A hypnotic page-turner about the frightening haziness between past and present.
A woman’s seemingly perfect life unravels in this debut novel that explores what happens when past traumas resurface.
Kate Whittier, nee Barton, lives in a “Southern California movie script”—a dream life with her wealthy husband, Jacob, and their two children, Becca and Logan. But tensions arise when Jacob comes home after a debauched evening unable to recollect exactly what happened but convinced that he and his wife should be tested for sexually transmitted infections. Kate’s positive HPV result, after years of fidelity to her husband, seems to confirm the one-off affair. With her marriage now under serious pressure, Kate feels that her position in her haute social world is precarious. In a circle that focuses so much on pedigree, Kate’s traumatic and abject past threatens to undo the life that she has built. Zadeik’s novel is not really about the strained relationship between Kate and Jacob. Rather, their knotty bond becomes a catalyst for Kate’s coming to terms with her past and present. While her husband’s infidelity sours their unity, that betrayal is not what haunts Kate in the form of waking nightmares and horrifying memories, or what will keep readers glued to the page. What troubles Kate are the unseemly characters of her past—her villainously cruel brother, Daniel, and their drunken father. Kate’s past and present become like a Russian nesting doll of grief, where the glossy surface projects a beautiful, polished version of herself. But underneath are all the iterations of the protagonist and the various grotesque experiences she suffered at the hands of her brother and his loathsome friends. When Daniel reenters Kate’s rocky life, the effect is truly riveting, and readers will be left wondering if she can ever truly escape her past. The author’s tale is as chilling as it is affecting. With a cast that includes the intriguing and mysterious Ryan, who becomes Kate’s main source of emotional support, the story will keep readers wanting to learn more about the protagonist’s past and her new possibilities (perhaps involving a new man?) for the future.
A hypnotic page-turner about the frightening haziness between past and present.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-379-7
Page Count: 312
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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