A compelling romantic thriller with appealing characters.
While running from his dangerous past, a man stumbles into his oldest crush’s hometown in Jolie’s novel.
Erik Lai is a professional hacker who changed his last name to Yeung as a protective measure. After deciding to separate from Spectre, a crime syndicate, he and his team (Wolf, Trevor, and Kairi) have been hunted by assassins. During the killers’ last attempt on their lives, they murdered Kairi’s fiance and forced the team to go deep into hiding. Erik’s company monitors the dark web for threats for the United States government and other organizations, so luckily for him and his team, they can do their work remotely. To help Kairi feel safe, they go back to the Napa Valley town where she grew up. Once there, Erik tracks Firefly, aka Vivi, an old gamer friend he’s never met in person, and discovers that she’s the owner of a small local bookstore. He doesn’t immediately tell her who he really is because he doesn’t want her to know that he tracked her IP address, which inevitably breaks an old promise they made to stay anonymous forever. In the process of getting to know Vivi, Erik finds himself struggling to decide whether he should stay with her or go back into hiding. Jolie gives the novel a strong start with a description of an assassin attempting to break into Erik’s home, which adds validity to the characters’ constant concerns about being attacked again. Jolie’s action scenes, suspense, and engaging plot developments make it easy for readers to put themselves in Erik’s shoes. Similarly, her talent for character development, as when Vivi banters with her grandfather and siblings, adds further depth and helps to build a cast of likable characters—even when Erik lacks a certain amount of social intelligence, as when he doesn’t understand why tracking someone’s IP address might be seen as intrusive.
A compelling romantic thriller with appealing characters.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Noctivity
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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