Misdirection, shadows, and a lot of snarky meanness—but in the end, it’s all surface drama.
Coming home to London to confront her past, Sadie Roper finds herself embroiled in several mysteries.
When Sadie left for New York with her husband and her daughter, her mother made it perfectly clear that she was a failure for choosing motherhood over her job and that she’d never be welcome in her childhood home again. But when her mother dies, she leaves Sadie the home in her will—with the stipulation that Sadie’s daughter, Robin, must attend Ashams, the prestigious private school where Sadie went. Her marriage already in tatters, Sadie flees back to London; she has little choice but to adhere to the terms of the will. Returning to a house of gloomy memories, bearing the weight of her daughter’s disappointment and homesickness, she struggles to find her footing. The school mothers are the worst, and the Queen Bee, Julia, has all the other women wrapped around her little finger. She makes Sadie's and Robin’s lives a living hell—until she finds out that Sadie is an Ashams "old girl." Connection and legacy go a long way, and Sadie and Robin are soon invited to parties and sleepovers, part of the inner circle. Meanwhile, Sadie, trained as a barrister but having left work when Robin was born, finds a job helping to organize materials for an upcoming trial in which a young woman has accused her teacher of sexual abuse. As she begins to wonder about the truth of that relationship, a tragedy strikes close to home, and then Robin goes missing. What is the rot at the heart of Ashams? And whom can Sadie trust to help her uncover the truth about the case? The characters are sharply drawn, but there’s not much depth to the plot.
Misdirection, shadows, and a lot of snarky meanness—but in the end, it’s all surface drama.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-6275-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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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