A satisfying summer thriller—but it could have been so much more.
Three British women whose friendship was forged from trauma take a luxury holiday to celebrate a divorce—but someone has a different agenda.
After defining herself for years as the perfect wife and mother, Darcy is still reeling from her recent divorce. She decides to use part of the settlement to book a luxury vacation in the Maldives for herself and her two best friends, Kate and Camilla. Theirs is no ordinary friendship; they found each other just a few years ago, tied together by their different connections to a mass slaying 22 years earlier at an English guesthouse. The culprit turned himself in and died in prison, but as the anniversary approaches, it seems that all the women have reservations about whether justice was truly served. And despite the gorgeous ocean views and the bottomless cocktails, their vacation is not lacking in drama. They befriend a young woman on her honeymoon who can’t quite conceal the bruises from her husband’s fists and a suave dance instructor who goes missing after sharing a night of passion with Camilla. Is there a link between the long-ago massacre and the current acts of violence, or are the friends stuck in the trauma of their pasts? The setup to the story—the book’s first and second acts—is exquisitely tension-filled. The novel moves among the perspectives of several characters, and their psychological layers—particularly that of the “survivor” who, in her own words, is “barely existing”—give the book a depth and complexity that belie the basic thriller structure. The third act, however, falls firmly into the realm of the sensational. True, there’s a big twist, and it’s surprising, but the superficiality of the solution and the extremity of the final action scene are disappointing after the thoughtful scaffolding.
A satisfying summer thriller—but it could have been so much more.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668058848
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
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
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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