Absorbing and electric.
Two women escape the mundanity of their New York City college lives to reinvent themselves in Berlin, leading to unexpectedly dark consequences.
At the end of their sophomore year, Zoe Beech and Hailey Mader are both ready to escape New York and the hypercompetitive culture of their art college, where the irreverent “sculpture bros” are universally worshiped and “the easiest way to dismiss a female’s work [is] by calling it domestic.” Zoe, though, is also spurred by a darker reason: the recent murder of her best friend, Ivy Noble, who’d been a dancer at Juilliard. Once at a study abroad program in Berlin, Zoe quickly grows close with her classmate Hailey, the magnetic, brazen daughter of a Midwestern supermarket-chain mogul. The two navigate their way through dark and isolating Berlin, waiting in hundred-person lines for exclusive clubs, attending insular gallery shows and art classes with fossilized professors, always slightly removed from the heart of the city’s social scene. Things shift, though, when they begin subletting an apartment from a creepy, enigmatic duo: Beatrice Becks, a helmet-haired mystery novelist, and her mother, Janet. In the perpetually dark apartment, the two become fixated with Beatrice; the more they sift through her “tax filings, photo albums and letters,” the more unsettlingly present she feels. As Zoe and Hailey compete socially and stumble their way through drug-filled parties wearing elaborate vintage costumes, they aim to live out the increasingly risky, brightly colored nights of their dreams, fueled by Hailey’s dictum that “art is what you can get away with,” no matter the cost. Henkel masterfully brings every inch of Hailey and Zoe’s world to life with her live-wire prose: German, for instance, sounds as violent as “a car being compressed into a cube.” But what truly pushes the plot forward is the obsessive, psychologically damaging friendship between Zoe and Hailey, which slowly leads them from a cocoon of insulated partying to a state of real danger: a finely negotiated shift. Though the book’s middle grows a little long and unwieldy, its specter of mystery is tantalizing and will keep readers captive till the final page.
Absorbing and electric.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54735-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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