A dark, suspenseful tale about self-discovery—with a disappointing twist at the story’s end.
Powered by a decidedly Twilight Zone–esque undertone, this novella follows a lawyer’s slow descent into madness as he searches for an acquaintance who inexplicably ceases to exist.
Growing up in 1960s Dallas, Simon Steed is considered the “weird” kid. He is impressively bright but shy and socially awkward. And his childhood is filled with bizarre accidents. In kindergarten, a girl whom he doesn’t like trips and sustains a scary head injury. In sixth grade, a boy who mocked him for not being chosen for school safety patrol dies in a freak gym accident. A callous junior high school vice principal is seriously injured during a pep rally. High school bullies, who happen to be football players, have their lives irrevocably changed by a deadly drunk-driving car accident. At some point, Simon realizes that his thoughts can influence events in the external world and he tries hard to suppress the negative feelings. While attending the University of Texas at Austin, he has a peculiar experience with a student named Monica Storm, who invites him on a date (“She’s so cool. I can’t believe she’s interested in me!”) but then never shows. After Simon hears about a reported suicide by a woman called Monica, who jumped from the university’s iconic tower, he is even more confused as the facts simply don’t add up. He eventually moves on with his life and becomes a criminal defense attorney but he never forgets about Monica’s strange appearance and disappearance. When he attempts to get a sex worker free from an abusive pimp, the mystery of Monica is finally revealed. Lively skillfully embraces the twisty Twilight Zonestructure as he keeps readers guessing until the very end: Does Simon have paranormal abilities; are the tragedies simply coincidences; or is he delusional? As the unusual events become more frequent and the tension rises in Simon’s life, the engrossing story’s focus is on the anticipated brass knuckle punch of a revelation at the conclusion. But the explanation comes with very little thematic power, leaving readers underwhelmed after such a taut, well-plotted buildup.
A dark, suspenseful tale about self-discovery—with a disappointing twist at the story’s end.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-1959127123
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Treaty Oak Publishers
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2023
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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