Horses and young riders are center stage, but dysfunctional adults steal the show in this moody mystery.
Brazier takes readers deep inside the rarified and competitive world of “horse girls” in this tale of jealousy and deadly secrets.
This irresistible novel opens with police asking questions about “an unimaginable tragedy” but quickly spins backward in time, exploring the months leading up to the suspicious death of one of its major characters, whose identity remains a mystery throughout most of the book. Brazier’s juicy narrative gives credence to a detective’s comment that “there were no people quite like horse people,” as she perfectly describes the back-stabbing day-to-day life at an equestrian school in California. The school is run by the megalomaniac trainer Kieran Flynn, an imperious man who makes or breaks horses as well as their riders. Young girls are his beleaguered students, but their overinvolved mothers are holding the reins, and Brazier expertly captures their arrested development, broken relationships, and neediness. Heather, rich and oh-so-sad, wants her teenage daughters to fulfill her lost dream of being a champion show jumper. Daughter Piper, a natural equestrian, won't ride because of the overbearing Heather's interference. Her timid sister, Maple, is afraid of horses but is pressured by Heather into riding. Ex-addict Pamela is broke but wants her daughter, the chaos-loving Vida, to have the same opportunities as Heather’s girls and will do anything to make that happen. This tale of the horsey set unpacks enough mean-girl drama and emotion to fill a horse barn. Equipment tampering, underage drinking, and animal doping will keep readers turning the pages, and long-kept secrets, unplanned pregnancies, and power-hungry manipulators add to the novel's can't-look-away storyline. Laughing at rich-people problems is a popular theme, but Brazier makes us feel for her characters, rich and poor, and delivers a blue-ribbon story of the haves and have-nots.
Horses and young riders are center stage, but dysfunctional adults steal the show in this moody mystery.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780593438886
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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