A riveting, fresh interpretation of monsters.
A politician finds herself endangered by a quarrel going back centuries in this engaging supernatural thriller.
This rivalry begins in the American South in 1850. Aaron, an enslaved person, plans to escape the Virginia plantation on which he toils and start a new life in the North. Plans don’t work out for him, however. He’s attacked on the night he escapes and is left for dead by a giant beast. During the attack, the “beast,” a werewolf, changed Aaron into a werewolf. Now nearly invincible, Aaron kills the cruel plantation owner and his wife—vengeance, in part, for whipping Aaron’s beloved mother. Perhaps unwisely, the escapee spares their 8-year-old son, James. Following the Civil War, James becomes a vampire and later leads a clan of all-white vampires, which wars with Aaron’s pack of Black werewolves. Since both groups need to exist in shadows, they agree to a truce: neither will turn victims of the opposite race. This truce holds for decades, until an inexperienced werewolf attacks and turns Ally, a white congressional aide from South Carolina. Aaron stalls while deciding how to handle this unique situation. But the two sides begin slowly but inexorably slipping toward war as the werewolves attempt to protect Ally while the vampires try to kill her. Michel deserves credit for finding a different slant on an overused trope. Usually, vampires are portrayed as highbrow and the werewolves lowbrow, but Aaron’s pack is classy and stylish. Also, injecting racism as the dividing line between two types of monsters is inspired. The long-standing grudge that James holds against Aaron only ramps up the tension. The character who evolves the most is Ally. She starts as a conservative eager to pass a voting-restriction bill. But time spent with Aaron’s pack, as well as peril to her family, impacts her perspective on race and life. Characters other than her and Aaron aren’t as well developed, however. But altogether, this is a fascinating new take on old monsters, one that Michel has set up to continue as a series.
A riveting, fresh interpretation of monsters.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798891578814
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
BOOK REVIEW
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