The Girl in the Cellar: A BRAND-NEW absolutely unputdownable psychological thriller packed with jaw-dropping twists, perfect for Halloween 2026!

by Maryann Webb, Greg Stylianou-Burns (Narrator), Ina Marie Smith (Narrator)

🎧Run Time = 9 hours & 48 minutes

A new release performed by a full cast: Izzy Blake has been locked in a cellar for months, visited only by a terrifying man who wants full control over her — until the day his wife wanders downstairs… A BRAND-NEW utterly addictive psychological thriller packed with stunning twists, perfect for 2025!

Not all cages have keys . . .

Izzy Blake hasn't seen sunlight in almost a year. Or at least that's how long she thinks she's been down here.

She only eats when she's been good. She only gets to wash when he says so.

Every day is the same. The darkness. The waiting. The fear when she hears the key turn in the lock and she knows he's back.

Until . . .

One day the door opens and there's a woman coming down the steps. I'm finally free.

But then Izzy sees the fear in this woman's eyes - and the bruises on her arm - and she instantly realises two two things:

Number one: If this is his wife, she knows exactly what he’s capable of.
Number two: If he catches her down here, we’re both dead.

But that's when they hear the noise from upstairs. He's home.

You don't have to be chained up to be trapped - being the girl in the cellar is bad, but it's not easy being the girl upstairs . . .

An absolutely unmissable psychological thriller perfect for fans of Freida McFadden, Steena Holmes, John Marrs, and Becca Day.

Genres: Audiobook, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Mystery, Fiction, Suspense

Audible Audio

Published October 14, 2025

About the author

Maryann Webb writes psychological thrillers and suspense novels, including the Oscar de la Nuit series. Her books have hit the Amazon best seller chart in the US. She studied psychology but prefers the fictional kind.

Not all secrets stay behind closed doors . . . The Girl in the Cellar is her latest psychological thriller.

Also writes under M.Q. Webb

Reviews

[Sheila]

I received a free copy of, The Girl in the Cellar, by Maryann Webb, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Izzy Blake is missing and kept in a cellar, will she ever get freedom? This book was way to dark and disturbing for me.

[౨ৎ emily ౨ৎ]

3.75-4 (undecided) -- Solid audiobook. I listened to this audiobook with a quickness as soon as my Spotify hours renewed.

This is dark, twisty and so fast paced.
The podcast portion was so so good, and my fav part of this book.

Izzy was kidnapped, she's been down in the cellar for a year. She went through extreme torture, was malnourished and hasnt seen a speck of sunshine the entire time she's been down there. She's so strong and capable. Honestly if I was her, I'm not sure I would have survived.

Lucas was a deranged psychopath that got off on torture and different ways to make Izzy suffer. He was manipulative, sometimes had ME even questioning things. I hated that man something fierce.

Kady was a somewhat unreliable narrator in her POVS, and had me so mad sometimes, and honestly really well done. She had me crashing out at work, saying WTF the entire last half of th book.

Ending was slightly predictable, I had one ending that would have blown this out of the park but sadly I was wrong.

If you want something you can't put down read this!!

edit: OMG I FORGOT ABOUT THE PODCAST PORTION. no it really made this audiobook come alive, it had background effects, suspense noises, the narrator for it was kinda cheesy and made me laugh. it felt real, and just itched a spot in my brain!!

[Annie Strong]

What a load of shite. Honestly had potential but it’s just absolute bullshit. Went on far too long. Honestly can’t believe how much of my life I wasted.

[Cassie]

Could’ve been good but the twist was too predictable and the main character was ridiculous.

[Shannon]

The plot and character development just weren’t there for me. The book just wouldn’t end, how can there be so many “twists” and nothing ever really happens?

[E S]

When you start off hard and fast into the drama and thrill, there’s nowhere to go but down.
Izzy Blake is kidnapped and kept in a cellar by someone who “has too normal of a name to be kidnapping girls” according to her. The repetition of “should we call the police” and “who do I believe” is tiresome.
Not to mention the amount of errors in the ebook.
The podcast scenarios were strange and out of place. They had nothing to further or benefit the story line. It was just a reminder and repetition of story lines already discussed through Izzy’s POV.
All in all a bit of communication between Kady and Izzy would have gone a long way.

