Now You Owe Me

by Aliah Wright

Ben and Corinthia spent years abducting college coeds, until one night they took the wrong victim.


No one knew witnessing their first murder at seven would propel Ben and his twin toward a killing spree in Pennsylvania. Racked with guilt, they vow to take just one more victim. Too bad they snatched the wrong woman . . .

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Adult, Mystery Thriller, Horror

302 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2024

About the author

Now You Owe Me is NOW A Foreword INDIES finalist for Book of the Year!

Philadelphia native Aliah Wright worked her way through college as an editorial assistant for The Philadelphia Daily News, and as a stringer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. A successful journalist, she spent her career working for a variety of news outlets. Those include The Associated Press, where she was a Political Correspondent, and at what is now known as Gannett | USA TODAY Network, where she was the Entertainment Editor for Gannett News Service. A Temple University graduate, she lives with her family just outside Philadelphia, where she’s plotting the next two novels in this series. She loves writing and traveling. This is her first novel.

Reviews

[Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️ 5 stars ⭐️

“Good. ’Cause you are never getting rid of me—not after today. Know why?” He shook his head. “Because now you owe me.”

— MURDERING TWINS WANTED IN DISAPPEARANCE OF COEDS —

[ Ok, so I started jotting down some ideas for this review around 50%. Let’s just say, everything I wrote in that initial review was so fucking wrong. The plot twist caught me completely off guard, I AUDIBLY gasped so fucking loud my coworkers thought something was wrong. Well, something IS wrong, because WTF. I’m shocked, but ohmygod I love it.
Needless to say, I had to throw out the whole thing and start over. So, let’s get into it. I’m going to try to avoid spoilers, because it’s best to go in blind. That being said, if anyone would like a trigger list just hit me up. ]

For a debut novel this was fantastically written, full of exciting and breath-catching twists, thrilling from start to finish.
Now You Owe Me was a deep dive in total codependency, unhealthy coping mechanisms to trauma, thrilling investigations where the readers can experience both sides of the coin, an intriguing insight into different psychoses.
It was horrifying, chill-inducing, nightmarish. All the right elements for a great thriller.

“Promise me one day we’ll run away.” Ben nodded. “I will always take care of you, sis.” She smiled. “I’ll always take care of you, too, little brother.”

I loved how the author set up the story, beginning with the twins origin. It was interesting to see how they became killers, how they devolved in time, how their crimes escalated. Made me think of the Nature vs Nurture debate. Had Ben and Corinthia had a loving childhood, would they still have became murderers? Was it wired into their DNA, or beat in to them at an early age?

This was a very different read, surprising and excellently written. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Aliah Wright in the future.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley, and am leaving this honest review voluntarily.

[BiblioPeeks · Rating 5 out of 5]

"He pushed his head into his hands. 'I just can't believe you killed her, ' he whispered. A hush descended over the room. Ben broke the silence. 'We have to leave.' 'I know', she replied, her voice filled with concern. 'Are you afraid we'll get caught?'"

Seven year old twins Ben and his sister Corinthia, witness their father kill someone violently. This pivotal event sets them down a path of strange predilections which include kidnapping and murdering women.

Twins have a close bond right? Well imagine twins who are deranged, disturbing and a little disgusting but also mesmerizing. They’re remorseful and don’t like the compulsions they have, but can’t seem to stop! Ben and Corinthia were as compelling as they were repulsive. At times I even felt sorry for them. It’s like not being able to look away from a speeding train about to crash. The pacing was simply perfection as the twins age from seven to twenty-four and vow to take one last victim...

You might need to suspend some disbelief but for me these are THE BEST kind of tales. It doesn’t happen often, so I love it when I can’t predict what will happen next because it’s just that out there! Aliah Wright has written a gripping story that is dark and twisted with bits of humor, heart and just the right amount of social commentary. It borders on psychological horror with characters you can’t look away from. Amanda is a force to be reckoned with and I loved her moxie! Who is Amanda? You’ll have to read to find out! There is graphic content, but it’s not overdone or exaggerated, however some animal cruelty/harm is included.

