A deliberately paced mystery that always stays one step ahead of its readers.
A tech-startup VP suspects that someone is trying to kill her in Traymore’s thriller.
Things are looking up for Laura Foster. After seven years of marriage to Peter, who, she’s sure, loves her, and being stepmother to his two children—who, initially, didn’t like her—the 39-year-old has just been given a big career opportunity. She’s the new vice president of monetization at a company about to launch an app aimed at prospective college students. But things start to go downhill rapidly when she discovers brake fluid leaking from her car. Would jealousy drive someone to kill over a promotion? Her fevered imagination goes into overdrive when she suspects that something is bothering Peter. Does it have to do with his job at a biotech company that is anxiously awaiting U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for a new cancer drug? Is the seeming attempt on Laura’s life conjuring up memories of his late wife, who died in a fatal hiking accident? A friend of hers suggests that something sinister is afoot with Peter. However, when Peter seeks out a private investigator to look into the incident, he denies it. “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Peter insists, “but we’re happily married. There’s no story there….” “Okay, then. Nothing in your present,” the PI says. “What about your past?” That’s when things really start to get interesting. Traymore, most recently the author of Little Loose Ends (2022), provides readers a sympathetic hero in Laura, who tends to bury her feelings; with the kids grown and out of the house, she’d dearly love to move from the house that Peter shared with his ex-wife. The chapters alternate between her first-person perspective and third-person narration of Peter’s side of things. Dueling perspectives, à la Gillian Flynn’s bestselling Gone Girl (2012), might have ratcheted up the suspense a bit more, but that would have required an immediate explanation of an anonymous email sent to Peter: “I know what you did. I won’t tell anyone.” However, Traymore deftly handles revelations and twists throughout.
A deliberately paced mystery that always stays one step ahead of its readers.Pub Date: April 19, 2023
ISBN: 9798218177195
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Pathways Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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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