Hoop dreams with too much explaining to do.
After a member of the girls' high school basketball team in fictional Samhattan, Michigan, is gruesomely murdered, her surviving teammates fear an avenging ghost of local legend—a 7-foot woman named Daphne—is responsible—and is coming for the rest of them.
When Natasha Manksa relates the myth of Daphne to the rest of the team at a sleepover the night before a big game, no one is more freaked out than star player Kit Lamb, who is immediately overwhelmed with fear. Even as she wins the contest with a clutch free throw, Kit is consumed by the threat of Daphne, a one-time Samhattan baller who died a mysterious death many years ago. Then freshman-to-be Tammy Jones is found dead in her bedroom with “trauma to her face. To her head.” Could it have been Daphne? Kit suffers from intense anxiety, which she closely documents in her diary, and believes she is somehow responsible for Daphne’s return because she’s been thinking about her. As Daphne—who can be seen only by her victims but leaves behind the smells of smoke and whiskey—continues her murder spree, secrets from the town’s past begin to emerge. Daphne has inspired a cult following, perhaps because she’s covered in KISS makeup. Malerman, whose thrillers—including Bird Box (2014)—are uncommonly varied, now ventures into the teen sports territory owned by novelist Megan Abbott and the Showtime series Yellowjackets. Though he effectively captures the team’s group chemistry, this is one of his spottier efforts. Too much is invested in the theme of making a thing true “just by thinking about it”—and, ultimately, reversing that process—and the climax is convoluted. The book may well have fared better as the novella Malerman says he initially wrote.
Hoop dreams with too much explaining to do.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-15701-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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