work, but it wasn't for ransom or revenge but to satisfy the twisted desire of a psychopath. Brooke has been a captive for ten years, and in her isolation, she is joined by other victims who have failed to survive. Brooke's key to survival was following the game's rules, and escape has long since evaded her. Until the arrival of a down-and-out cop who may or may not help her finally put an end to their abductor's reign of torment. As the victims are killed off one after the other, Brooke's decision to break the rules and plot her escape gives her a sense of momentum that propels the story toward a gripping climax.

I'm unsure whether I received an uncorrected proof of the book, but despite the minimal errors, this novel's "cabin in the woods" trope is dealt with in a refreshing arc. One aspect of the story explores Brooke's struggle to survive and maintain her sanity over ten years in captivity. The author has expertly portrayed her desperation, resiliency, and the psychological effects of her trauma. The dynamic between Brooke and the other kidnapped victims adds tension and intrigue to the narrative as each character battles their secrets and demons, and the stakes of their imprisonment rise.

"The Final Scene" by Steph Nelson is one mystery novel I couldn't quite identify the emotions it evoked. The first few pages already had me on the edge of my seat; then, as the story progressed, the plot commenced into absurdity with an atmosphere of uproariousness. I can't tell if the book is a mystery or a smutty romance novel, yet I couldn't stop myself from leafing through the pages. It was nothing I'd ever read before. However absurd it may seem, this book pulled me out of a reading slump, sparing me the struggle of not finishing it.

Overall, "The Final Scene" is a gripping read that keeps you guessing until the end. Rooting for the characters came quickly - hopeful for a satisfying end to their fate. I got giddy after signing up for the author's mailing list to get a copy of the book's epilogue simply because I couldn't stop obsessing over what had happened to the characters.

The Final Scene by Steph Nelson was was an excellent read.
Once I started this book, I couldn't put it down. I finished it in one night.
This was fantastically written with vivid descriptions that really put you in the storyline.
The plot is intriguing and complex and full of twists.
A creepy story that was truly unputdownable.

Thank You NetGalley and Ticking Clock Press for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

The Final Scene was just a crazy book. There are outrageous situations and coincidences. I still like it. I just wanted to see where it went next. I read through the last half in one sitting. I think this is what we call a guilty pleasure.

Wow wow wow - I'm obsessed. Read this in one sitting because I couldn't put it down. This claustrophobic thriller has me holding my breath the entire time. I swear I could envision the story in my mind like a movie and needed to know how it ended before doing anything else. It's twisty, wild, entertaining, and nearly perfect. The romance aspect didn't work for me.

This book was incredible. I was so invested the entire time and I couldn't put it down. The Final Scene is twisty, gripping, and shocking, and will keep you on the edge of your seat. The only thing I didn't LOVE was the romance aspect. It felt unnecessary and out of place. 4.75 stars

So so good! This book had action from the start, good twists, great cliffhangers that left me wanting to keep reading! Loved! thank you NetGalley for this ARC

thank you so much net galley for the arc. this book is so so good, ok so this story follows brook who gets kidnapped on her way home by mitch. they are in this cabin off the oregon coast. ten year ago. there are other who get kindnnaped s well there are to play a role in this sick twisted game . if they break charahter they will die. this is a crazy roller coster ride.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ticking Clock Press, LLC for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. This book officially publishes on 2/27/24!

This book was a wild ride from start to finish! It is a quick read with short chapters and multiple POVs. I read the majority of this book in one sitting, as the author did an amazing job of creating urgency within the scope of the plot that I found myself not being able to put it down until I learned the resolution of this story. I found the characters to be well-written within the scope of their own stories, and the overall premise behind this one is terrifying. This book could be considered a thriller or light horror, with a sub-plot of romance in the midst. Definitely recommend giving this one a read!

This is a tight crisp thriller with a plot that's unlike other books in the genre. I like things that are a bit weird while still feeling familiar at the same time.

