I’m not entirely sure what it was about Tell Two Friends that hooked me so quickly, but I loved it from the start. Sometimes a book just has that magical combination of characters, humour, tension, and slightly unhinged circumstances that makes you want to keep turning the pages. This was an easy four stars for me.

At the centre of it all is Jane Baye, who might be one of the most wonderfully ordinary heroines on the page. Jane is capable, kind, and pretty good at plenty of things. Unfortunately, spotting the serial killer practically under her nose isn’t one of them.

Back in 1990, when Jane was a college senior, she started writing to an incarcerated woman simply because it seemed like a nice thing to do. Fast-forward thirty-six years, and it turns out that her former prison pen pal wasn’t a woman at all. He was a man, he’s now living next door, and he has been nursing a very specific plan involving Jane for decades.

You know. Normal neighbour stuff.

The problem is that Jane has quite a lot going on without realising she’s starring in someone else’s long-term nightmare.

Her romantic life has recently spectacularly imploded thanks to Wonder Lake’s small-town golden boy, a man with big promises about forever and an even bigger history of cheating. When Jane finally exposes him, you’d think the town might rally around her.

Nope.

Instead, Wonder Lake effectively decides that Jane is the problem, because apparently nothing brings a community together quite like defending the charming man who behaved badly.

This whole small-town dynamic was one of the things I enjoyed most about the book. Ann Garvin gives Wonder Lake that familiar feeling of a place where everyone knows everyone, everybody has an opinion, and secrets have an annoying habit of becoming public property. There’s humour running underneath the drama, even as the story becomes increasingly tense.

Jane herself is the reason the book works so well.

She isn’t written as some impossibly clever thriller heroine who notices every clue, predicts every twist, and can suddenly take down a criminal using skills she picked up during a suspiciously convenient childhood hobby. She feels like a real person. She misses things. She makes assumptions. She gets distracted by the mess happening directly in front of her.

Things really escalate around Wonder Lake’s Norwegian heritage festival, when what should be a night of celebration takes a seriously darker turn. From there, the story shifts into full survival mode, and Jane proves that being ordinary doesn’t mean being weak.

In fact, that’s probably my favourite thing about Tell Two Friends.

Jane’s strengths aren’t flashy. They’re the qualities people often overlook: resilience, practicality, determination, kindness, and the ability to keep going when everything has gone spectacularly wrong. Watching those traits become her greatest weapons was immensely satisfying.

There’s also something deliciously unsettling about the central premise. A small act of kindness made decades ago becomes the starting point for something Jane could never have predicted. That idea alone gives the story a creepy undercurrent that stays with you even during its lighter moments.

Tell Two Friends manages to be suspenseful without losing its personality. It’s funny, tense, character-driven, and just strange enough to keep things interesting. The combination of small-town drama, betrayal, dark secrets, and an incredibly determined woman made this ridiculously easy to read.

If you enjoy thrillers featuring ordinary women thrown into very extraordinary situations, complicated small-town relationships, dark humour, and villains who are far too close for comfort, Tell Two Friends is well worth adding to your list.

Just perhaps think twice before starting a prison correspondence programme.

You never know who might move in next door.