A fantastic medical and supernatural thriller with a memorable hero.
An overworked physician is bedeviled by strange visions in Simonds’ thriller.
Dr. Ryan Brenan is an incredibly dedicated and talented neurosurgeon, but his powerful work ethic leaves him depressed, with little time to spend with his family. His wife, Kelly, is concerned for his health and wants him to curtail his time at the hospital, but Ryan is too anxious to rely on other doctors and nurses because he’s seen what happens when people aren’t as careful as he is. The situation grows much worse as he begins to hallucinate such disturbing scenes as a child running into the street, a truck crashing into leaves that are left undisturbed, and a man being run over. Physician assistant Ariana Salazar suggests that his hallucinations may be the work of the supernatural and that he might be seeing ghosts that have devious intentions for him. As tensions rise and the specters grow worse, Ryan’s strained marriage approaches a breaking point. Before he loses everything and everyone he loves—and perhaps even his own life—Ryan has to figure out what these ghosts want. The author has created a compelling character in Ryan Brenan, a man who goes beyond the limit for his patients and cares for his family while navigating both human and supernatural obstacles. Ryan’s dialogue is occasionally overburdened with exposition, especially regarding medical information (“It’s an epidural hematoma. The brain and spinal cord are contained in a bag of fluid called the ‘dura.’ This clot of blood is on the outside of the dura and thus is ‘epi-dural.’ If it were under the dura, it would be ‘sub-dural’ ”), but the majority of the narrative avoids this problem. The supernatural elements are well developed and believable, creating scenes of insanity that feel truly consequential. Readers will be drawn in by the novel’s great characters, steady pace, and satisfying ending.
A fantastic medical and supernatural thriller with a memorable hero.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9798886330045
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Boutique of Quality Books
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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