A bold, no-nonsense story about young women dealing with and overcoming sexual assault.
In Rodger’s thriller, a serial rapist terrorizes Ontario, attacking women and upending lives—until his victims plot revenge.
This narrative is loosely based on aspects of the Scarborough Rapist case, one of the most disturbing in Canadian history, pitting a collection of young women against a perpetrator whose criminal acts threaten to destroy their futures. In 1989, high school student Samantha meets an intoxicating hockey player named Andy (“He drove a motorcycle and lived his life on the edge, a little wild, never wanting to follow the rules”). Things take a horrible turn when Andy rapes her. He disappears, and Sam learns she is pregnant. When Liz meets Blake, she is impressed by his charm and work ethic, so much so that the two are engaged within a year. Liz was planning to go away to college, and her parents convince her to do just that (and marry Blake afterward). But several disturbing comments from him give her pause. Jenny, a high school theater kid, is distressed by the news of the Scarborough Rapist but figures she’s safer since she just got a car. However, she is raped in that car one night, and the aspiring dancer is left with a broken foot. Despondent after the assault, Jenny forsakes her dream of being a physician and decides to become a psychologist instead. Oscillating between youthful optimism and intense fear, these women eventually must come together to share the truth of what happened to them and bring down the responsible party. Rodger’s concise novel wisely avoids exploiting the real-life story by giving the fictional players some distance from it. The web of lies and deceit that is woven here is complex, and the action plays out over many years. There are a lot of characters, and it requires careful reading to follow the plot over the short chapters, which can bounce around in time. All becomes crystal clear toward the end, though, and the novel works well as a testament to the resilience of survivors.
A bold, no-nonsense story about young women dealing with and overcoming sexual assault.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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