Ashley Winstead Proves She's An Auto-Buy Author Again & Again

"This Book will Bury Me" is a gripping psychological thriller that explores the dangers of obsession and the true crime world. College student Jane Sharp, grieving her father’s death, becomes immersed in the dark realm of online sleuthing. When three college girls are murdered in Delphine, Idaho, Jane and her new friends are determined to solve the case before anyone else. However, the more they dig, the more the case unravels into an unsettling mystery that doesn't add up.

Told a year after the events, Jane reveals the shocking truth behind the Delphine Massacres. This twisty, suspenseful novel dives deep into the ethical dilemmas of internet sleuthing and the fine line between fascination and obsession. With unexpected twists and a chilling ending, it’s a must-read for fans of true crime and psychological thrillers.

4.25 ⭐️

THIS BOOK WILL BURY ME by Ashley Winstead shows grieving main character Jane Sharp becoming immersed in the world of armchair sleuthing and a specific case at a university in Idaho. Her network of sleuths even go to Idaho from different parts of the country to investigate.

➕ I thought this was a very engaging novel, and I wanted to pick it up at any spare moment.
➕ The found family element was very strong. After losing her father, Jane felt lost. The other armchair detectives felt fringe for one reason or another, and I loved their interactions with one another.
➕ Really like learning about being an armchair detective.

➖ I was a bit disappointed in the ending.
➖ The current culture is to give attention to the victim rather than the murderer. The victims, especially in Idaho, were just names with so much more attention given to the perpetrator.
➖ I wanted to know more about Jane. It felt like all the reader gets is that she’s grieving.
➖ The awful title

I felt like I was in the sweet spot target demographic of this book. I have heard of armchair detectives through Michelle McNamara’s book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, but I haven’t read much about them other than her book. I really enjoyed seeing the inner dynamics unfold. I’m sure the author dove into these forums to understand them more, and I was super pulled into these parts of the novel.

I loved this book, but I analytically realize there were some problems with it. Still, I will remember what a propulsive reading experience it was.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmarkfor an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an unbiased review.

It publishes March 25, 2025.


#thisbookwillburyme #ashleywinstead #netgalley #netgalleyreviewer #bookstagram

3.5 stars rounded up --- wow this book was a mind f*ck. On the one hand, I literally could not put it down. I loved the characters of this true crime small group and how they each came to be obsessed with trying to find answers to unsolved crimes. And I loved how it was written in the format of a tell-all book being published a year after the investigation was closed.

Jane Sharp, the main protagonist, felt like she could be any of us -- a 24 year old woman reeling from the sudden loss of her beloved father and trying to grasp on to anything that gives her some semblance of control in her life. A college dropout working as a barista at Starbucks, this online community she stumbles upon gives her the purpose and the motivation she so desperately seeks. And when she successfully helps solve a local crime, she is immediately hooked.

But when this group of five decides to come out from behind their respective screens and head to the actual scene of the crime they are investigating, it ups the ante -- and the danger.

Good pacing and great twist of a conclusion. My only true complaints are the rushed job of tying everything up the end and the fact that this was so clearly based on a very recent, graphic true crime case. Which, of course, completely makes the point about society's obsession with true crime. But would have liked this far more without those parallels.

This was my first book by Ashley Winstead. This was an interesting read! I enjoyed it and I look forward to reading more books in this genre.

Unfortunately, this novel was completely ripped from the headlines of the ACTUAL Idaho murders with nary an original thought in it. Very sad.

🔍🔍🔍🔍🔍
The way Ashley Winstead writes is intoxicating. I’m always thinking about her books when I’m not reading them!

This Book Will Bury Me is a fictional true-crime account of the “Barbie Butcher” serial killings and the team of successful true-crime sleuths who are recruited by the FBI to work on the case. Jane is our protagonist and she tells us the story. If you liked the documentary Don’t F**k with Cats, you’ll enjoy this book.

It’s a hard read because Winstead does use details of the real-life cases of the University of Idaho, Gabby Petito, Golden State Killer, and Abraham Shakespeare, but in doing so showcases the obsessions people have with true crime and how those obsessions can impede investigations, but also advance them. It’s a very meta book and I would only read it if you can stomach true crime, especially for a case that is ongoing and awaiting trial this year (Idaho).

I’ll read anything Winstead writes. I’m such a fan of her work! The plot and the grief in this book were written so gently and profoundly. The pacing was slower at times, but that wasn’t an issue for me. I loved the personalities of all the sleuths, especially Jane (duh), and the ending was quite literally jaw-dropping. Masterful.

