by Haylen Beck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 6, 2019
An adrenaline-pumping, anxiety-inducing thriller built around a core so sentimental it just might make you cry.
A woman risks everything for her child in Beck’s (Here and Gone, 2017) latest.
Libby is enjoying a well-deserved vacation with her 3-year-old son, Ethan, to celebrate her book contract. At the resort, she can pamper herself and enjoy spending time with her little boy, things that have been hard to do since her husband left them when Ethan was a baby. It was a long, difficult path to motherhood for Libby, and in the end, Mason just couldn’t deal with it. But she has Ethan now, and he is all she needs to feel complete. But when Ethan disappears while Libby literally has her back turned, her worst nightmare comes true. Because Ethan isn’t abducted by just anyone, but by someone who knows him and who calls him “Little Butterfly.” What is the true story of Ethan’s parentage? What secrets has Libby buried deep in the past? And who is willing to do anything to get revenge? There is a lingering sense of unease established in the very beginning of the novel—because the reader knows it’s a thriller, yes, and so something is going to go wrong—but even more because of Libby’s personality. She’s established as an overstressed single mom desperately worrying about everything. Her tight hold on Ethan can’t end well for either one of them—but the truth is completely mind-blowing. No spoilers here: The twists and turns are not only masterfully paced and layered, but so is the emotional impact. Once another perspective is offered within the narrative, this other character captures the reader’s sympathy—but it’s also true that while we may not always like Libby, she has our understanding, too. Beck plays both characters off one another until close to the end, unspooling tension to an almost unbearable breaking point.
An adrenaline-pumping, anxiety-inducing thriller built around a core so sentimental it just might make you cry.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-5958-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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