Melodrama of the first order, but frightening all the same.
A social worker with a traumatic past goes undercover to save a patient to whom she bears a strange resemblance.
By day, