PLEASE ENJOY YOUR STAY, ghastly truths emerge about a family tragedy

PLEASE ENJOY YOUR STAY
TARA GOEDJEN
Atria/Emily Bestler Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, treorder now for delivery on 13 October 2026

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: After a true crime podcast reopens her cousin’s murder case, a woman must confront her past at a glamorous European castle-turned-hotel where she follows a trail of toxic family secrets and deadly lies.

When they were teenagers, Mia’s beloved cousin was murdered during their stay at an infamous castle in the Austrian Alps. As the only witness, Mia’s testimony put the killer behind bars, but it tore her life apart: the media accused her aunt, a controversial true crime author, of being involved. Now, a decade later, the murderer is appealing his conviction, and a popular true crime podcast starts covering the case, determined to exonerate him, and resurfacing lies about Mia’s family in the process.

Desperate to protect her aunt—and what she knows to be the truth—Mia returns to Austria. The castle is being revamped as a luxury hotel, and Mia gets a job as a nanny for the new owner, hiding in plain sight as she investigates, needing to set the story straight once and for all. But after someone mysteriously disappears on the property and sinister new evidence emerges regarding her cousin’s death, she realizes she might have accused the wrong man...and put her own life in danger.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: It disconcerts me when I read a debut novel this expertly crafted. I expect untacked hems, unblocked waists and armholes, some lumpy seams...none of that here. Comes the dawn...she's been busy the past ten years tending the story vines in the YA vineyard.

So why move to the adult side? I thought maybe some smexy content...not by my adult lights, but maybe for teens it would be? Nope, this isn't a bonkbuster. It's maybe a little deeper on the fragility of Mia's confidence in herself and in her judgment and memory than is good for YA stories, but that's a problem I have with YA stories aimed at girls a lot of the time. The gothic elements...crazy mother, brooding heroes with dark secrets who tell lies for genuinely good reasons, eville greedy men who want the heroine to fail...aren't too disturbing for any goth teen I've ever met.

Well, here we are. This solidly crafted mystery is a pleasure to read, the setting is so well evoked I put on my cardigan against the chills, as Mia's memories of the deeply traumatizing murder she witnessed are attacked and undermined I was frothingly furious with the liars abusing her for their own gain.

There's that half-star gone. In a truly effective gothic novel I expect to feel doubt about the heroine's perceptions. I expect I'll have to wonder id the lies aren't more evenly distributed. Never, not once, did I think so much as "...matbe she misremembered...?" Mia was victimized, and I truly got angry about it.

Author Tara doesn't deliver by-the-numbers gothic storytelling. She keeps the story moving, bending around some pretty sharp corners. Never once did she cheat on the ghostly horror front, by which I mean it was all revealed as regular ol' skulduggery seen from a particular, carefully engineered angle.

What provided the horror for this out-of-step old man was the true-crime podcasting angle, the way the search for Truth is weaponized and twisted and manipulated. Humans scare me far far more than "ghosts" or the "paranormal" ever could. Humans harm and kill each other for fun and profit...and that horrifies me more than spooky set-dressing ever could.

Uneasy reading for spooky season your jam? This story will deliver, though not for the usual reasons (IMO). Need a heroine to root for? Here she is. Need an ending you can close the book, smile, and say to yourself "okay, that's good"? I got that here almost in spite of Mia having less faith in herself than I had in her...that christawful true-crime podcast...and think most of y'all would too.