If You Knew Me by S.P. Miskowski
Thomas & Mercer (September 23, 2025)
Reviewed by Dave Simms
Move over Annie Wilkes — there’s a new ultra fan in horror-thriller literature: Ann Mason (yes, the first name checks but the author goes way beyond the iconic character here). If you’ve never read S.P. Miskowski, this is a fine place to start. If you’re a fan of the Skillute cycle of stories, this is a step up in storytelling, which is quite a high bar to jump. She wields the exquisite skills to marry the best of horror with the razor wire tension of thrillers.
The setup is killer. Parker Dillon works as a journalist for her aunt’s website, which sounds like a cushy launchpad for her career, until the bottom drops out and leaves her unemployed. A terribly timely insert: the site might be replaced by AI writers! That alone is enough to make readers’ (and writers’) skin crawl.
Enter Ann — when Parker scours the archives in search of anything to help her move on, she discovers a pitch letter from a woman who claims to have committed a terrible crime decades ago. Parker dives in and learns that the writer is more than a bit unhinged. Ann has a strong obsession with an actor who played a television detective back in the day, but what happened? What was that terrible deed?
Parker tracks down Ann in Arizona, but the quest isn’t as simple as it seems. Ann’s neighbors shed light on how her behavior might be a bit schizophrenic in the clinical sense as she might live in a reality all her own. But is that true or is Ann’s motives much more coherent — and malicious — than the journalist believes?
To say more about the plot would be negligible on the reviewer’s part, but what will be divulged is that while hardcore thriller readers may think they know how the puzzle pieces fit together, Miskowski has an arsenal of tricks up her sleeve. The inventive format, mixed media entries and epistolary pieces could be distracting in many a novel but work beautifully here.
It’s tough to find something both chilling and page-turning lately in the horror-thriller realm, but If You Knew Me pulls it off with aplomb.
This is easily a strong candidate for a top ten book of the year.