NOW YOU OWE ME has truly blown me away! I was pleased as punch to ride this depraved crazy train until the last stop and even then I didn’t want to get off! Though wrapped up beautifully, don’t expect any neat and tidy endings here. I’m hoping for another book and guess what? There will be!! Aliah Wright totally kills her debut! (Pun intended?) I need MORE of these captivatingly lethal twins. Bring on book two!
____

Thank you Red Hen Press for the gifted copy. All opinions are mine.
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Potential spoiler content warnings below.











































⚠️Content Warnings: animal cruelty/harm, gore, child abuse, mental illness, violence, voyeurism, stalking, strangulation, kidnapping, death, Mention of: fatal hit & run

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had many twists and turns I loved it I wish it had
Continued on further.
A great read.
It is quite graphic at times.

[Mandie (allbookedout_with_mj) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I enjoyed the twists in this one and was totally intrigued about where it was heading and then fooled by the major plot twist. I always love an ending that I can't guess and Wright certainly had my jaw dropping. An addictive read broken into three parts. The first part is quite dark and intense and although not triggering for me, may be for some.

The writing style didnt quite gel for me though and I feel there was excessive use of description of characters clothing and brand names but on reflection think perhaps this was to boost the atmospheric perception of wealth.
Overall a decent read and for a debut had some great concepts and I'll look forward to more from this author in the future.

[Yinka Boudreaux · Rating 3 out of 5]

BUCKLE TF UP because you are going on 👏🏽 a 👏🏽 ride 👏🏽

Push through part 1 because while it is bleak and super descriptive, part 2 is so incredibly worth it!

Before you get mad at the end, I already did my research and I’m happy to share that there’s a book two on the horizon. You’re welcome. lol

Our book club had such a great time talking about these damn twins 😩😮‍💨

[Jody Reads Smut · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not help but be glued to the book from the very first page to the last one! There are a lot of unforeseen turns in the storyline that made me sit on the edge of my seat. One of the greatest advantages is that characters were well-developed and the plot was almost perfect. Wow… What a great start for a new author, this really is quite a remarkable novel. Looking forward to reading other books by this author. Quite prefect, Wright did very well on this one.

Thank you to Red Hen Press, and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

[Eileen]

Aliah Wright's Now You Owe Me was a DNF for me. Two bad twins were too much, but if you like horror this might be a book for you.

[Claire Burge · Rating 2 out of 5]

I...didn't love this. Don't get me wrong, I was hooked from the dedication page:
"For women who die at the hands of men.", things just went downhill from there.

Personally the character development featured far too much animal cruelty and an inundation of brand names (whyyyyyyyyyy must we keep doing this????? it ages books so fast, and there's not a book on earth I need to read "WAP" in) without enough.....character development to really feel much for Amanda, Corinthia, Ben, or anyone else in the story. By the time things really came to a head in the plot, there was so much left in the book I couldn't figure out where the story was going - is it setting up for a sequel, is it a cliff hanger, or is it just run of the mill plot holes, we may never know.

If you liked the "the things I do for love" aspect of GoT, but could do without the blatant twincest, this book might be for you, it just wasn't my cup of tea.


Thanks to Red Hen Press and Goodreads for sending me a free copy to review!

[Cheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book until the end. The first chapter was difficult to get through with disturbing content, but after that I was fine. Maybe I am in the minority, but I did not understand the end at all and it left me confused. Wish someone could explain it to me lol.

[P. English Literature · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a scene early in Aliah Wright's debut novel that announces, quietly and without fanfare, the kind of book it intends to be. Seven-year-old Corinthia Zanetti and her twin brother Ben are hiding under a tarp in their father's truck, watching him beat a man named Lenny to death in a dark gravel parking lot. Ben trembles so violently the tarp shakes. And then Corinthia removes it. She does not flinch, does not look away, does not reach for her brother's hand. She jumps down toward the violence. That single physical action, a child's body moving toward horror rather than away from it, is Wright's thesis, her origin myth, and her most precise image, all compressed into one gesture. She trusts it completely. She does not explain what it means. She simply lets it happen and moves on, confident the reader will carry it forward. That confidence is her greatest asset as a novelist, and it is the quality that makes this first book, at its best, feel like the work of a writer who has been doing this for years.

