NEVER COME BACK

Reinard’s psychological thriller follows a family coming apart at the seams as they are victimized by a grisly plot.

Rowan Bishop fixates on the worst possible outcomes—it’s a trait she developed during her chaotic childhood in Philadelphia—so she can’t help but obsess over the dangers and threateningly exotic women that her husband Wyatt may encounter while away on business in Mexico City. Wyatt wants to be a good husband and father to his pregnant wife and their young son Landon, but Rowan’s paranoia and scrutiny leave him exasperated. So, when an alluring woman invites him for a drink in Mexico, it’s hard to refuse…But Wyatt’s slight indiscretion ends with a gruesome attack pulled straight out of a terrifying urban legend. He survives, returning home frightened and sickly but also determined to downplay the events of his harrowing trip. Wyatt is mostly afraid of his wife’s wrath should she suspect infidelity, but the thing he should be worried about is the mysterious and powerful organization that planned his attack, referred to only as “The Network.” Trying to keep Rowan calm quickly becomes the least of the couple’s worries as the Network strikes again, this time targeting their little boy. However, members of the shadowy, international Network have underestimated their suburban target; as Wyatt already knows all too well, “once [Rowan] sinks her teeth in, there’s no letting up until she finds the truth.” As Reinard cycles through the perspectives of Rowan, Wyatt, and several members of the Network, the author develops characters more complex than those found in the average thriller. Even if sometimes it feels like Reinard is rushing through a laundry list of past traumas and justifications, both her villains and victims earn equal measures of sympathy and disgust, adding additional engrossing layers to the surprises and suspense in the narrative. Rowan seems an unlikely protagonist at first, but with her zany arc—from insufferable desperate housewife to an unhinged and unstoppable investigator—the author is clearly having fun with stereotypes and the conventions of both genres. Readers surely will, too.

A twisted plot and even more twisted main characters make this thriller shockingly fun.