MoMoBookDiary

---

---

Steena Holmes

New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author!

With 2 million copies of her titles sold world wide, Steena Holmes was named in the Top 20 Women Author to read in 2015 by Good Housekeeping. She continues to write books that deal with issues that touch parents heart, whether it is through her contemporary fiction or psychological suspense novels. 

📚 2012 NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE BOOK Award for her bestselling novel Finding Emma 

📚 2015 USA BOOK NEWS Award for The Word Game 

📚 2015 USA BOOK NEWS finalist for The Memory Child

For softer, sweeter stories with a hint of chocolate, a lot of coffee and communities you want to live in, look for her stories under the name STEENA MARIE.

---

My review

The Girls in the Basement by Steena Holmes is a haunting psychological thriller that explores the deep emotional scars left by trauma, secrecy, and betrayal. It’s not a fast-paced, twist-every-page kind of thriller—but rather a slow-burning, emotionally layered story that pulls you in with a quiet intensity. While I didn’t find it completely immersive in every moment, I was deeply compelled by the themes, the atmosphere, and the painful truths it uncovered. For that reason, it earns a solid four stars from me.

What Holmes does especially well is build tension that doesn’t necessarily come from shocking reveals, but from an unrelenting sense of dread. From the opening chapters, there’s this gnawing feeling that something is very wrong—and she sustains that unease throughout the book. I appreciated how the story unfolds through multiple perspectives, each adding a new layer to the central mystery. Every character has their own secrets, and the slow unraveling of those secrets is what kept me invested, even during quieter moments.

Jillian, in particular, is a character I wanted to fully connect with—and while I didn’t always feel as emotionally close to her as I wanted, I did care about her story. Her emotional journey, especially in the face of betrayal and manipulation, felt raw and painfully real. There’s a certain distance in the way the story is told that occasionally made it hard for me to fully step into her shoes, but at the same time, that distance may reflect the emotional numbness and disorientation Jillian herself is experiencing. In a strange way, it worked—just not always in the most immersive sense.

What really impressed me was Holmes’s handling of heavy subject matter. This book doesn’t just hint at trauma—it dives headfirst into the psychological damage inflicted by abuse, gaslighting, and long-term manipulation. And yet, it does so with a level of care and thoughtfulness that doesn’t feel gratuitous. It’s uncomfortable at times, but that discomfort felt necessary and honest. Some of the twists, while not entirely unpredictable, still packed a punch, especially as the full scope of what was happening came into focus.

I’ll admit that parts of the story were emotionally difficult to read. There’s a darkness here that lingers, and I think that’s part of what makes the book effective. It may not have hit me on every emotional beat, but the overall impact was undeniable. It made me reflect on how trauma reshapes identity, and how people cope in the aftermath of profound betrayal and loss. That’s not something every thriller attempts, let alone pulls off.

In the end, The Girls in the Basement is a slow-burning, emotionally charged thriller that doesn’t rely on flashy reveals but instead digs deep into the psychological damage hidden beneath the surface. While I didn’t feel completely immersed the entire time, I was absolutely drawn in by the story’s weight and complexity. For readers who appreciate darker, emotionally driven suspense with a strong psychological undercurrent, this book will stay with you. It certainly stayed with me.

Content/Trigger Warnings:
Child abuse/death, domestic abuse/violence, emotional abuse, misogyny, kidnapping, murder, gaslighting, sexual violence, human trafficking

Thank you to Steena Holmes, Joffe Books, NetGalley and Zooloo’s Book Tours for including me on this book tour and introducing me to another great author. The tour, hosted by Zooloo’s Book Tours, runs from 10 to 16 April – follow along with the Book Tour Schedule

#SteenaHolmes #TheGirlsInTheBasement #JoffeBooks #ZooloosBookTours #VirtualBookTour #BookReview

All views expressed are my own. This review, or parts of it, may also be shared on my social media channels and various book platforms. Links are accurate at the time of publication.