Now You Owe Me operates on a premise that could easily tip into exploitation: twin siblings from a broken Pennsylvania household become serial killers, abducting and murdering young women for nearly a decade, until they target a victim who refuses to stay one. Wright is after something more demanding than a genre exercise. Beneath the procedural mechanics and the courtroom drama lies a serious inquiry into the transmission of violence, not the sensational kind that makes headlines, but the quieter, more insidious kind that moves through families like inheritance, arriving in children not as choice but as architecture. The Zanetti twins do not become killers because they are evil. They become killers because the adults charged with protecting them were themselves damaged, and the damage ran downhill. This does not excuse what Ben and Corinthia do. Wright is careful never to let it. But it changes the moral register of the novel, lifting it out of thriller territory into something closer to tragedy, a distinction the book earns, mostly, by the time its courtroom doors close.

The novel divides into three parts. The first, set in 1998 and covering the twins' childhood and adolescence, is the strongest sustained writing in the book. Wright establishes from the opening chapter that she understands a principle many thriller writers miss: effective horror is atmospheric, not procedural. The murder Corinthia and Ben witness in Chapter One devastates not through graphic accumulation but through what surrounds it. The darkness, Ben's held breath, Corinthia's wide-open eyes, and then, after the violence, a white sneaker stained red nudging a dead man's body. Wright withholds explanation throughout, presenting the children's responses in pure action and trusting the reader to assemble the psychological portrait. The differentiation between the twins is never stated, always demonstrated. Ben flinches, clutches, trembles. Corinthia calculates, pinches, leads. By the time she delivers the line that titles the novel, "You are never getting rid of me, not after today. Know why? Because now you owe me," it carries the weight of everything the chapter has built. It is almost Flannery O'Connor in its compression: a child speaking her worldview with complete sincerity, the sincerity itself the source of the chill.
G
The skunk-drowning sequence that follows is the book's most psychologically sophisticated early passage. On the surface it is a disturbing set piece. Structurally, it is the origin of Corinthia's central obsession: a refusal to accept death's permanence, a compulsion to test and retest the boundary between the living and the dead that will, two decades later, put her in a Pennsylvania courtroom. "Daddy killed that man." / "No, he didn't. I can prove it." Those two lines contain the psychological architecture of everything that follows. Wright plants them in Chapter One and never needs to return to them explicitly. The novel grows outward from that exchange, the way the wisteria vine grows outward from the wall of the Zanetti estate, beautiful, climbing, binding everything it touches.

That wisteria is one of Wright's most patient symbolic achievements. It appears first as a fairy tale image in the grandmother chapters, something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, Corinthia says, and it is both of those things and also the image of something that grows more beautiful while it quietly, structurally, constricts. By the time Amanda Taylor stands outside the guesthouse at the end of the winding path and tears dead vines from the windowpanes to see inside, the reader understands that tearing away beauty to find what it conceals has been the novel's central gesture all along. Wright did not plant this image deliberately. She planted it, which is better. It grew on its own.

The grandmother section, which occupies the novel's emotional center between the horrors of childhood and the horrors of adulthood, is the most underestimated writing in the book and deserves to be named directly. Alma Zanetti, with her purple velvet flats and amethyst earrings, represents the only moment in the novel when the twins' trajectory might have been interrupted, and Wright handles her with real tenderness and real craft. The old woman's dementia, her confusion of Ben for Corinthia, her observation that they look so much alike it is like seeing double, is delivered as the natural fumbling of a failing mind. It is also, for the reader who understands where the novel is heading, the entire psychological architecture of the book compressed into one confused old woman's sentence. Wright does not wink at us. She trusts the detail to find its meaning in retrospect, and it does, with full force, the moment Ben smiles in an arrest photograph and says, "That's Corinthia." The grandmother chapters are where the novel breathes, and what makes them devastating is precisely that breathing: we are briefly allowed to love these two children before remembering what they are going to become.