Searcher is Jane’s sleuth handle, but she’s really on a quest to find her identity (justice, friends, love, investigative journalism), her father in his death, and solace. It’s a study of the transition from teen to adulthood and all the things we have to bury along the way.

It’s a dark book, but there’s also mention of Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Faith, Veronica and JD of Heathers, fan fics, Reddit, and a dog named Gatsby... just things I enjoyed as a millennial woman!

I highly recommend picking this one up when it comes out on March 25th! Thank you so much to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the ARC!

This book had from the beginning. I loved all the soothing
and twists. Can’t wait to recommend this one to all my friends.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for providing a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

It's a 'like' from me. This book begins with an author's note explaining that Winstead's plot was drawn from some real-life true crime cases. After her father unexpectedly dies from a heart attack, Jane Sharp becomes enraptured by TheRealCrimeNetwork.com. Think Don't F**k With Cats—it is a place for amateur online sleuths to come together and solve crimes. At first, the website is a simple distraction, but it quickly develops into more as Jane's online relationships with other home investigators grow. The characters were really awesome, but I unfortunately guessed the killer at around 50-60% of the novel. After that, I was just reading for the sake of my reading goal.

Firstly, thank you to the publisher and author for my free ARC.

Okay, so, I have multiple issues with this book. I wasn't fond of the characters; could've been shorter; dragged on quite a bit.
My biggest issue, though, is that this book is supposed to be inspired by the Idaho murders but it seems to be a carbon copy, to me. I do want to note that regardless of this, I still didn't LOVE this book, so my rating is from all angles here.

I do not believe the author purposely meant this to be controversial but it is. This book is set to be published before the trial this same year...
For a book that was "inspired" by a true crime, it is WAY too similar to what went down.

I do not in any way mean to disrespect the author, this is just what I took from this book as a whole. My heart goes out to the author whom lost her father recently.

This book was not for me. I tried and tried to get into it. I liked some of it. The characters were intriguing, but I just couldn't find my way through it. Honestly, I was a little sick of the main character and I was bored. I'm glad it's over. I am an Ashley Winstead fan so I'll try with her next book.

This book totally consumed my weekend. Historically, Winstead's books have either been major winners or very underwhelming. Fortunately, this was another major winner. True crime fans will surely enjoy the plot of this, which consists of 5 internet sleuths who band together to solve a murder.

I went into this story totally blind, and I think this is the way to do it.

Also, I learned that this was actually inspired by an active case. While controversial, Winstead does address this matter in a note.

I have deeply loved Ashley Winstead in the past. In fact, I think In My Dreams I Hold A Knife is the only thriller I've ever reread. This book felt like Winstead coming back to her roots with a traditional thriller, but this one felt like it could do with a little more editing. While I appreciate that Winstead was battling with the grief of her own father's death as she was writing this book, I felt as though some of the storyline about Jane's father was a little heavy-handed and ultimately made it feel a little disjointed from the main storyline. I think with some editing, this could have tightened up the book overall and made the length much more manageable.

Overall - I thought this was a really fun thriller! Although I figured out the mystery very early on in the book, I found myself staying up late and turning the digital pages on my Kindle long past my bedtime to see how the story would unravel. One criticism I would have is that this book seemed to dance around the topic of how a fascination with true crime can be detrimental to the people who are impacted in their real lives, but never seemed to really drive the point home or in a way that felt head-on and authentic. I think there was a little too much "playing both sides" of the argument when it comes to true crime enthusiasts and Internet sleuths, and I would have liked to see Winstead dig her heels in a little deeper and really call out the real-life damage that can be caused by people who cross the line when involving themselves in crime scenes.

Overall, this was a fun read. My primary complaint is the length, but it was more of an issue because I'd figured it out already. If it had been shorter, I would have been less upset about figuring it out.

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead is one of my all time favorite thrillers. In that book, she drops enough breadcrumbs to make the twist make sense in hindsight, but not enough breadcrumbs to spoil the ending. Unfortunately, in this book she was a bit too heavy handed with her breadcrumbs and I guessed the twist very early on.

Unfortunately, I feel like the road has come to an end for Winstead and I.

Before I read this book, I found out it was based on the murders in Idaho a few years ago. I was a bit hesitant since I'm not a fan of thrillers based on a real life murder. But at the end, there was an author's note where she states she drew inspiration from the Idaho murders and the University of Idaho. I did follow the true crime story of the Idaho murders in 2022. This story felt like the EXACT same thing. Literally, word for word with a few minor changes. This completely turned me off. It felt just wrong.

