An engaging tale with a disturbing subject, fraught relationships, and a touch of romance.
In this thriller series opener, the brutal murder of a teenage girl rocks the students of a New Mexico high school and reconnects their psychological counselor with her former best friend.
Five years ago, after her mother’s tragic death in an automobile accident, forensic psychologist Kate Medina moved back to her family home in Alamogordo to care for her widowed father, Frank. Now, she is working as a counselor in the same school that she attended almost 20 years earlier. It is Friday, and Kate goes home disconcerted. Her session with Mandy Garcia is unproductive, and another student, Gabby Greene, is missing. During a difficult dinner that night with her father and her sister, Tilly, Kate learns that Frank is dying. Tuesday morning, her world turns even darker. She arrives at school to find police Detective Roman Aguilar, the best friend she left behind so long ago, waiting in her office. Gabby’s mangled body has been found in a creek, and the police are assuming the murder is gang related. But Kate and Roman are both chilled by the memory of an eerily similar killing that took place 17 years ago when the two friends discovered the body of a teenage girl in a burned-out car by the creek. Little do Kate and Roman suspect that the ensuing investigation will put their lives in danger. Although the plotline sometimes feels like a cross between an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and a Hallmark Channel movie, Rivers ably tackles the frightening topic of domestic sex trafficking of underage girls by malevolent, powerful men as well as the emotional baggage carried by victims of rape. Not quite a page-turner, the timely novel is nonetheless engrossing, with enough tension and dramatic angst—especially between Kate and Roman—to keep things intriguing. Despite the evasion of justice by too many bad guys, the story leaves hopeful possibilities with plenty of strings to be followed in the sequel. And Kate has the potential to be a sufficiently strong protagonist to carry the series forward.
An engaging tale with a disturbing subject, fraught relationships, and a touch of romance.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73451-604-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Compathy Press, LLC.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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