Part Two introduces Amanda, and her arrival is the book's most important structural decision. Wright has spent five chapters building a closed world, a system of damage with its own terrible logic, and then she opens a door and a twenty-year-old woman in combat boots and a jeweled cross walks in trailing the specific textures of an ordinary, fully inhabited life. The contrast is strategic. Amanda's relationship with her roommate Fiona, rendered through borrowed shirts, overheard phone calls, and the comfortable shorthand of a close friendship, is Wright's argument that something other than damage is possible, and that argument matters because it makes the threat to Fiona morally urgent rather than merely dramatic. When Fiona disappears and Amanda refuses every institutional instruction to go home and wait, she is not being reckless. She is being constitutionally incapable of abandoning the evidence that another life is possible. She told us who she was in the puppy story. She is keeping the promise.

Wright's Amanda is the most vivid character she has written and one of the more compelling figures in recent American thriller fiction, because she is defined by who she is before the danger finds her rather than by the danger itself. Her Blackness is not incidental to the story but the specific ground on which the story stands. Wright does not flinch from the double danger Amanda navigates, threatened simultaneously by what is inside the guesthouse and by how she might be perceived outside it, a hooded Black woman peering through the window of an expensive house in a white neighborhood at night. That detail does not slow the scene. It deepens it. It insists that the America this novel is set in is not a neutral backdrop but part of the violence under examination.

Where the novel struggles, and it does struggle in places that matter, is in a craft habit that runs across all three of its parts: a tendency to soften or over-explain at the very moments when silence and restraint would hit hardest. This pattern appears first in Chapter Three, after Corinthia kills Jane, the neighbor girl whose death marks her first murder. Wright layers so many stacked gestures of grief and remorse, arriving so rapidly after the violence, that the scene risks converting what should be a revelation of character into a portrait of a remorseful child who made a terrible mistake. The remorse is not false. But its accumulation closes down the moral space before the reader has had time to inhabit it. Corinthia's capacity for both violence and grief is the most psychologically rich thing about her, and scenes that pile grief on top of violence flatten that complexity rather than honoring it.

The same habit recurs in Chapter Twenty, where extended physical detail during Amanda's assault risks repositioning her, even briefly, as an object of violence rather than the subject of her own story. And it surfaces at the prose level too, in moments where Wright reaches for a familiar phrase when the material demands something more precise. A heart that "tangos against" a chest, a character who erupts into laughter twice in quick succession, the winking aside "and not just blood, either" after a moment that should land in cold silence: these are places where the writing drifts toward the comfortable. They are noticeable precisely because the writing around them is so often sharp and alive. When Wright is at her best, horror inhabits beauty so completely the two become indistinguishable. The passages that undercut that achievement feel like drafting artifacts that survived into print, and a tighter editorial pass would have caught them.

The trial section, which occupies the final third, is the book's most structurally ambitious and most unevenly executed movement. The courtroom architecture is smart. The waiter who cannot settle on a pronoun while testifying about Corinthia, "He, um, I mean she... she, I mean him," embeds the trial's central legal and philosophical question inside a piece of ordinary human fumbling more eloquent than any legal brief. The forensic psychiatrist's cross-examination, building through a staircase of one-word answers toward her admission that, technically, Corinthia committed these murders, is properly tense courtroom drama. And Fiona's two minutes on the stand, walking in composed, finding Ben's eyes, dissolving into the single syllable "Dad?", is the emotionally truest passage in these chapters, the most honest accounting of what survival actually costs.

What the trial sections do not fully deliver is Ben's interior experience of what is being argued about him. A man sits in a courtroom while strangers describe, diagnose, and dissect the sister he has carried in a duffel bag for twenty years, whose voice he has been hearing in his head for longer than that, whose death, caused by his own hand on a tree branch in 1998, has organized every choice he has made since. What does it feel like to hear that? Wright gives us Ben observing the prosecutor's shoes, Ben gripping his attorney's arm at a photograph of Corinthia, Ben shouting once and being restrained. These are islands of interiority in a sea of legal exposition. Between them Ben is largely absent from his own trial, and his absence costs the courtroom chapters the psychological density that distinguished the earlier sections. The legal argument about Ben's interior life is most compelling when counterpointed against the experience of that interior life in real time. That counterpoint is intermittent when it should be sustained.

