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
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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