An evocative thriller that doesn’t quite stick the landing.
In Royce’s novel, a troubled young woman rushes into marriage, only to learn that her husband isn’t quite the man that he appears to be.
In 1987 Los Angeles, rising soap-opera star Eleanor Russell has just wed the handsome antiques dealer Orlando Montague. They rushed to the altar after a whirlwind six-week romance, and Eleanor hasn’t yet told him everything about her past, including the fact that her father—also an antiques dealer—abandoned her when she was 6 during a tour of a cave at Ruby Falls in Tennessee; the trauma still feels fresh 20 years later. Eleanor and Orlando buy a rose-covered cottage in Hollywood together and she quickly lands the lead role in a remake of the classic film adaptation Rebecca. Along the way, she adopts a feisty cat that wanders onto her property. Then Orlando starts to behave oddly; first, he refuses to let Eleanor’s mother come visit them for Thanksgiving: “You’re all the family and friends I need this year,” he tells his wife. Then Eleanor realizes that he’s been snooping through her desk and suspects that he may be having an affair with their real estate agent. She soon worries she’s being conned, and wonders what else her new spouse might be capable of doing. At the same time, Dottie Robinson, a clairvoyant who lives next door, helps Eleanor delve into the secrets of her father’s disappearance—and specifically, whether he planned the vanishing himself. Can she uncover the truth without losing her grip on reality?
Royce’s prose is taut and propulsive, as when she regrets telling her mother that she’s never been happier in her life: “Why did I say that? I shouldn’t have used that phrase. That is the thing they always say on soap operas before the axe falls—before the cancer diagnosis or hidden twins or un-dead-ex-wives come down from the attic.” The book has a fun premise, and the pages turn easily as Eleanor’s life slowly turns into a mystery worthy of a film—one in which she can’t even be sure of the identities of the people closest to her. That said, the narration inevitably gets a bit unreliable, and the ending, while surprising in its details, isn’t quite as satisfying as it should be, nor is it terribly fresh. The extent to which the reader will be taken in by this story will likely depend on how familiar they are with similar tales in the thriller genre; the works of author Daphne du Maurier and filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock loom large over Eleanor’s plight, as does that of Shirley Jackson, the writer of The Haunting of Hill House. Still, many readers will find this journey to be a fun one, as it inhabits a hallucinatory Hollywood where fact and fiction mingle freely and even the smallest acts can feel ominous. Although the book may not fully live up to the works that inspired it, it’s an often enjoyable pastiche with plenty of twists and turns.
An evocative thriller that doesn’t quite stick the landing.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64293-709-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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