This is the trial's central missed opportunity, and it matters because the section is otherwise so well constructed. The over-explanation problem that dogs the earlier chapters manifests here in reverse: rather than explaining too much emotionally, the trial chapters explain too much legally and too little humanly, and the imbalance produces the same effect, a flattening of the moral complexity that the novel has worked hard to build. Wright knows how to write Ben's interiority. The chapters before the trial prove it at every turn. The courtroom needed more of that knowledge applied inside its walls.
The Corinthia eruption in Chapter Twenty-Six recovers much of this lost ground. When Ben's personality shifts mid-testimony into the falsetto fury of his alter ego, complaining about haircuts and manicures while confessing to murder, the scene achieves what the earlier trial chapters reach for without quite grasping: comedy and horror occupying the same moment, neither canceling the other. "I'll schedule an appointment for your feelings!" may be the most perfectly calibrated line in the book, funny and devastating in the same breath, two seven-year-olds arguing in open court, the law's entire apparatus of dignity helpless against damage that predates it by decades. The judge's gavel over their bickering is a sharper image of institutional limitation than anything in the preceding testimony.

The epilogue places Amanda alive but captive in a remote cabin controlled by Luke Zanetti, Ben's younger brother, and sets up a sequel while attempting to close this volume's emotional arc. The final image earns its place: Amanda with cornrows she braided herself, a rusty fork hidden under the couch, already planning, chuckling to herself in a locked room. Her last line, "I won't. But you might," is the right ending, confident and outward-directed, refusing to surrender the last word. What slightly undermines the epilogue is the weight of new exposition it must carry. Luke's backstory, the hidden family fortune, the photographs of Amanda's parents as leverage, the mechanics of sequel setup, all of it competing with the emotional closure the chapter needs to deliver.

The craft habit identified in the early chapters reappears in the final pages, explanation crowding out implication at the one moment in the novel when implication should have everything to itself. That a first novelist closes her book with the same instinct she opened it fighting against is not a verdict on her talent. It is the record of a writer in the middle of learning something, learning it visibly and in public, which is the only honest way it can be done.

And that instinct, when Wright follows it rather than overriding it, is exceptional. In a literary landscape where the psychological thriller has become increasingly formulaic, Now You Owe Me is doing something harder: asking the reader to hold real moral ambiguity about people they have watched commit terrible acts, to understand the architecture of how damage transmits across generations without letting that understanding function as an excuse, and to believe simultaneously in the reality of evil and the survival of ordinary human courage against it. The dedication, "For women who die at the hands of men," establishes from the first page that this is not a novel interested in glamorizing what it depicts. It is a novel interested in reckoning with it honestly, and the reckoning, for all the places it stumbles, is honest.

Amanda Taylor, battered and one-eyed in a locked cabin with a plan already forming, is the proof of that honesty. Against everything the Zanetti world built across three decades, she chuckles. Against the inheritance of violence, Wright places the inheritance of love, imperfect, insufficient, and entirely necessary. That is not a comforting ending. It is a true one, and in fiction, truth is harder to achieve than comfort.

Aliah Wright is a writer with real gifts and a moral vision that distinguishes her from the crowded field she is entering. Now You Owe Me is forceful, urgent, and alive in the ways that matter most: it has something serious to say, it has characters worth following into the dark, and it has, at its center, an image of a young woman choosing courage not because she is fearless but because someone she loves needs her to be. That image will stay with you. In a first novel, it is everything.

Now You Owe Me (Red Hen Press, 2024) is a Foreword INDIES finalist for Book of the Year. Readers drawn here by comparisons to Gillian Flynn or Tana French will find those connections apt, but the more precise company is early Thomas Harris: a writer whose obsession with the psychology of violence is always, beneath the surface, an obsession with what we owe each other, and what happens across a lifetime when that debt goes unpaid.

[Julie]

DNF. This is a psychological thriller. Corinthia and Ben are twins who had a horrific childhood. I do like psychological thrillers usually. This was just too disturbing for my taste.

