This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum review – Thriller meets love story in the best possible way
The perfect marriage of thriller and romance.
This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum: The key details
- Publish date: 12 March 2026
- Genre: Thriller/romance
- Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
- Available formats: Hardback, audio and ebook
- Series/standalone: Standalone
- Length: 368 pages
Blurb: Benny and Joy like to say that they’ve been saving each other since the moment they met… Until the day Joy disappears and Benny is accused of her murder.
Best friends Benny and Joy host a beloved ‘comedy survival’ podcast, gleefully finding life-affirming humour in near-death experiences. When Benny arrives at Joy and her husband’s home one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house.
With Joy missing and the hours ticking by, not even their most devoted fans could guess the terrible secrets they have hidden from the world – and from each other.
If Benny wants to find Joy in time, and clear his own name, he’ll have to solve the highest stakes survival story yet.
This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum: The review
Joy and Benny have been best friends for most of their lives and, after starting a comedy-survival podcast, aptly titled This Story Might Save Your Life, the pair find huge success. Things are good – or so it seems from the outside.
Everything changes when Benny arrives to begin recording one morning, only to find Joy missing. Her husband and her dog are also nowhere to be seen. Maybe there’s a rational explanation, but Benny instantly goes into panic mode.
The way this story is told is what carries it: it’s a perfect mixture of Benny’s perspective, Joy’s, segments from their podcast and even the odd listener comment thrown in. It’s a format that works well on paper, but it truly comes alive on audio, where it really feels like you’re listening to a living, breathing podcast.
This Story Might Save Your Life does many things exceptionally well. It perfectly pitches Joy and Benny’s relationship: this is, for al intents and purposes, a love story. But there’s nothing saccharine, nothing unsavoury; just the real, human, messy feelings of two very believable, likeable humans. It also paces the tension of Joy’s disappearance perfectly. I was genuinely on the edge of my seat at times, following Benny through police interviews, searches of Joy’s house and interrogations of neighbours and friends.
Crum has blended together two disparate genres so masterfully that here, it feels like they were born to go together. Thriller and romance, romance and thriller. It really does work, because honestly, what is more devastating than the person you love going missing? Benny’s desperation really seeps through every page, and you as the reader will be just as anxious to learn about her whereabouts.
This Story Might Save Your Life is a wonderful novel, and if you get the chance, do listen to it on audio. It’s one of 2026’s highlights for me, and one I’m not going to forget in a hurry.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy.
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