An engrossing yarn about innocence-turned-malignant, by turns hilarious and haunting.
Schoolkids are as devious and dangerous as they are cute in Kelly’s slyly unsettling suspenser.
Tina is a single mom with a checkered past (she barely remembers the drunken hookup that derailed her life and produced her 10-year-old son Matty) who has a toehold in affluent Park Slope, Brooklyn, thanks to a below-market rental and a teaching job at L’il Learners preschool. She loves her charges—vomiting and poop jokes notwithstanding—but wonders about Jonah, a 3-year-old who never talks or plays, especially when his attacks on a little girl escalate from biting and hair-pulling to stabbing with a tack and worse. Jonah’s older sister Darla, Matty’s classmate, is also a problem; her more sophisticated bullying of an overweight boy named Byron progresses to subtle, disturbing bloodshed. Tina sympathizes with Jonah and Darla because their mother Laura recently died in a hiking accident (they say they can see her ghost) and grows even more sympathetic when she meets their handsome, ingratiating father Patrick. As Tina grows closer to Patrick and his kids, she puts aside others’ misgivings even as red flags appear, including hints that Laura’s death might not have been accidental. Kelly’s novel is a mordantly funny portrait of high-end preschools full of well-heeled, judgmental moms and exasperating, antic children. It’s also a plangent reflection on the fragility of relationships—Tina’s decade-long friendship with her landlady Cheryl, whose daughter Naomi she practically raised, goes by the wayside when Cheryl decides she wants more rent. The author’s clever, evocative prose illuminates characters in their labyrinthine complexity—especially Darla’s arresting mix of childishness and dark calculation. (“Darla hates the fat boy so much she would like to bite him and swallow the pieces. She wants to call him fatty-pants again, but this time Naomi and Matty would hear….Darla knows better than to show her friends what she feels.”) From this bad seed sprouts a page-turner.
An engrossing yarn about innocence-turned-malignant, by turns hilarious and haunting.Pub Date: July 3, 2024
ISBN: 9798988721369
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Flexible Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
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