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
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
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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