Nifty, twisty suspense requiring some suspension of disbelief.
An attorney finds out who abducted her (and her sister) as teens in western Virginia while prosecuting a current case in this legal/crime thriller from Iwan.
Sisters Charlotte and Mari Jones, 18 and 14 years old, respectively, are camping in their hometown western Virginia woods. Charlotte, excited to start college in the fall, is awaiting boyfriend Jack Henry to join them around the campfire. The next thing we know, Charlotte is running from a shadowy attacker and passes out. She wakes up in a cave, eventually finding Mari there, who cries, “He hurt me.” Charlotte then has to fend off their kidnapper, and the girls flee, only to have Mari drown in the nearby river in an attempt to swim to safety. The narrative then jumps 22 years to the 1980s. Charlotte is now a U.S. attorney in D.C., prosecuting the kidnapping/molestation/murder of 8-year-old Kaya Adkins, whose disappearance had captivated the nation. She suspects the accused, a man named Mark Reynolds, is behind ongoing abductions in the area, but frustratingly there’s only evidence linking him to Kaya (and even that is questioned at trial). After the trial, Charlotte continues to dig into his past, which to her shock leads back to her family’s own sheep-rearing farm operations in Virginia. She uncovers more men with connections to the area abductions, including some she knows. Relying on players she doesn’t completely trust, and learning more about the tensions between the area’s Welsh-descended farmers and Monacan tribe, Charlotte ultimately gets answers while racing against the clock to expose a human trafficking ring just as another young girl goes missing.
Author Iwan has crafted a thriller that grabs reader interest from the get-go, given its shocking child abduction opening that will have readers (much like Charlotte) determined to seek clarity and closure on a tragic incident, which is effectively conveyed via murky, shadowy description. This book also contains clever slow reveals of several key details, including the identity of the “mystery man” that visits Charlotte in her D.C. apartment and why one instance of her awakening half-naked is not as threatening as it might seem. Although the cultural concerns and fears of Native Americans ultimately provide some context for why this horrific crime ring was held a secret for so long, the ethnic backgrounds of people in this Virginia community are not always apparent. Some plot elements are a bit fantastical, given the less than convincing evidence. It’s also a bit surprising that Charlotte, an area kidnapping victim herself, would be tapped to prosecute Kaya’s case in the first place, although this circumstance also helps to foster a tension-building sense of paranoia, with Charlotte at one point remarking to her family, “But what does it all mean? What are you going to suggest next? That it wasn’t a coincidence that I was assigned to Kaya’s case?” Charlotte’s interludes with her family, while serving as heartwarming contrast to the dark doings of the community that she soon exposes, prove tedious at times, with descriptions of meal-making and tea-drinking occasionally serving as frustrating interruptions to the main action.
Nifty, twisty suspense requiring some suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9798992234206
Page Count: 450
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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