The Ghostwriter

A new thriller I’ve been looking forward to for months is out today: The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark. This dual-timeline story explores how a horrific trauma can haunt a family for decades. Vincent Taylor was one of three teenaged siblings growing up in 1970s Ojai, California. But both his older brother and younger sister were murdered one awful day, leaving him the only survivor—and the one most in town believe was the killer, even though he was never convicted. Fifty years later, his estranged daughter Olivia has been hired to help Vincent (himself a famous horror author) write a memoir finally revealing what really happened.

What I Liked:

• Complex father-daughter relationship. Vincent was a single father to Olivia after she turned five, but with his writing career and addictions, he was often absent (whether physically or emotionally). They’ve been estranged since her early 20s, and it’s only now, over two decades later, that she’s back in his life to help him write a memoir. They have to find a way to understand each other despite all the baggage.
• Messy sibling relationships. Vincent was the middle child between older brother Danny and younger sister Poppy. All three were teenagers in 1975, and between the volatile relationship between the two brothers and Vincent’s insecure romance with his first girlfriend, Lydia, tensions were high. The issues only became more tangled leading up to the murders in June of that year. But were the siblings that hateful and violent? Or was it someone else?
• How memories and narratives can be wrong. How well do people remember what happened years, even decades, ago? Can video footage be misleading? How do the ideas we have of people color the way we see events? All of these are at the heart of The Ghostwriter, from the way others saw Vincent at a villain to the way he portrays himself and those around him. I loved all the dissections of lies, memories, and hidden meanings.
• Portrayal of Lewy body dementia. Related to inaccurate memories, Vincent now has Lewy body dementia. I knew nothing about this disease before reading this book, but it is a devastating disease that affects cognitive abilities. Here, it’s the reason Vincent needs Olivia’s help to write the book. It’s also an obstacle in her learning the real truth as opposed to fabrications and misremembered details.
• Treasure hunts. Vincent was a big fan of leaving clues leading Poppy, and later Olivia, to fun surprises. This may be a crutch in how he communicates with others, too, always choosing an indirect form of getting messages across.
• Poppy’s feminism. And Olivia’s too! I loved seeing how Poppy was already so active in women’s rights at the age of 14, going against her mother and other women in her life. Olivia clearly got the same genes as her aunt!

Final Thoughts

The Ghostwriter is an intricate and absorbing novel about family dynamics, long-buried secrets, and the ways little things can add up to something awful. I enjoyed falling into the 1970s setting and watching Olivia and Vincent finally find some sense of mutual understanding, even in the midst of all the trauma.

This is my first time reading Julie Clark, but I look forward to reading more. I already have The Last Flight ready to go!

Special thanks to Sourcebooks and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy The Ghostwriter here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark
Audience	Adult
Genre	Mystery; Crime Fiction
Setting	California
Number of Pages	368
Format I Read	Ebook (NetGalley ARC)
Original Publication Date	June 3, 2025
Publisher	Sourcebooks

Official Summary

From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Last Flight and The Lies I Tell comes a dazzling new thriller.

June, 1975.  

The Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their own home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets. 

 Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she’s offered a job to ghostwrite her father’s last book. What she doesn’t know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies. Because it’s not another horror novel he wants her to write. 

 After fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk about what really happened that night in 1975.