Some interesting exploration of the “evil twin” cliche, but ultimately too ambiguous.
When a teenage girl is revived after nearly drowning, she insists on being called by a new name. Is it trauma—or is she possessed by the spirit of her dead twin?
When Lucy Hamilton’s daughter, Eden, is pulled from a nearby lake in the English countryside, it looks like the worst has happened—until she begins to breathe again. But while still in the hospital, she starts to insist that her name is Eli, which was the name of her unborn brother lost to vanishing twin syndrome. When Lucy and James bring their child home, she cuts her hair, begins to dress more androgynously, and continues to insist that her name isn’t Eden. On one hand, Lucy is relieved, because her relationship with her child has been combative for some time, and this new incarnation is sweet and demonstrative; on the other, she’s concerned, understandably, about what’s really going on. James has no time for this drama; he’s super busy with work (and maybe an affair?) and then his mother dies in a fall down the stairs. Then a boy from Eden’s school is hit by a car. Across these spikes of action, Lucy is also dealing with her own repressed childhood trauma. The strangest thing about this novel is that, despite the title, Barker-White never directly writes in the voice or perspective of Eden, focusing primarily on Lucy as narrator with an occasional chapter dedicated to Charlie, Eden’s best friend. Instead, we are left to try to solve an unsolvable mystery, with insufficient clues and a twist at the end that offers no clarity. The other discomfiting thing is that we are offered a character who seems to identify as male, totally out of sync with his female body, and we are asked to consider this strange and even villainous. At one point Charlie asks whether Eden “want[s] to actually be a boy,” but Eden rebuffs the question; it seems tone deaf not to explore this possibility more directly.
Some interesting exploration of the “evil twin” cliche, but ultimately too ambiguous.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780063341296
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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