Claire Campbell has been living a lie for years, telling friends that she has a sister but she's just not seen her in years. In fact, her sister has been missing for 22 years and her body was never found.
After quitting her job in NYC as a journalist, she returns home to South Carolina. But unable to live with her mother, she seeks refuge and a temporary job at Galloway Farm. As she gets to know the farm's occupants, something just doesn't seem right and her journalistic instincts kick in to investigate. There are secrets buried at the farm.
This one was so mysterious and intriguing. I did guess some of the connections but others were a complete surprise. As always, the author's writing was a complete delight. I flew through the pages, needing to find out the answers to the mystery.

I really enjoyed this book. It's a bit of a slow.burn to begin with but soon picks up pace. Highly recommend

I really enjoyed this book! It starts off slowly but before you know it, you're completely engrossed. The atmosphere and setting are wonderfully eerie and unsettling. I loved the diary aspect, with the two stories working together. There are twists and turns throughout and I thought for ages that Natalie would turn out to be Marcia's child but when all is revealed, it is simultaneously astonishing and believable. The characters are brilliant and the MC, Claire, is an easy character to will a good outcome for. A really great thriller.

This is a great read.
Claire has spent years running from her past, but in a twist of fate ends up in the same place her sister spent time before she went missing.
An evocative, pacy book, I couldn’t set it down!

4.75 stars rounded up. At first, this starts out fairly slow, building the atmosphere and tension of an oppressive southern summer on a remote island farm in South Carolina. Stick with it though as the tension begins to grow until a gripping finale with twists aplenty. I think I saw some bits, but some definitely caught me by surprise!

Overall, an excellent read.

I received a free ARC copy of this via NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

🪻The story follows Claire as she returns to her hometown to confront the haunting memories of her past. Her oldest sister,Natalie, vanished without a trace twenty two years ago, leaving the family with unanswered questions. While working at a local farm, Claire stumbles upon a mysterious diary that could hold the key to solving the mystery behind her sister’s disappearance. As she delves deeper, Claire uncovers long buried secrets that challenge she thought she knew.

🪻 Pick this up if you like/don’t mind:
📌 crime mystery
📌 missing person case/ cold case
📌 two different interconnected timelines
📌 fast paced plot
📌 short chapters
📌 small town setting
📌 eerie/ cult/ atmospheric/ dark
📌 “diary entries”
📌 addictive/ edge of your seat/ binge worthy
📌 family drama

🪻 Wow-what did I just read? This was my third book by this author, and she just keeps getting better! I thought her second book outshined the first, but this one has completely surpassed them both. (Haven’t read “Only if you’re lucky”)
From the very first page, the plot captivated me. I genuinely had no idea where the story was going, and I devoured it in a single setting, racing through the pages to find out what would happen next. I put everything else on hold - chores, responsibilities, all forgotten. The tense atmospheric writing kept me on edge- I didn’t even realise I was holding my breath until I turned the last page. Despite being an avid reader of thrillers, I was genuinely surprised by the plot twist.

🪻 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Thanks NetGalley for the advance copy. 4.5 starts rounded off to 5

A thriller you won’t see coming. After losing her sister to murder, Claire moves to the city to become a journalist. Years later she goes back to the small town, finds a diary and the mystery starts again. Great story!

The perfect book to read this summer! It was so atmospheric, creepy and intense. I’ve read A LOT of thrillers, but I would’ve never have been able to solve this mystery. The twists was phenomenal and shocking! If it weren’t pretty obvious from this review, I LOVED IT! Devoured it in a day! Thank you Netgalley for this arc. I highly appreciate it!

3.5 stars rounded up.
Atmospheric, yes, and intriguing at first, but the pace was glacially slow, making my mind wander instead of concentrating on the book. I think KU readers may dip out very early on because of this. Claire was a frustrating character to follow as she made some really unfathomable decisions, which made it difficult to want to keep reading, but I didn't DNF and the writing was good, so 3.5 stars.

At the request of her father, Claire Campbell finds herself visiting her mother who has recently broken her leg. It’s been fifteen years since she’s been back to her home in South Carolina and 22 years since her older sister Natalie disappeared. Claire was only 11 at the time but remembers Natalie underwent a change that last summer before she vanished leaving her distant and moody. She had been working at a vineyard an hour away on the coast and was reportedly seen with an older man who was later charged with her murder after evidence was found in his car.

