Murder is all in the family in this novel, but the surprise ending lacks punch.
A birthday party on a remote island turns into a series of bizarre murders.
“I was born with a broken heart” is how the title character and narrator of this murder mystery opens her story. Daisy is happy, however, to be celebrating the 80th birthday of her beloved nana, Beatrice Darker. Nana is a children’s author who several decades ago made a fortune on a book titled Daisy Darker’s Little Secret. Her family gathers for the birthday party at Seaglass, Beatrice’s eccentric old house on the Cornish coast, on an isolated island at the bottom of a cliff that’s only accessible at low tide. It’s a family affair: Beatrice’s son, Frank Darker, a globe-trotting classical musician who was often absent when his children were growing up; Nancy, his ex-wife and the coldly critical mother of those children; and Daisy’s two older sisters, beautiful and brainy Rose and vain and lazy Lily. Also on the island are Lily’s teenage daughter, Trixie (whose paternity is unknown), and Conor Kennedy, whom Beatrice took in when he was a neighbor boy abused by his father; he’s now a successful journalist. As the tide cuts off the house from the mainland, Beatrice serves a feast and then announces the reading of her will—a reading that makes almost everyone in the family unhappy. Then someone in the small group is found dead in a pool of blood. Soon bodies are stacking up, each killed in a strikingly personal manner, and the dwindling number of living people are frantically trying to identify the killer. (No calling for help—there’s no cell service, and Beatrice has stopped paying her landline bill.) Between the murders, Daisy fills us in on everyone’s backstory, which sometimes bogs down the suspense. If this all sounds a little like Agatha Christie’s bestseller And Then There Were None, that’s probably no accident. But this tale has a different twist ending that, despite some clever construction throughout the book, doesn’t quite convince.
Murder is all in the family in this novel, but the surprise ending lacks punch.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-84393-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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