Stuck at home because of the pandemic? This is cheaper than moving, and it’ll make you feel better about staying put.
Wilson returns to Bury, New Hampshire, where a painfully widowed millionaire takes up residence in a house even more troubled than he is.
In the middle of his wife Holly’s memorial service after she’s died of an aneurysm at 34, Baltimore bartender Aidan Marlowe learns that the numbers he’s been playing twice a week for many years have hit a $29.8 million Powerball jackpot. Marlowe, a dissociative type who can sense energies most people can’t, though he often fades out of the picture for hours on end, decides to move to upscale Bury and buy a house that was owned by investment banker Logan Yates before he vanished along with several members of his family. He soon begins to get insinuatingly creepy letters welcoming him to Bury and signed “WE WHO WATCH.” His questions to Abril, the longtime Yates housekeeper, net just enough information to make him feel that he and his 7-year-old twins, Maggie and Bo, need more protection, but his visit to Police Chief Walter Sike produces nothing but bland assurances, and he’s unwilling to provide Sike’s friend and security consultant Owen Brace with the personal information required to take the wholesale measures Brace urges. Soon after a housewarming party flushes out the news that Marlowe’s won the lottery, a secret he’s been determined to keep, WE WHO WATCH make it clear that they’re interested in Marlowe’s money, that they’re not going away, and that the violence they threaten won’t end with him. The big reveal, which goes on forever, strains credulity, but there’s no denying Wilson’s power to weave a dark web and keep making it darker and darker.
Stuck at home because of the pandemic? This is cheaper than moving, and it’ll make you feel better about staying put.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72824-752-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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