Claire decides to visit the vineyard to see where her sister spent her last summer, wondering if anyone is still there who might have known her. When she is offered a job picking grapes for the season she decides to accept and see what she can find out. Staying in the vineyard’s guest house she finds an old diary written by Marcia, now the wife of Mitchell the owner. It tells of the early days of the farm and vineyard and Claire can’t help feeling unsettled by what she’s reading.

I loved this atmospheric setting and slow burn of this mystery with a deep sense of unease at its core and became immersed in wanting to find out what became of Natalie. There are a lot of dark secrets to be uncovered before Claire can unravel what really happened to her sister and others at the vineyard with several excellent twists that made the revelations shocking, but not unrealistic. Clever, creepy and thoughtful, this is another winner from Stacy Willingham.

Unhappy with the direction that her life has taken and in something of a rut, Claire decides to honor her father's request and return home to South Carolina to look after her mother after she's had a health scare. In the process, she also plans to deal with the tragedy she has for so long spent avoiding - the loss of her sister Natalie over two decades ago.

But her plans change again after she realises that staying with her mother is not a practical option. When an opportunity unexpectedly opens up to booster her meagre savings by taking a summer job at the Galloway Farm, her sister's last workplace before her disappearance, she cannot resist, hoping it will help her find closure and perhaps discover what actually happened to Natalie.

But Claire has no idea just how dangerous the series of events she has set into motion with her decision to return to South Carolina actually is...

A nuanced, clever and suspenseful read is what Stacy Willingham gives us in this, her third offering, with elements of domestic abuse, a cult-like community and an insight into the toxicity of some family secrets. All in all, it gets 4.5 stars. This is definitely worth checking out.

I really enjoyed this book. It's my second time reading this author, and I enjoyed this one much more than the first.(A Flicker in the Dark). For the most part, I did like Claire's character, although, at times, she made some very questionable decisions. The storyline was intriguing and immersive too. I found myself not wanting to put this one down.

The mystery is suspenseful and I found myself trying to piece it all together with Claire. Unlike her though, I did have some parts figured out lool. However, that didn't stop me from enjoying this one. I also really like that this book calls to attention, the subject of grooming. It's tactfully handled in a thought-provoking way, not just as part of a storyline.

Though, this was a thriller, I found it to be very emotional at times. I love when a book can evoked so many emotions from me. I found the ending to be very bittersweet. A solid four ⭐ read for me

3.5 ⭐


There's a lot in this book that just felt a bit too much like box ticking. Too many similar themes to books I've read previously.
Despite that, it's an enjoyable read.
There's definitely a few nice turns to the story line too, as we follow Claire on her quest to uncover the truth.
Great sense of location, and having such a small cast the whole thing feels a little claustrophobic.
Nicely entertaining.

4.5 stars rounded up.

I love Stacy Willingham’s writing style - it’s so full of atmosphere and emotion, and really draws you into a claustrophobic setting and builds up a perfect tension.

Forget Me Not tells the story of Claire, whose big sister Natalie went missing before being presumed murdered 22 years ago at the age of 18. As soon as Claire turned 18 herself, she moved to New York to become a journalist and never returned home to South Carolina.

Now she has quit her job and found herself drawn back home to help look after her mum. And she finds herself pulled back into the mystery of her sister’s disappeared and what changed in her that summer.

As Claire ends up taking a live-in job at the vineyard where Natalie briefly worked that summer, she finds a diary kept by one of the owners, Marcia, from when she was 18. As she works her way through the diary, she starts to find parallels between Marcia and her sister - and starts to feel that something isn’t quite right on this farm.

This was wonderfully creepy, suspenseful and mysterious, keeping me guessing all the way as to what was happening and how the stories all linked together!

I really liked it, such an eerie and compelling mystery thriller. A story that stays with you, long after you finish it.

