This crafty storyline hooks you from the start. All you need to do is hang on for a wild ride.
A troubled marriage undergoes a stringent series of tests in the boondocks, dislodging secrets and upending expectations, including those of the reader, in this wry, sly chiller.
Craig and Daisy have been married for two years and, on the surface anyway, are living the dream: a Brooklyn home, steady work in the creative sector, and enough income to leave the city for a weeklong anniversary getaway in upstate New York, organized by Daisy as a surprise for Craig. But the title of this wickedly inventive, briskly paced psychological thriller is enough to suggest trouble in paradise. Sure enough, Craig has been planning to slink away the day after their anniversary for a separate getaway to Cabo San Lucas with his mistress, Lilith. The “Eden Test” is also the name of a series of questions waiting in the cabin, to be posed from one partner to another over the course of seven days, to test the strength of their marriage. The first question is “Would you change for me?” (As you can probably guess, they get harder each day.) Craig is, to say the least, not amused that Daisy has dropped this game on him, and at first, he’s even more determined to leave for Mexico. Eventually, Craig decides to stay after all just as things around the couple, notably the people living in the town nearest the cabin, get weirder. Some of the locals use the portmanteau citiots to characterize “city idiots” from Gotham like Craig and Daisy. Some pop into their space unexpectedly, including a hunter wearing a blaze orange cap whose “arms and shirt are smeared with slick and shiny blood.” Even the therapist couple who came up with the test questions show up, as does a mysterious “protector” named Shep who turns out to be somehow connected to one of the secrets Daisy’s been keeping. In darkly funny domestic gothics like this, false leads, red herrings, and jolting change-ups are part of the narrative decor. And Sternbergh—author of The Blinds (2017), etc.—shows he’s gotten even better at evoking bizarre behavior in seemingly normal environs and keeping his readers in the dark just long enough to make them jump when the lights, so to speak, come up.
This crafty storyline hooks you from the start. All you need to do is hang on for a wild ride.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-85566-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.
Second of the Walter Nash thrillers—following Nash Falls (2025)—in which the remade hero seeks vengeance.
Due to urgent circumstances, Nash has bulked himself up to become the “muscled and tatted fighting machine” now known as Dillon Hope. His antagonist is Victoria Steers, a global drug dealer who wants him dead. Not realizing his new identity, she enlists Hope to free her mother, Masuyo, from a prison in Myanmar. As an incentive, she shoots one of her associates and threatens to frame Hope for the murder unless he complies. She also wants him to find Nash. He in turn wants to kill Victoria to avenge the death of his innocent daughter, Maggie. “If I go down,” he muses, “I’m taking others with me. Starting with Victoria Steers.” He learns that Victoria had killed all her siblings to eliminate business competition. But as heartless as Victoria is, her mother, Masuyo, is even worse. In league with the Chinese government in a perverse plan to kill as many Americans as possible through fentanyl overdose, she shows contempt for Victoria for her perceived weaknesses. Readers won’t find many happy family relationships here: mother-daughter, father-son, husband-wife—all fraught. Hope’s employer, who accompanies him to Myanmar, is a billionaire chief executive with a dodgy past (i.e., probably killed his father). And there’s a mega-billionaire with an astronomical IQ and ditch-deep morals who, putting it mildly, does not have America’s best interests at heart. As a teenager, he’d defeated two world chess champions; as an adult, he regards his dealings with the world in terms of master chess moves. Only one character seems truly decent and credible—Hiroko, Victoria’s former nanny and lifelong companion, who provides Hope with valuable insights into the Steers’ background, which is partly Chinese. Searing grudges, simple evil, and not-so-simple misunderstandings carry the cast through this complex, action-packed plot. This sequel ties out the loose ends dangling in Nash Falls, which would be helpful to read first. To get to the requisite ending, though, Baldacci takes pains to surprise the reader. It works but often feels forced.
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781538758021
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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