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CLAIRE, DARLING�� YOU DID NOT JUST DO THAT. 😭😭😭

3 stars! 🌟Huge thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Bantam for the eARC via Netgalley! 💌

This had me HOOKED�� until the last 10% absolutely wrecked me (and not in a good way). But let’s talk about it.

Claire is living her best life—engaged to the perfect man, Noah, and thriving. That is, until she decides to surprise him with lunch at work�� only to be told that Noah doesn’t even work there. 😨 WHAT. She calls him—no answer. Texts—ignored. Claire’s fiancé has disappeared off the face of the Earth, and when she tracks him down, she realizes the truth is even worse: Noah has a whole new life, new girlfriend, new everything. And Claire? She was never in the picture.

Now, Claire is determined to get answers, and what follows is a psychological spiral of obsession, love, and revenge. But as the layers of Claire’s past start unfolding, we start asking—who’s really the liar here?

Tropes:
✅ Unreliable Narrator
✅ Obsession
✅ Stalker Behavior
✅ Gaslighting
✅ Psychological Spiral
✅ Bingeable Writing
✅ (view spoiler)["It Was All in Their Head" (hide spoiler)] Twist
✅ Identity Crisis

WHAT I LIKED:
✅ THE PREMISE �� Ghosting? But make it unhinged psychological thriller? I WAS SOLD. The idea of your fiancé just vanishing and pretending you never existed?? NIGHTMARE FUEL.
✅ TENSE & GRIPPING �� The first 90% had me flipping pages like my life depended on it. The dual timelines, diary entries, and slow unraveling of Claire’s past? Chef’s kiss.
✅ THE WRITING �� Callie Kazumi knows how to build tension. Every chapter had me second-guessing what I thought I knew.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:
✖️ CLAIRE IS A LOT. She’s obsessive, messy, and downright delusional at times. I LOVE a morally grey female lead, but I never fully connected with her.
✖️ THE PACING �� Some sections dragged with excessive inner monologue. We got it, Claire, you’re spiraling!!
✖️ THAT ENDING.

⚠️ MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!!! ⚠️

Okay, let’s talk about it. We spend the WHOLE book building up this intense mystery, only for the final twist to be�� (view spoiler)[ Claire imagined it all. (hide spoiler)] She had a (view spoiler)[ mental illness (hide spoiler)] and was (view spoiler)[delusional the entire time (hide spoiler)]. EXCUSE ME?? 😩 I hate when thrillers pull the (view spoiler)[ “it was all in their head�� (hide spoiler)] card. It’s frustrating, lazy, and turns what could’ve been an insane twist into a disappointing cop-out. The book had me, but the ending fumbled HARD.

But wait�� if Claire (view spoiler)[imagined all of this, then why didn’t anyone check her call logs or texts?? She was texting Noah constantly. And when she gets arrested, wouldn’t the police have immediately checked her phone?? Like, wouldn’t it be OBVIOUS if the conversations were one-sided?? (hide spoiler)] This entire situation was set up to be this huge, dramatic reveal, but the second you actually think about it, the logic collapses. WHAT WAS THIS. 😭 The book really tried to hit us with a shocking twist, but instead, it just felt like a last-minute, nonsensical mess.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Would I recommend it? Maybe. If you love psychological thrillers and don’t mind an unreliable narrator who takes unreliable to a whole new level, you might enjoy this. But if you hate (view spoiler)[mental illness (hide spoiler)] being used as a last-minute plot twist, skip it.