[Kiana Cabral]

This book had me hooked from the first page. Izzy Blake was kidnapped and held captive by a faceless, nameless man. Until her kidnapper’s wife, Kady finds Izzy chained in their wine cellar. The story does not stop there. The twists and suspense keeps going until the very end.

I enjoyed the multiple POV and the podcast element. This book is dark, twisty, and hard to out down.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc read in exchange for my honest review.

[Jennifer Woods]

Characters made dumb decisions. They are very one dimensional and don't feel like real people. The villain is ridiculous. There's not enough background or character building. It feels like this was written in the hopes of it being turned into a subpar movie.

[Kat (Katlovesbooks) Dietrich]

The Girl In the Cellar by Maryann Webb  is a psychological thriller about a woman who is kidnapped and tortured, before the man's wife finds her locked in the cellar. 


Let me thank NetGalley, the publisher Embla Books, and the author, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.


First, I am going to watch for more by this author! 

The book is about kidnapping, and torture, and a lot of manipulation.  It was a dark tale of lies, deceit and coercion.   A man who is so sure of himself and his ability to sway others to his way of thinking.

OMG, this was good.  It was also somewhat horrific.  Sometimes the author just let the reader's mind imagine what had gone on in that cellar....and apparently I have a vivid imagination.  Often the author wrote about the wound that had been inflicted, but not as it was happening, thereby "just" letting the reader know why Izzy had such problems running.  I'm not saying that there weren't some vivid descriptions, because there were, but there were also those little nuances.   It was very well written.

There were a lot of twists in this book.  The author had us wondering where the minds of both Kady and Izzy were headed.  I loved both characters.  I also loved Theo.  Lucas was just ....

Overall, this was a rather horrific tale.  Very dark and very suspenseful.  An edge-of-your-seat thriller from start to finish.

Anyway, until next time.... 



For a more thorough review of this book and others (including the reason I chose to read/review this book, my own synopsis of the book, and its author information), please visit my blog: http://katlovesbooksblog.wordpress.com/

 

[Kelly]

My knowledge of the legal system and basic psychology had me feeling like the whole 2nd half main plot was way too far-fetched.
I listened to it on Spotify in 2 big chunks and the audiobook delivery was solid but if I had been reading, I would have skipped through all the “should we call the police” and the navel gazing about trust. One convo about it was enough.

[Mellisa]

It was good. Kind of lost interest the last 20%....have a feeling I missed something big at the end🤣 Some books keep my attention and some I just force myself to finish. This was a forced finish.

[Alison Bruce]

I filed it under ‘don’t bother’ and am lamenting the wasted hours.

[Maddie Fish]

So boring, same stuff repeated over and over again

[Nichole]

Predictable and the end drew on way too long

[Pearline]

Sloppy review for myself: lucas took too long to die. The 2 FMCs were ridiculous. Neither psychological nor thriller. Thankfully the chapters were short and i had nothing better to do while waiting for my food.

[Bre Hoover]

what a ridiculously long and pointless book. I almost DNF'd it, but I'm behind on my reading goal so I stuck it out.

Really stupid main characters.. plot that went literally no where.. all just repetition.

[Kristin]

This unfortunately feels like wasted time having read this. Writing wasn’t great, twist didn’t twist … very dissapointed.

[Teresa Martin]

Such a great audio book.

[Laura C]

I didn’t know who was telling the truth and I kept changing my mind throughout.

[✼ Hollie ✼]

This would’ve made a decent short story, but it dragged as a novel, and the resolution wasn’t worth it.

[Sheri]

The title of this book tells you something bad is happening. Who is the girl in the cellar and why is she there? I can’t say much without giving away the plot but the story took me by surprise. I loved the multi media approach as between chapters there was a podcast dedicated to finding the missing girl, Izzy.

The writing had me in the cellar with Izzy. I can still picture the cellar and the house in my head. If you are looking for a thrilling read that will have you questioning what you would do to stay alive, this is a book to add to your TBR!