[Carson Schulte · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book was simply odd….. grotesque and odd.. the pacing was weird, i had no buy-in to the characters, also the expert witness mixed up cognitive distortion with cognitive dissonance and psychopathy with psychosis, can not stand behind so many choices made in this book… strange stuff

[Shan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Red Hen for gifting me this book in exchange for an honest review.
Full disclosure, I almost stopped reading this after the first few chapters. There should really be trigger warnings clearly stated at the beginning. I am really NOT an advocate for trigger warnings but this one definitely needed it. Animal cruelty is one thing I have the hardest time stomaching. This book had A TON. Yuck!
Once I got past the icky beginning, the pace was good and I was pleasantly surprised with how much I loved the constant twists. For a debut, it was decent but could use some rewriting with the clunky dialog at certain points.
I would be hesitant to recommend this book unless you are a diehard gore fan... I usually can read ANYTHING but this was too much for me.

[Shay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t usually read things so disturbing. My mysteries usually include a sprinkle of murder, homicides that fade to black. So every few pages it took a lot of convincing myself to continue, but continue I did, until the very end.

My initial thoughts are: What the hell did I just read? I was so overwhelmingly uncomfortable reading this whole book, and yet, I couldn’t stop reading. The writing was so good. The story came with so many twists and turns I didn’t see coming, and it left me wanting more. Hats off, I can’t say I’ll go seeking more of these stories out but it did not leave me disappointed.

[Justinstaysreading · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ugh this book gives me chills and an uncomfortable crawling feeling all through my skin. The entire premise felt so disgustingly disturbing. This took me a few days to finish despite the length.

[Meghanhope · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up because it did keep me captivated and I flew through this read! At first I didnt know if I should read on because it was rather graphic and it had an inappropriate feel. Dont worry it doesn't get graphic in that way. But the story telling and the trial scenes had me fixated. The author did the research. With that said, my only complaint was the ending, it was rather abrupt and very lackluster. I was left wanting so much more! But great concept overall, and well written.

Thank you NetGallery for the opportunity to read this copy.

[R J Mckay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book from Goodreads in exchange for a review.

Ben and his twin sister Corinthia never had in easy childhood, but it really turned tragic when the witnessed their father kill someone. That event went on to color the rest of their lives. Ben channeled his life toward abducting women, and Corinthia had to clean up his messes, usually by killing the victims. But one day they abducted the wrong girl. And then things started to go horribly wrong for them.

This pulse pounding story will have you turning back pages to see what you missed. It’s engrossing. It’s compelling. It’s just a little bit scary. It’s ‘oh my gosh’ riveting.

[Habiba Khalid · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a nyc read. i read it in 3 sittings while i was skipping pages of 1st half of the book. i really like the 2nd half and the 3rd part. i like the cross examination and the courtroom drama. overall, it was a good read. What i don't like is the last few pages of the book for me that were unnecessary details and changed the mod of the book.

[Monique Rosenbaum · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last 100 pages of the book was the best. I figured out a little before what was going on and found that it made the story better once you got it. Could do without a couple things the author liked to throw in now and again so I took a star off for that. It is very violent and descriptive so sensitive readers might want to skip this serial killer themed book.

[Krista Beckwith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was hooked immediately from the beginning of this book. Those twins, Ben and Corinthia are diabolical! But I don’t think I’ve ever shouted at a character as much as I shouted at Amanda!! Like girl 🙄😒 That court scene was well laid out. I felt as if I was there inside the courtroom. The only reason I knocked a star off was bc I’m confused on what Amanda’s plans are.

[Tisa Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

When the twins were little, they went through some crazy stuff. As time passed, their family's drama just kept getting wilder. It's like this intense game of cat and mouse that totally kept me hooked. I couldn't believe how wild the whole thing was!

[TheLisaD · Rating 5 out of 5]

A complete mind boggling story about twins who are also murders that grew up in a very rough upbringing which could have lead to them being who they are. As I read it I felt like I totally knew what to expect and then the twist hit and I was completely shocked. Not only did the twist get me but it doesn’t stop there.

