A diverting if plausibility-testing thriller.
Like any extreme sport, ultrarunning can be dangerous, and it proves deadly in this thriller set in the Sahara Desert.
Elite runner Adrienne Wendell, who lives in England’s Lake District with her 10-year-old son, Ethan, is in Morocco to participate in the 250-mile Hot & Sandy race; it’s organized by enigmatic impresario Boones, who has, as Adrienne puts it, dedicated his life to “finding out the limit of human endurance.” Adrienne hasn’t raced in seven years—not since she was met at the finish line of the Yorkshire 100 by police informing her that Ethan had nearly been hit by a black Range Rover that seemed to be targeting him before it fled the scene. Of course, Adrienne has agreed to participate in Hot & Sandy: Her invitation arrived bearing the words “COME AND FIND ANSWERS” above a license plate number; results from Adrienne’s online sleuthing link the plate to a black Range Rover. But Adrienne brings her own whiff of villainy to Hot & Sandy: Just before Ethan’s accident, something happened at a runners’ training camp in Ibiza that has made her a pariah in the running scene. The novel’s slow-drip reveal regarding what occurred in Ibiza is abetted by a second narrator: Stella Mamoud, who is attending Hot & Sandy because her fiancé, Adrienne’s ex-husband, is participating. (Stella also happens to be Boones’ estranged daughter). This novel about extreme behavior in the world of extreme sports won’t win any prizes for extreme plausibility, and cliches and pat psychology clot the writing. Regardless, readers should remain absorbed by the elaborate plot’s multiple lines of inquiry: What happened in Ibiza? Who will win Hot & Sandy? And who is incapacitating runners more effectively than even the punishing Saharan sandstorms and immobilizing heat?
A diverting if plausibility-testing thriller.Pub Date: July 1, 2025
ISBN: 9780593687031
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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