A finely wrought, character-driven thriller with a propulsive and satisfying climax.
When people who inflict violence get away with it, does murder become justice—and justified?
Penny Albright is just a few shifts away from completing her training as a cop in Kennesaw, Georgia, when she pulls her first murder scene. She’s shocked to realize she knows the victim: Danny Bowery, one of three men who raped her twin sister, Nix, several years ago, sending her into a spiral that ended in her eventual death by overdose. In a nearby alley, Penny finds a woman covered in blood. Penny doesn’t arrest the woman, Thalia Gray, even though Penny knows Thalia is “a stone-cold killer”; she confiscates Thalia’s knife and lets her get away. Hiding the weapon, and now complicit, Penny can’t stop thinking about Thalia even as her own family drama clamors for attention. Penny’s teenage niece, Shadow, has been suspended from school for hacking, and her wandering influencer brother, Shadow’s father, Gand, arrives in his converted school bus—but for how long? Then Nix’s ex-boyfriend, Michael Sullivan, reaches out, having heard about the murder. Penny knows the man Thalia murdered was not the first of Nix’s attackers to die; Xav Castillo was killed right around the second anniversary of Nix’s death. Did Thalia know Nix? Is she on a revenge tour for Penny’s sister—or does Thalia have a sister story of her own? Is the third attacker now in danger? Caught up in fear and admiration for Thalia, Penny is willing to sacrifice her budding career to find out the truth about this woman and perhaps even help her. For Penny, “life [is] made almost entirely out of stories about sisters,” and this is indeed a sister story—about how far into the flames they will walk for one another and about how this love burns fiercely, even after death. Jackson’s mystery is tight and breathless, but it’s the characters who shine, especially smart, loyal, wounded Penny, but also her cast of supporting family members, her tough but fair mentor, and steel-eyed Thalia.
A finely wrought, character-driven thriller with a propulsive and satisfying climax.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9780063158719
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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
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
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