[Jennifer Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Darkly Compelling with a Sharp Edge |

Now You Owe Me by Aliah Write is one wild ride. This debut novel plunges headfirst into a dark, gritty world of secrets, debts, and complicated relationships. If you like your thrillers with a side of twisted morality, this one's for you.

The writing is sharp, the tension is real, and the characters? Let's just say they have more layers than an onion at a French bistro.

Every turn of the page left me wondering who was playing who-and whether anyone would walk away unscathed. Spoiler: most don't.

That said, Trigger Warnings: Prepare for some graphic violence, heavy psychological manipulation, and moments that might make you pause mid-page and stare into the distance. There's some seriously dark material here, including abuse, toxic dynamics, and more than a little blood. If you're squeamish, maybe keep the lights on.

Overall, this is a gripping debut that will leave you questioning whether anyone really wins when the stakes are this high. Just don't expect to come out of it with your faith in humanity fully intact! 🔪🖤

[Ultimate World · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Review: Now You Owe Me by Aliah Wright

Aliah Wright delivers a chilling and unrelenting psychological thriller with Now You Owe Me. The story dives deep into the twisted minds of Ben and Corinthia, twins bound by a shared trauma and a dark, murderous pact. From the first page, Wright masterfully sets a tense and haunting atmosphere, drawing readers into the sinister world of two siblings who have spent years preying on unsuspecting victims.

The narrative's sharp focus on the twins’ inner turmoil and fractured moral compass is both disturbing and captivating. Ben and Corinthia's childhood trauma, witnessing a murder at just seven years old, becomes the catalyst for their descent into depravity. However, their plans take a dramatic turn when they abduct the wrong woman, unleashing a gripping sequence of events that keeps readers guessing until the final twist.

Wright’s writing is crisp and visceral, with vivid descriptions that evoke a sense of dread. The characters are complex, particularly the twins, whose guilt and humanity struggle to surface beneath their dark deeds. The pacing is relentless, with each chapter peeling back layers of suspense, making it nearly impossible to put the book down.

Now You Owe Me is not for the faint of heart, but for fans of dark thrillers and psychological depth, it’s a must-read. Aliah Wright has crafted a story that lingers in the mind long after the final page, a haunting exploration of trauma, guilt, and the terrifying consequences of making the wrong choice.

[Amy V · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written thriller with enough twists to keep me entertained!

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book so fast, it was hard to put down!! Just when you thought you'd figured out what was going on, there was another twist! I really wish that the story had continued on further! Maybe there will be a 2nd!

[Mariah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had so many twists and turns and I didn’t want to put it down. The descriptions can be graphic, so take that into account. But the only thing this book was lacking for me is that I didn’t want it to end. Can’t wait until Aliah Wright writes more books!

[Bessie Bynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed this thriller!! It had me sitting on the edge, I couldn’t stop wandering what was happening next. The twins became my family.

[Marsha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. Twins Corinthia and Ben embrace the dark side. The story mainly takes place in rural Pennsylvania near a University. This book has twists and turns that I never saw coming! This is a compelling debut novel and I look forward to reading more from Aliah Wright.

[Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this book was such a ride! Check the trigger warnings below as it was pretty graphic at times. Benji and Corinthia are twins that live in a rural area of Pennsylvania. Their parents are abusive, neglectful, and unsavory types. At only 7 years old, the twins witness a murder. This triggers something in them, and they eventually become violent. The story follows their childhood and early adulthood. They are responsible for the kidnapping and murdering of several college coeds.

I liked how the story gets into the why of their behavior. How patterns are set in childhood that they don't feel like they can escape. The story is heartbreaking, upsetting, and shocking. I was immediately engrossed in their story and very surprised by the twists it took. The story changes focus as we meet a new character and learn how she fits into the plot. The book is pretty fast-paced and gripping, so readers will want to know what's going to happen next. I do wish it went on a little longer as there as some loose ends that aren't quite resolved. Highly recommend for those who enjoy thrillers and aren't squeamish!

Trigger warnings: child abuse and neglect, sexual assault, graphic violence, manipulation, etc.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.