A stunning story of mental illness and its challenges.
Zadeik’s novel offers an unflinching account of mental illness from multiple perspectives.
After Julia Reeves loses her father to cancer, she becomes despondent. She distances herself from her friends, her family, and, most of all, her mother, Laura. She then endures a clinical depression in which she uses drugs, disassociates, self-harms, and eventually attempts suicide to cover up a truth she’s hiding about her father’s death. Upon meeting with yet another therapist who fails to understand her, Julia recognizes that she must commit to hospitalization to save herself. (“Time and space had gone wonky lately; weaving in and out of weeks, an hour could feel like a year, while a day went by in a blur. The world couldn’t be counted upon to keep its form and shape.”) Julia checks in to a facility called Brookfield, where she meets Sam Lorenzo, another patient. As the two connect over aesthetic and literary interests, they fall in love. Not unlike the trajectory of mental illness, however, the narrative then takes an unexpected turn: Sam asks Julia to leave with him, and Julia follows. Laura receives a call from Brookfield reporting that Julia has disappeared; the institution can do little because Julia is over the age 18 and not a threat to herself or anyone else. Laura, joined by Sam’s mother, Arabella, crosses the country piecing together where Julia and Sam could be located in a seemingly hopeless search. The author offers an authentic-feeling depiction of mental illness and its impact on the sufferer’s loved ones. Zadeik deftly evokes the dark days of clinical depression and the rapid cycling of a mood disorder while exploring societal attitudes toward mental illness over generations. The author also beautifully depicts the unfolding and emotionally charged love story between two young people invested in philosophy, literature, and art, and she captures the heartbreaking spiral that can happen when things go awry. Alternating between the perspectives of Julia, Laura, and Arabella, this beautifully rendered narrative offers striking environmental details that mirror the characters’ perspectives while maintaining a tight plot structure.
A stunning story of mental illness and its challenges.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9781647426682
Page Count: 344
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
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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