An entertaining love story with glamour, guns, and a Mexican accent.
A mechanical engineer falls for a mysterious man who helps her evade a drug cartel in McDavid’s debut romantic thriller, the first novel in her Border series.
Avery McAndrews flies from Denver to Zapata, Texas, for client Sam Rockforth. She’s there to perform an inspection at a Rockforth Petroleum facility. But Avery has entered an unofficial war zone for rival cartels: the Ramos family and the Contreras, each stealing crude oil and trying, sometimes lethally, to prevent the other from doing the same. At the facility, Avery has a run-in with Javier Ramos, son of the cartel boss, Diego. Before she can leave Texas, Javier has men abduct her and take her to Mexico. He thinks her billionaire client, Sam, will pay a ransom, but he also wants Avery to design a tunnel for transporting drugs. Diego’s Mexican attorney, Alejandro DeLeon Harrington, frees Avery from captivity for reasons she doesn’t yet understand. Getting her back to the U.S., however, won’t be easy, especially after Javier slaps a million-dollar bounty on her. Avery is drawn to handsome, chiseled Alejandro, who’s clearly more than a cartel stooge, and the two keep their heads down but their eyes focused primarily on each other as they fight to stay alive and get her to safety. McDavid’s story is often tense, as much of it has Avery and Alejandro dodging criminals. But their romance gets most of the spotlight, which works thanks to strong characterization. Avery, for one, is tenacious even in the most harrowing moments. Although the peril rarely lets up, some of Avery’s grievances are trivial, like having to hide out in a place with chickens or dye her red hair black (“I look like a witch!”). Nevertheless, watching the two grow close—in various ways—is delightful and perfectly suited to the narrative’s unwavering pace. There are also a few surprises, especially regarding Alejandro’s past.
An entertaining love story with glamour, guns, and a Mexican accent.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68291-939-2
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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