Claire finds herself back at her hometown in South Carolina, after her mother has an accident. But being home isn't easy for her, it's filled with ghosts of the past. Her sister Natalie disappeared 22 years ago, never to be found. It was solved, her older boyfriend arrested and charged, but Claire never moved on. Unable to stay with her mother, at the house she grew up in, she accepts a seasonal job at the Galloway Farm. The last place her sister worked. There she finds an old diary, a diary of a eighteen year old girl, one whose story might be similar to her sisters, in more ways than one...
But reading that diary might bring something even more sinister to the surface. Because there is always someone watching..

This was an incredible story, the constant unease you felt while reading it, the tension that was always there, slowly building up the story. It was slow at times, but I didn't mind that at all. That eerie feeling of the Farm and its occupants was always there, making it much more thrilling. I loved the present and the past timelines.
While I did see the outcome of the story coming, which is why I took away a star, the writing was compelling enough to make me enjoy this story very much.

This author is new to me, but I would really like to read more from her.

Stacey Willingham is a steadfast name in the thriller genre. Her complex female leads and devasting family relationships entwined with shocking twists make her work a must read. This is no exception

📝ARC Book Review📝
Title: Forget Me Not
Author: Stacy Willingham
Publication Date: August 28, 2025
Rating: 4/5 stars

Forget Me Not is a haunting, character-driven thriller that seamlessly blends emotional depth with suspense. Stacy Willingham explores trauma, memory, and buried secrets through Claire Campbell—a flawed, guarded woman haunted by her sister’s decades-old disappearance.

The story unfolds slowly, with atmospheric tension and a haunting Southern backdrop. Galloway Farm, eerie and layered in silence, mirrors Claire’s unraveling. Willingham’s writing is beautiful and evocative. She doesn’t just tell a story; she creates a mood. Every chapter peels back another layer of long-buried grief, and the final reveals land with quiet weight earned through emotion, not cheap shock.

That said, the pacing may feel sluggish in the early chapters, and some readers might find Claire’s emotional detachment hard to connect with at first. A few of the supporting characters, particularly those at the farm, could’ve been more fleshed out to heighten the emotional stakes.

Still, if you’re not expecting a fast-paced, high-adrenaline thriller, and you enjoy a well-written, character-driven mystery with heart, atmosphere, and emotional complexity, Forget Me Not will absolutely deliver.

This is a new author to me and I’ll be checking out her backlist now! Loved this book, read it in a day and couldn’t put it down.

Claire Campbell is a journalist in NYC and thinks she’s put her painful past behind her. The disappearance and supposed murder (no body was ever found) of her sister Natalie when she was 18 and Claire 11 tore apart their family, and as soon as she could she escaped to New York to work as a journalist…on the murder beat. Yes she has some unresolved feelings about it all.

Now unemployed and with her savings running out, she’s persuaded to go home for the first time since she was 18 to care for her Mom following an accident. However finding her Mom as cold and distant as ever, and struggling with the memories evoked by being in her old family home, she escapes again: this time by taking a summer job on impulse.

The job is at the farm her sister worked at the summer she disappeared - and the last place she remembers Natalie being happy. Lovely little guest cottage, hard work in the sun, beautiful scenery, isolated farm with no neighbours… what could possibly go wrong?

Needless to say, the story of how Claire comes to terms with her past and the secrets she uncovers is twisty and absorbing. It kept me guessing; but everything felt earned and organic, rather than twists simply for the shock value.

First, thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins for this ARC!

I discovered Stacy Willingham rather late, I think at some point two years ago, when I had to buy all of her books. So of course, I also had to keep an eye on her new release and was more than happy to get approved to read it early. And what can I say - it did not disappoint!

We do follow Claire, who is heading home to South Carolina to face her past, and then ends up living on a farm because she finds it impossible to just stay with her mother after Claire's sister disappeared when they were still children. The problem is, said farm does have some dark secrets of it's own...

It is a slow-burn thriller, but one that is creepy and did send chills down my spine all the time I have been reading. very well done again, Stacy Willingham!

I have a sister. But we haven’t spoken in years! That’s what I told everyone. I lied. My sister’s been missing for 22 years, her body never found. Her disappearance has haunted me ever since! Wow great chilling thriller! This book had shocking suspense, mystery, murder, kidnapping, gaslighting, intriguing and so many shocking twists! The story was very interesting! I definitely recommend reading this book! Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!