This richly evocative story exists at the point where love, fear, guilt, bad decisions, psychosis, and mythology collide.
Two stories separated by 25 years intertwine on an island at the far reaches of Scotland: A man tries to hide from who he used to be, and a woman tries to figure out if a man was murdered on the desolate island the day she was born.
In 1993, Robert Reid moves with his wife, Mary, and their son, Calum, to the small island of Kilmeray in the Outer Hebrides to become a farmer. He is plagued by memories of past misdeeds, and no matter how hard he tries and how hard he works, he cannot find the success in farming or the happiness in his family that he so desperately wants. In 2019, 25-year-old Maggie Anderson arrives on the island trying to figure out who she really is after her mother’s death. She is bipolar—this she has known since she was a teenager. She is also plagued with memories and dreams that don't make sense, and when she was a child, she knew with absolute certainty that she had previously been a man named Andrew MacNeil and had been murdered. Her mother previously brought her to the island to try to find the truth: Was there an Andrew MacNeil? Had he been murdered? The villagers held firm that no one of that name had ever existed and that Maggie’s mother—though convinced she was a psychic and a witch and despite having many, many tricks up her sleeve—was not infallible. When Maggie visits as an adult, she finds a warmer welcome on the island, quickly becoming friends with Kelly, a single mom, and Will, a farmer who lives near her Airbnb. Fans of Tana French will embrace author Johnstone's skill at weaving supernatural and setting-as-character aspects into her story, and readers of Lisa Jewell will enjoy her unexpected plotting and character development. The caliber of Johnstone's writing and masterful storytelling will delight both.
This richly evocative story exists at the point where love, fear, guilt, bad decisions, psychosis, and mythology collide.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-982-19967-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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