A woman is kidnapped one night and is held captive for over ten years. Her captor is an older woman with a henchman serving as her muscle. But it's WHY this woman was kidnapped and the purpose behind her captivity that I don't want to spoil. Let's just say it's out there and the less you know going in, the better.

The woman is not alone. Other victims are brought to this house and each one has a role to play in the twisted game of this old woman. Escape is impossible. Failure to comply results in death and another person is brought in to replace the fallen.

While all of these victims have dark, sometimes tragic, pasts, there will be revelations and twists at the end that will reveal things which makes it appear not so random after all. There are others, in other houses, playing their roles and things are going to get twisted!

There is a romantic angle involved in this book which I'm not personally a fan of but I also know a lot more readers like a bit of romance in the mix. So, good on the author for including it (wisely) but it's just not my thing.

Overall, I recommend this book for fans of well crafted thrillers with some surprising elements you're not likely to find elsewhere.

I really wanted to like this!!! I did!

The premise is interesting:
Our lead Brooke is kidnapped off the street just moments from walking through her front door, held captive and forced to role-play her captor’s mother in this sick and twisted recreation of the old woman’s childhood. She’s been stuck there for 10 years.

But sadly, right from the first page the text was riddled with cliches, it felt overly contrived and more like a high school creative writing experiment than a well-constructed and considered adult fiction novel.

There is so little depth or exploration within any of the characters that not a single person is interesting or likeable. When new characters are introduced they are flat and two-dimensional with next to nothing by way of description of their appearance let alone their inner world and story.

I did not care about a single character in this book.

Not a single one.

This was not a good book in my opinion which is a shame, and really boiled down to the writing not being expanded and explored deeply enough.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ticking Tock Press, LLC for the advanced copy. I wish I had better news for you. 😂

HOLD THE PHONE, finally a thriller done right!

We begin with Brooke, who has just landed her dream job and is en route home from work. Until she wakes up from a drug induced slumber surrounded by strangers, wearing outdated clothing that isn’t hers. Fast forward 10 years later, and Brooke takes us through the timeline of what’s happened since she’s been gone.

I’m not usually a fan of forced proximity, but holy smokes was this done right. A deranged psychopath and her henchman kidnap people and hold them hostage in a remote cabin in Oregon. Grace Wakeford is a maniacal freak, she enlists her abductees and forces them to reenact the story of her life. She keeps them all living a false reality, until one of them causes an anomaly in her history. Then it’s curtain closed.

Meanwhile, Mina is a writer taking a hiatus from her husband after her marriage has suffered from the loss of their babygirl. But her neighbors at her airbnb aren’t passing the vibe check for her and soon she is in way over her head. This is one play you definitely don’t wanna make the cut for.

Thanks to NetGalley and the author for this fast paced thrilling eARC

4.5 ⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley, Xpresso Book Tours and Steph Nelson for this advanced reader copy!

This book was suspenseful, dramatic and creepy all in its own way. It definitely not like any other book I’ve read in a long time. I was really rooting for the main characters throughout and until the last chapter, I really didn’t know how it was going to end which kept me wanting to read more and more.

Overall a fab book, and I will definitely be picking up more books from this author!

This book was intense—start to finish, gripped to the page, couldn’t put it down, INTENSE.

Brooke was kidnapped on her way home from work… ten years ago. She’s been held prisoner in an isolated cabin, playing by her captor’s twisted rules to stay alive, watching time and again as other victims fail where she, so far, has not.

But when a new victim shows up, changing the rules of the game, it becomes painfully clear time is running out for all of them, and Brooke must work out how to break the rules she’s followed so desperately to this point, in order to survive another day, and hopefully, get her life back, whatever the cost.

This wasn’t a perfect read. I had issues with bits of the dialogue and aspects of the writing structure and with some of the plot details. But… but I was so totally invested from page one, that I never really slowed down in my consumption of the story long enough to truly grasp onto any of the smaller elements that (could have) bothered me.

