An uneven pace is elevated by a charismatic and complex main character.
While on a book tour, a bestselling author begins to realize the steep price of fame and fortune.
Three years after publicly quitting her job under the hashtag #MomsWithDreams, Tessa Calloway has not only spent more time with her young children, she’s also written a bestselling novel about the strong and feisty character Annabelle Brown. But weeks into a national tour, she’s starting to question the balance of what she’s lost against what she’s gained; every day brings a new flight, a new hotel, a new event, and then barely time to FaceTime her husband, Henry, and kids, Linny and Zack, before tumbling into bed and waking at dawn to do it all again. The crowds are flattering, but she’s sliding into overwhelmed. You can’t keep a good storyteller down, though, so when Tessa discovers a delicate locket holding a family picture inside a hotel nightstand, she uses her social media clout to see if she can find “Locket Mom.” Despite the immediate interest of her fans, no news arises, and then Tessa begins to notice odd little incidents that, taken together, seem to point to something possibly more sinister. For one, she keeps getting questions at her events about where she grew up, which is a closely guarded secret because of a “bad thing” in her past. Has someone found out the truth? And if so, how far will they go to tear her down? Tessa is a well-developed and likable character, but there’s something a bit off about the rhythm of the novel. It takes a long time to establish a true sense of threat and how it relates to Tessa’s shadowy past, and Tessa’s guilt and paranoia begin to feel wearying, rather than sympathetic. But once the blackmail plot gets going, the pace picks up and the story unspools smoothly. The novel begins by interrogating the “have it all” myth, but twists its way into a thriller by the end.
An uneven pace is elevated by a charismatic and complex main character.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781250349996
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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
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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