Standard psychological thriller fare that hits all the expected marks.
A new mother with a troubled personal life discovers that the wealthy, picture-perfect neighborhood she walks through every evening isn’t so perfect after all in Sadera’s novel.
Every night, Caroline Case pushes her newborn daughter Emmy through an affluent upstate New York neighborhood, where she can’t fight the urge to spy on the far more glamorous lives of the wealthy and privileged. Nothing in her life is as perfect as the families she sees through their blindless windows—she’s dealing with an emotionally absent husband, grief over her recently deceased mother, her colicky new baby, and depression (“The postpartum meds hadn’t worked, and I wasn’t able to sleep without Xanax”). The only thing that gets Caroline through the long days of sleeplessness and child rearing is her nightly walk throughDeer Crossing. Her latest subject of surveillance is Jane Brockton, who is embroiled in an affair with one of her neighbors. But when Jane confronts Caroline, the interloper pulls back from watching her so closely to focus on another couple in the neighborhood. Melanie is having an affair, too, but her story takes a deadly turn when Caroline witnesses her murder. Or did she? Caroline might not be the most reliable narrator, as her mental health is on the decline. (She drinks wine at all hours of the day in her empty home and no longer speaks to anyone aside from her alcoholic neighbor Mary.) She’s also on the outs with her only friend, Muzzy Owen, after learning of her affair with Caroline’s husband. Still, Caroline won’t be so easily deterred from this mystery—even when the stakes grow deadly. The novel is split into two halves. The first is a slow burn; the second has more twists and turns to keep readers engaged as they must keep track of each new revelation. Caroline is a typical unreliable narrator who sows seeds of distrust—readers will oscillate between condemning her actions and rooting for her despite it all. The mystery at the heart of the narrative is resolved in a surprising and satisfying way.
Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780744310955
Page Count: 352
Publisher: CamCat Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2025
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
