A tense, beautifully written page-turner with a truly unsettling denouement.
The murder of her cousin moves a Scottish woman to explore her past.
When her husband divorced her, Tabitha Lawson lost not only her marriage but her job, since he anonymously told her employer about a schizophrenia diagnosis she hadn’t revealed to them. Her son chose to live with his father; Tabitha moved in with her mother, Zelda, whose dark paintings give her nightmares. So do the dark waters of the loch she’s lived nearby most of her life. Her cousin Davey Muir, a coder and collector, and his friend Gordo spend a lot of time with Barrett, a divorced gardener with two teen girls, picking up litter near the loch. It’s all very routine until Gordo reports a mysterious underwater explosion at the loch, which is set to be drained and turned into parkland. When Davey doesn’t answer his door, Tabitha gets the police to investigate just as Barrett and Gordo arrive to find Davey dead. Although he’s left what looks like a suicide note, his friends can’t believe he’d kill himself. Neither can Tabitha, who’s inherited everything he owned. When she, Barrett, and Gordo clean out his house, which is packed to the rafters with junk, they start uncovering long-hidden family secrets. Tabitha and her sister, Jocasta, and Davey and his brother, Johnny, all grew up together, children of a pair of brothers who both died by suicide. The marriage of Jo and Johnny puts even more pressure on the turbulent family dynamics. Tabitha, Davey’s friends, and their teenage children launch an investigation that will reveal that everything Tabitha thought she knew about her childhood is based on false memories.
A tense, beautifully written page-turner with a truly unsettling denouement.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781448312078
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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