[Lauren P]

2.5 rounded up to 3. This book had so much potential but was about 100 pages too long. There was a huge amount of repetition, however, I was so intrigued about how it ended that I forced myself to finish…and I was a bit disappointed. I can’t get on board with how much Kady flip flopped and changed her mind, especially considering how much she knew about what Lucas had done before. I feel like there was an awful lot put into the book as filler and not nearly enough character development beyond surface level details, I like to know the characters a lot more in order to understand the decisions they make, not just “he had a hard childhood” - Izzy rightly said herself in the book that a difficult childhood does not equal a torturing serial killer. I feel that Lucas needed a much more complex back story. I appreciate Kady thought she had contributed to a murder but I just do not understand why she unlocked Lucas and let him run free. I also felt the podcast sections were a little all over the place - a great idea overall but poorly executed in my opinion. I may give this author another chance at some point as the idea and story were there, they just didn’t quite hit the mark for me, unfortunately!

[Jacob Heartstone]

DNF at 40%.

This was so, so bad on so many levels! The writing was bad, overexplanatory, repetitive and dull as all hells. The characters were bad, super inconsistent and just plain stupid, and the plot was badly structured and executed even worse. The whole story, the way it was structured and the way events unfolded didn't make much sense, the characters acted so stupidly I almost wanna say they deserved everything that happened to them, and everything about this was so illogically described I wanted to throw the book out the window repeatedly.

This is not a good one.

[Jenn]

The Girl in the Cellar was a quick, gripping read that pulled me in right from the start. The alternating POVs added depth and variety to the story, and I especially enjoyed the podcast element-it kept the pacing fresh and engaging.

This is one of those thrillers that’s hard to put down; I stayed invested from beginning to end. Fans of fast-paced psychological thrillers with multiple perspectives will definitely want to pick this one up.

[Jenny]

I did really enjoy this book but I will say there was almost too much information - way too much going into detail - this book could have been about 10 chapters shorter because of how much detail there was. It was a good read though and the twist at the end was good although not shocking

[Grace Siri]

This had the potential and had really good twists. However, the use of "what they said next shocked me" over and over reduced the shock factor.

[Ellen (the_plentiful_library)]

This book was WILD! I’ve got serious whiplash from all the back and forth in this book.

I got about half way through the story and it felt like it was coming to its natural end, then I checked my phone and saw there was still 4 hours left in the book. I thought the story felt done and wondered where is it going to go from there?
The manipulation and unpredictability of the characters kept the story spiralling on with twists right up until the very end.

I did spend the entire story thinking I would have made the exact opposite choices to the characters but that’s why we love fiction 😅
5 stars for this bold story!

[momaddictedtobooks]

4.5⭐️

Pretty good! Had me on the edge of my seat. I was hooked from the beginning.

[Joy_Ly]

Alright. *cracks knuckles* Let's get into it.

This was a dumb book.

I picked up this book because I was intrigued by the premise. A girl locked in a cellar, an abused wife discovering her, the two of them having to survive together. That would have been an interesting story, unfortunately the author had to throw in illogical twists that made this book a frustration to read.

But let's start with some basics. I knew I was in trouble an hour in when out of nowhere Izzy uses the word 'unalivings'. I almost DNF right there. Thankfully no other censoring language was used, but it raised my red flags high. If you can't used the words that are happening, don't write a psychological thriller about a woman being kidnapped, raped and tortured. Simple as that.

Other indications of basic bad writing cropped up through out the book. Namely, the continuity errors. The author couldn't seem to remember from one chapter to to the next what Lucas had done to Izzy.

He arrives and plays nice for a night, giving her food, a full water bottle, and emptying her toilet bucket without complaint. He even lets her sponge bath with warm, coconut scented water.
Then he comes back the next night and we KNOW it was the next night because Izzy is surprised. He never comes back so many days in a row. This night he's meaner and the inconsistencies start.

Izzy is desperately thirsty again because "He made me drink so much of the last bottle and spill some of it" so she's out of water already. When in fact, this did not happen. He did push Izzy to drink the water, but we were not told she drank all of it. As far as we knew she still had some stashed.

