When Jane’s father dies unexpectedly, she escapes her grief by falling into the world of armchair detectives. Before long she’s so engrained within this community that she considers the small group of friends she’s made to be almost her family. When a mass killing occurs on a small campus in Idaho, Jane and her team, head to Idaho to investigate where the FBI and local police can’t. As their investigation continues, Jane and her team find themselves at the center of the case and might not survive past it.

I’m conflicted with this book. It’s very clearly based on the Idaho four, which I know other reviews have noted. However, there is an author note where Winstead addresses this and states her reasoning for basing the story on true events. So, I’ll give her that. Her intentions seem ‘good’ but it’s still hard to separate the true events from such a recent murder from the actual storyline. At the end of the day, tons of fiction is based on true events and so I don’t know if we can ‘cancel’ this book because of it. Just a fair warning as you head into this book, that there are lots of very true details.

The story itself, is ‘meh’. I hate saying that since it’s based on true events, but the first half of the story is just following Jane and her grief around and has such a slow start. Learning about message boards was interesting and honestly incredibly frustrating. Which is kind of the point Winstead is trying to make. How small facts can blow up and suddenly mob mentally takes over. Another book I read recently I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, also dived deep into the way social media can complicate facts, which in the end can hinder police investigations. It’s interesting that we’re starting to see this be a bigger theme in stories.

Jane as a character though, I never connected with. She’s a hard to like character and just felt off. Same with most of our other main characters. Even after the story started moving, I never felt truly invested in the story, primarily because of Jane. There are a few areas of suspense but the ending again was ‘meh’ and felt completely unrealistic and a bit lazy.

This is my first Ashley Winstead book and while I didn’t hate it, it was just okay. It’s entirely too long. Has some forced romance side plot which I didn’t love, and I’m not sure everyone will appreciate how closely it follows other murders.

AMAZON | GOODREADS | BOOKSHOP |★★★

This Book Will Bury Me comes out March 25, 2025. Huge thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.  If you liked this review, please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my Instagram @speakingof.books.