4.5-STAR REVIEW: HIDDEN ROOMS by Kate Michaelson

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The Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2024

When murder hits home.

Long distance runner Riley has been fighting various bewildering symptoms for months, from vertigo to fainting spells. Worse, her doctors can’t tell her what’s wrong, leaving her to wonder if it’s stress or something more threatening. But when her brother’s fiancée is killed—and he becomes the prime suspect—Riley must prove his innocence, despite the toll on her health.

As she reacquaints herself with the familiar houses and wild woods of her childhood, the secrets she uncovers take her on a trail to the real killer that leads right back to the very people she knows best and loves most.

For readers who enjoy Deer Season by Erin Flanagan, All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers, and A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham.

Excerpt The Review

Riley Svenson will do anything to protect her brother, even if it means warning him about his fiancée, Beth.

When Ethan is arrested for Beth’s murder, Riley is determined to prove his innocence and digs deeper into Beth’s life with shocking revelations. This serves as the premise for Hidden Rooms by Kate Michaelson.

As a slow-burning thriller, the story first focuses on Beth’s disappearance and the subsequent search. Witnesses contradict Ethan’s alibi, leading to his arrest. However, Riley discovers items in a hidden room that point to a drug connection.

Meanwhile, Beth’s murderer is watching to make sure Riley doesn’t get too close. As the pieces fall together, an unexpected culprit emerges from the shadows.

Hidden Rooms focuses on a woman’s determination to clear her brother’s name in a story filled with twists and turns. Buy Links

Growing up in rural Ohio, Kate Michaelson simultaneously developed a love of nature and a strong desire to live closer to a mall. Pursuing the latter, she attended Ohio State, where she studied English and Psychology. After earning her MFA in Creative Writing, Kate worked as a technical writer and taught English at St. Petersburg College in Florida and, later, at the University of Toledo in Ohio. Over the years, she has published academic articles, creative nonfiction, poetry, and short stories. Her debut novel, Hidden Rooms, follows a distance runner who returns to her rural Ohio hometown and must clear her brother of murdering his fiancée while also seeking answers to her own medical mystery. As someone with Lyme disease and dysautonomia, Kate’s writing uses humor and suspense to explore the experience of coping with chronic illness. Ultimately, she wants to portray the reality of the challenges that invisible disabilities pose while also demonstrating that “ability” is not a binary concept—that illness does not equal a loss of self or agency.

Kate enjoys traveling, hiking, and trying (fruitlessly) to tire out her Labrador mix. She works in curriculum design and holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. She lives with her husband and pets in Toledo, Ohio, only ten minutes from a mall she now avoids whenever possible.