The Bookish Mindset

Overview:

Title: The Quiet Girls
Author: Dorothy Koomson
Published: March 2026
Genre: Thriller
Themes: Class, Racism

One sentence summary: Dr Kez Lanyon is back and this time in a dark academia setting, under cover of a school girls disappearance.

One sentence review: I adored it, Koomson is the Queen of the thriller for a reason.

Review:

Dr Kez Lanyon is back again. A teacher is dead, a student is missing and people from her past just keep popping up.

As you might know, thrillers as a genre are still relatively new to me. I’m a self confessed wuss and scaredy cat and I’m fine with that. I’ve read a handful in the past and while I’ve enjoyed some, there’s been a lot that I’m not fussed on. But Dorothy Koomson is the queen of the genre for a reason, her writing is utterly brilliant and I’ve loved what I’ve read of hers to date.

The Quiet Girls is no different, I’ve loved Kez from the beginning. I love her attitude and her quirks and her flaws. I love her drive and her shut downs. Koomson looks after the women in her novels and I think it’s beautiful. It’s what makes them stand out for me. They are whole, messy women and they are loved.

Koomson’s work has full characters with lives not just created to endure the horrors and events of books and I think that’s why I love them. You bond with these people and then desperately hope something bad isn’t happening to them.

This was giving dark academia vibes, think Ace of Spades, and I ate it up. It definitely reminded me of the pains of all girls schools too.

It gripped me, I audibly gasped, I snorted, I sat bolt up right in disgust.. it was a rollercoaster and while my heart rate was through the roof most of time and I was too scared to read it at night, I loved it.

The Quiet Girls is out now and if you’ve been a fan of Koomson’s latest then you’re going to love this one too.

If you’d like to get yourself a copy, you can support local bookshops and my work while doing so on Bookshop.org here or as an audiobook here.

If you like what you’ve read and would like to access more content, I’d love if you could take a look at my substack and consider supporting my content on there too. You can also find more content on my Instagram here.

And don’t forget to check out my other blogs and reviews – you can find books with similar themes in the same folder link below, or click back onto blogs to see the whole offering.

Last updated 22/04/2026