I was simply in it. And I had blast while there.

So, if you enjoy fast-paced suspense-thrillers, with multi-pov narratives and do-or-die high-stakes plots, this story will likely be right up your alley, too.

The book is a quick read which is both good and bad. Good because you'll fly through it but bad because we get absolutely zero sense of who these people are, what the day to day is like and enough of a reason to care about what is going on. And I wanted to. Elements of an intriguing and truly effed up story are there, but it didn't grab me. I should care about Brooke but I'm still wondering why with what she went through I was being told about her being "overweight". It was just oddly paced. Anyway, for a quick book about an elderly psychopath, it could be for you.

Alright, I’ve got a bonus review today. One of the first books I reviewed when I started this whole thing was Steph Nelson’s The Vein. And I loved it. So I’ve definitely been excited to read more of her work. Well, I got my wish, because I had the chance to read her new thriller The Final Scene ahead of release. It comes out on February 27, which is just a few days away, so now is a good time to get excited.

I don’t normally read thrillers. But when I do, I want something fast paced and dramatic. Like an HBO mini series I watch in one day, turning the pages without realizing how much time has passed. The Final Scene definitely checked those boxes. I’m always impressed when a book can carry momentum through multiple POVs. Especially when those perspectives genuinely add to the story. And in a setting like this one, the characters really need to shine.

Luckily, they do, because spending so much time in the same space with the same people would not have been engaging otherwise. Brooke was extremely complex. As our lead, we learn much of how we got to this point through her eyes. Those reveals did not feel forced. Her character and choices also felt believable given her situation. I couldn’t help but feel for her and root for her. And the characters who enter in? I don’t want to say too much, but the way they play off each other is compelling.

Which circles me back around to the plot. The summary provided does not do this justice. It’s true, but it is also so much cooler. Which meant I was quite pleasantly surprised. I normally prefer to go in without knowing much, and with a thriller especially I feel like the less knowledge the better. That being said, I’ll be brief and vague: I found it unique, and really wanted to figure out more about the situation.

I had a ton of fun with this one. And Steph, that scene? You can write more of that, anytime. And if you’re not interested in adult content, this is your warning. I did say it was like an HBO miniseries, right?

This was my first approved ARC from NetGalley, and I was SUPER jazzed on the premise.

Kidnapped people being forced to “act out” a sadistic woman’s childhood?! Seems like such a wild ride. Unfortunately, I felt that there were SO many plot holes and that the characters were very loosely developed; which made it hard to actually connect to their storylines. Especially at the fast pace that this book seems to steamroll through things, haha. I kind of hated the romantic sub plot, it felt so forced and random. And then to be honest the ending was anticlimactic and not explained very well in my opinion.

I think that if this book was like 100 pages longer, and gave more detail to why this old lady had these sick urges, why she had all of these townspeople/police in her back pocket… and just gave her character more of a presence with all that added creepiness to it… it would have drawn me in a lot more. That being said, it was a page turner. Very quick read and I’ve heard many good things about this author so I’m definitely going to give some of their other books a try. This one was just a miss for me.

Grateful to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review it before the release date!

This book was fabulous. It had the perfect amount of horror, thrill and heartbreak. I loved it. Will be recommending!

A woman is kidnapped 10 years earlier. That is it! That is the setting and all the backstory we ever get.

If this book is not a hoax, the only other option is that it must be meant for a mature but very inexperienced reader. And I mean the kind of reader who has not have a chance to built their reading foundation with basic but more elaborate elements of a novel so they tend to just focus on the essential action. In fairness, the lack of any meaningful world building might be due to extreme editing as overall the novel is in a bad need of expository elements.

In many ways this ‘novel’ is much closer to a play script than an actual novel. For example its minimalistic approach in establishing the plot or providing any believable motives. I much prefer when both these elements are present in a novel. As it is, “The Final Scene” reads quite bizarre, and not in the best way.