Billed as a thriller but more satisfying as historical fiction; the rich story behind van Gogh’s success earns the spotlight.
A dual storyline connected by van Gogh’s legacy, the woman who first championed his art, and the women now fighting to protect it.
Before Vincent van Gogh was a household name, he died having sold barely any of his work: This is a familiar tale, and yet the name “Jo van Gogh” is rarely part of it. In 1996 Paris, Stella Swanson, an elderly woman married into a family of art dealers, reveals her connection to Jo in confidence to her housekeeper, Emma, an American art student struggling to make ends meet. Stella’s grandmother Claire was the longtime companion to Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law, Jo. Through Claire’s storyline in the 1890s, we learn that after her husband Theo’s death, Jo took it upon herself to continue his work of introducing Vincent’s art to the world—and Claire was vital to Jo’s success. Back in 1996, as Emma spends more time with Stella, she begins to share Stella’s sentiment that she was wronged by the Swanson family after her husband died. After devoting her life to the Swanson legacy, she’s been completely shut out, the precious art lining her salon walls now returned to the company collection. Stella introduces Emma to her step-grandson, Matthew, who works at the helm of the Swanson empire along with his sister, Caroline. Unlike Caroline, Matthew is sympathetic toward Stella and reveals some less-than-favorable information about Swanson’s business practices. Emma finds herself neck-deep in a plot with her roommates, emboldened to help Stella and unravel a massive art fraud in the process. “Every artist or art lover has thought at some point about how they would steal a painting from a famous museum,” she thinks. Well, if that’s true, it might explain why the plot to break in to the Musée d’Orsay is overly simple (Ocean’s 8 this is not). The modern storyline is fast-paced and cinematic, sacrificing character development for action. It’s easiest to root for Claire, whose perspective brings Jo van Gogh and her contributions to life in full color.
Billed as a thriller but more satisfying as historical fiction; the rich story behind van Gogh’s success earns the spotlight.Pub Date: July 14, 2026
ISBN: 9798217046492
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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