Then more inconsistencies. Lucas comes down twice that second night. The first time, Izzy wishes he would empty her toilet bucket (like he did the first night) but he doesn't. The second time she laments that she would dump her bucket over his head if he hadn't already emptied it. EVEN THOUGH we JUST established that he didn't do that. This is ALL in the same night. If the author cannot keep track on whether the bucket has waste in it or not, I am not surprised at all with the rest of the illogical plot.

Let's get into that.

The biggest illogical part of the plot is that when Kady, the wife, finds Izzy in the cellar, Izzy asks Kady not to call the police. Author tries to convince us that Izzy thinks the police won't help enough, that Lucas won't be locked away for long enough, that he will get out and hunt her again. Part of her reasoning is that Lucas hasn't killed her, so that's less of a crime than kidnapping, torture and rape. Izzy also does not want to have to tell her story to a jury.

This is incredibly twisted logic. Maybe author was banking on us buying that Izzy has had her mind manipulated after a year in the cellar, but we never see or are told about Lucas telling her that the police will not be enough to stop him.

Regardless, Izzy is convinced that calling the police is a bad option. While she is STILL kidnapped and locked in the cellar, she tries to convince the wife that they need to kill Lucas. Izzy has been telling the reader how much she yearns for freedom and would do anything for it, but when it's offered, she does not jump for the chance. Instead she risks staying locked in the cellar to try to form a murder plot with the abused wife of her kidnapper.

If the author wanted to go this route, she could have just had Kady have no access to a phone. We know her husband is abusive and controlling, it would not be a stretch she wouldn't have a phone, and couldn't call the police.

Alternatively, if the author was determined to have Izzy not want the police called (so she could also have Kady not want to call the police, Suspiciously), she could have given us a real reason Izzy doesn't trust the police. Make her a minority, or a previous addict, or a sex worker. Some reason she thinks the police will ignore the YEAR of torture, rape and kidnapping.

Anyway, Kady has to leave the cellar before they can really make a plan, and Kady's pov tells us that 1)Lucas has done this before 2)Kady knew about it and 3)She isn't sure if she is prepared to help Izzy.

Izzy does not know any of this but after a few hours alone in the cellar, she for some reason becomes convinced that Kady has abandoned her anyway. (If author wanted to portray Izzy's thoughts as manipulated and illogical, she did not do a good job). Izzy decides that she's on her own.

The next time Lucas comes to the cellar, he sees her infected wrist and decides to take the cuff off to change it. At this point, Izzy decides she will attack him and try to run.

This is directly opposite to the last time she was offered a chance at freedom a few hours ago. She does not have a plan to kill Lucas, she does not have a guaranteed escape, yet she still tries to flee him in the dark cellar. If she stuck with her motivations of wanting to put a permanent end to Lucas before she gets out, she should have waiting longer for Kady, or had a real plan for escape and murder when Lucas took off her cuff (she had time for this, Lucas took off her cuff when he came back the second time that night, after telling her he would do it in his first visit.)

Anyway, after somehow evading Lucas in a dark cellar—one realises the author has not described the cellar well enough to understand how big it is, or how Izzy could possibly find a hiding place in there that Lucas can't find her in. Lucas chases her around in the dark with only his flashlight and almost loses her, despite the fact that he could, I don't know, JUST TURN ON THE LIGHT and find her.

At the last second, Izzy trips and Lucas manages to grab her before she can grab a wine bottle to hit him with. Then the light turns on and reveals Kady at the top of the stairs. (Even though we learned previously that the only light switch is at the bottom of the stairs).

Kady helps Izzy cuff Lucas and now they have him locked in the cellar. They stand around for a while, as Lucas tries to manipulate them to let him go. The cuff keys are vaguely on the ground, unclear who's reach they are in, until Kady grabs them.

They finally leave and still do not call the police. Izzy once again tries to convince Kady they need to kill Lucas. Kady is not willing to do that, so now they just have a guy locked in their cellar.

Through some convoluted plot lines, the author makes Kady seem shady and you wonder if she is also a psychopath. This happens multiple times, with the author trying to confuse the reader and make us not know who to trust. This gets repetitive and convoluted, and leaves Kady's actions profoundly illogical once we finally know the truth.