I couldn't get into this book at all. I can see that others that didn't follow this case would like it but for me I wasn't into it. Unfortunately, wasn't a big fan of this.

2.5/5 stars

Thank you to netgalley and Sourcebooks for my arc

the feeling of an absolute page-turner is a rare one, and ashley winstead instead hit the nail on the head with this book will bury me. every day that I was reading this book, every second of free time i wanted to jump back in!

i absolutely loved the mixed media elements to this book; reading true crime forums & group messages. the plot twists were fun and pretty unpredictable. it’s been a lonnnngggggg time since i’ve read something that hooked me like this!

giving this one 4.5/5 stars: 1. it kept me wanting to read CONSTANTLY 2. the plot was very exciting to follow 3 i would recommend this to so many people and i throughly enjoyed it. it lost a half a star solely because i did predict one of the plot twists & none of the characters were super lovable for me personally (didn’t connect with as much as i normally prefer).

i also loved 1. how the entire book is written as a reflection on the narrator’s experience and everything is written with hindsight & 2. how the ending was tied up in a pretty perfect bow, with just a hint of ambiguity to the future but gave you answers on all the plot lines!

After her father’s sudden death, college senior Janeway Sharp stumbles across a true crime network on the interweb and quickly becomes enthralled as she looks for a distraction from her own pain and grief. Soon close friendships and alliances are formed as the armchair detective group takes on the shocking and brutal murder of three sorority students in Delphine, Idaho and are suddenly thrust into the spotlight themselves.

Looking at the reviews for this book, it strikes me that most people fall into two categories on it - you either love it or you hate it. Turns out, I am in the former. While this book didn’t quite bury me, it sure gripped my attention to the point of complete absorption. I. Could. Not. Put. This. Book. Down.

Unlike Ashley Winstead’s other novels that are works of pure fiction, the primary case in this book is based on a very true crime, and is part of what makes this book controversial. Is it too early to be featuring this brutal murder, an event that has left a town broken, in such a front and centered way? In fact, Winstead even includes an author’s note to explain her rationale on this and it’s definitely worth a read.

I would argue that although it is pivotal to the story, it is very much not THE story. At the core, TBWBM is about community and making sense of the senseless. It’s about our overarching desire for answers we may or may never be able to find. And it’s about family, those who we love and who offer comfort, and those who seek only to knock us down.

To prevent the risk of spoiling a book that’s best when gone into blind, I will end my review by saying that although, I didn’t love her last, this book was a major winner for me and such a pleasant surprise. Not since Verity has a first page grabbed me hook, line and sinker and I hope it does the same for you, if you choose to read it.

Thank you to the Alisᵗᵐ for buddy reading this one with me. Sorry I wasn’t able to slow myself down there at the end, but what a testament to the addictiveness of this book.

Read if you like:
▪️true crime
▪️serial killer storylines
▪️quasi-cozy mysteries
▪️epistolary format
▪️unputdownable thrillers

Thank you Sourcebooks Landmark for the advanced copy.

Based on enjoyment, this was great. I echo a lot of other reviews: it's a bit too long and maybe leans on the predictable side, but has some really well-done aspects (found family, grief, internet culture). The characters are mostly likeable and, for the most part, fleshed out. It gets a bit campy by the end there, but it's fiction, so I can't be too mad at it. I had a really great time with this and love Winstead's writing.

This book was fun. It started a bit slow for me, but by the last half or so, I was hooked. I did figure out the killer pretty early on (rare for me!) but still enjoyed the ride and how everything played out. The book is told an interesting way - the main character is describing the action of the book as if she is writing a tell-all or memoir after the events unfolded. I have really enjoyed a lot of this authors books, so in that regard, this wasn't a favorite of mine of those she has written, but that is admittedly a high bar! An enjoyable thriller, especially for fans of true crime (and I'm not even one of them, but still a 4 star for me!

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for providing a free e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I think this finally seals the deal for me that Ashley Winstead is just not the author for me. Like her other books, the plot is very predictable. I did like the fact of following a true crime forum, there was a found family that worked really well, and the suspenseful parts were decent. This book was entirely too long, however, as it could have been a good 150-200 pages shorter and gotten the idea across.

Apparently this book is based off murders that happened in Idaho back in 2022 that I'm not aware of, and though there are many books that I have read that are loosely based off serial killers from the past this may have been a little too recent in the eyes of some.

I unfortunately can't recommend her books as they all follow such a similar pattern and turn out to be such letdowns by the end, but give it a try if you enjoy her work as you may like it.