Review: The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark

The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was provided and ARC of this book via Sourcebooks and Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed this suspenseful, family drama. This follows ghostwriter Olivia in the wake of her social ousting. She had the gall to speak her mind at a conference and now she has essentially been cancelled and what was once a successful career ghostwriting memoirs and nonfiction has completely dried up. No one wants to be associated with her after she angered one of publishing's most successful writers. When a new project crosses her desk she has to take it, it just so happens to be her estranged father's memoir and the story everyone has wanted him to tell about what happened to his family. The problem is Olivia isn't sure if this is another one of his horror novels, another way he is trying to manipulate her, or if he really is telling the truth about what happened.

I haven't read a good thriller in quite a while. This alternates between the present day from Olivia's perspective, her father Vincent's perspective in 1975, as well as her Aunt Poppy's perspective also in 1975. In the present, Vincent's health is failing and he wants to tell the truth about what happened to his brother and sister as he is the only one who knows the truth. In bringing Olivia on to tell his story, it was almost as if he was making amends in a way for many things. Olivia is given very specific stipulations on how she must write the book, but being a good writer and a prior journalist she is able to seek out the information she needs to make sense of what her father tells her and the notes and clues he's left her. As we travel back in time and hear from Vincent and Poppy we learn of the tension and dark emotions that were running among the 3 Taylor siblings. There were plenty of red herrings to keep you guessing as to what really happened and why Vincent was so secretive about it all of these years.

If you are looking for a book full of secrets and scavenger hunts, this is a great read.

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