Kady is not an accomplice, she is not another kidnapped victim. She is a regular woman who married Lucas and found out previously that he had kidnapped girls. He locks her up to and tells her she must kill his victim Katherine to get free. She refuses but Katherine tries to kill herself in a way that will make Lucas believe Kady killed her. Katherine fails to kill herself and Kady ultimately does a mercy kill and lives with that guilt.

Kady's motivation throughout the book is to be a perfect, supportive wife of Lucas so he wouldn't feel the impulse to kidnap other girls ever again (okay, whatever). She is horrified to learn that hasn't worked and wrestles with the belief that maybe he can change and THIS time he will stop. I know the author was trying to portray an abused, manipulated woman, but she did not succeed in convincing me that Kady is really so twisted up by Lucas' manipulation she truly somehow thought after finding Izzy that he wouldn't do it again.

Kady's twisted perceptions lead her to let Lucas go. But then, a few minutes later, she sees pictures Izzy found of Lucas' previous victims, and seeing so many of them seems to finally convince her how dangerous he is and that they need to run.

They flee through the vast property and Lucas catches up. They spend some more time standing around while Lucas tries to manipulate them against each other. Finally, Kady hits him in the head with a stick and in the scuffle gets stabbed.

Now we learn Kady's motivation of staying with Lucas after finding out about Katherine was to keep him from killing other girls. "He would have to go through her" as she says.
So WHY did she let Lucas go? Your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway, Izzy hits him with a rock to save Kady, then freaks out because the two women have become convinced that he has another victim somewhere, and if he dies, that victim dies with him. (Why don't they call the police the second they think this and no longer want to risk killing him? Unclear).

Izzy finally calls the police for Kady's sake, and tries to get Lucas to tell her the location of the other girl. In another scuffle he manages to escape.

Then the final hour of the book blessedly arrives. Kady and Izzy meet up at the hospital and discuss how Lucas got away and they aren't safe. Izzy finds a bottle of wine outside her motel and knows Lucas left it there. He put an address and date and time for her to meet him. She goes, with a gun she got from Somewhere to go kill him.

She finds him at the beach, he tries to manipulate her again, she tries to shoot, misses and he tackles her. Then Kady shows up, with her own gun (or the one Izzy dropped, very unclear), and the author tries one last time to make us wonder if Kady will side with Lucas.

She doesn't, shooting him dead, and it's all finally over.

At the very end we find out the girl they were worried about also being kidnapped is fine and has been in hidding. Now she's free. Yay for her I guess.

The whole plot is unnecessarily convoluted and tries to be too clever for its own good. There are so many holes in the logic and not enough done to convince the reader of the characters motivations to make their decisions make sense.

There's so many other random dumb things. Like the fact that Izzy mentions multiple times that when she woke up after being kidnapped, Lucas tricked her into thinking he was a doctor, and she only realised what was happening when he put a cuff on her wrist and not a blood pressure cuff.
We know she woke up in the cellar, and Lucas never turned on the light for her to see his face.
So... are we supposed to believe she woke up in the dark, on a cement floor, and believed for one second she was in a hospital???

There's also a whole plotline about a podcaster who is related to a previous kidnapping victim, Katherine, and who is trying to find Izzy. Almost everything he speculates on for the first couple of his chapters is demonstrably false from the pov chapters we get from Izzy and Kady.

His chapters are completely pointless. We barely even learn more about Izzy's life, or the events happening outside of the cellar. The catharsis of the podcaster finding out what happened to his sister falls completely flat because we spend half the book thinking Katherine is alive as Kady, only to find out she is actually dead anyway.

I listened to the audiobook, and the only thing I enjoyed was that the podcast chapters were a full production, with music and sound effects. Otherwise, the narrators spoke weirdly, not putting the proper emphasis or inflection on words or sentences. It made it less clear to me for the first hour or so whether the writing of the book was mid, or the narration. Turns out it was both.

I ended up listening to the book at 2x speed by the end. I NEVER speed up books, but after 3 or 4 hours of this book I could not spend a full 10 hours of my life listening to this ridiculous plot and mediocre attempts at psychological twists.

[Courtney]

Invigorating. Compelling. I had to know EVERYTHING.