A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth.
Schorr’s novel explores issues of power, complicity, and the pursuit of justice in the wake of a campus sexual abuse scandal.
At Mountain Hill University, Serena Stanfield, the director of human resources, uncovers years of buried sexual abuse allegations against a beloved softball coach. When she decides to act, she tells a stunned colleague: “I’m not letting him spend another minute with these girls.” Her moral clarity cuts through the bureaucratic fog of plausible deniability that surrounds her—“Tim won’t save you this time,” she warns the abuser, refusing to be complicit. In New York, junior corporate investigator Troy Abernathy is trying to stay afloat at a firm where layoffs loom and ethics are optional. When the firm’s celebrity client, bestselling author Caleb Lugo, is accused of sexual assault, Troy is ordered to quietly dig into the accuser’s past. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., city councilwoman Megan Black navigates both public outrage over the campus scandal and a private mission to secure clemency for Evina Jansen, her childhood friend who is serving a life sentence for killing her abusive husband. (“I can’t live like this any longer,” Evina confides.) Megan’s journey underscores the uneven terrain of justice—the ways in which outcomes depend not just on facts, but on who’s watching, who’s connected, and who cares. Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor. The dialogue feels authentic, especially in tense institutional exchanges and moments of personal crisis. Serena’s confrontation on the softball field is a highlight, cinematic in its timing and righteous energy. While the story is sprawling, the pacing is taut, and the characters’ voices are distinct. The author avoids easy moral binaries; even well-intentioned characters must face the limits of their choices. The title of the book takes on layered meaning, suggesting not just a high-society gala but also the dangers of unchecked access and what comes through when no one’s watching the door.
A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9781684632565
Page Count: 336
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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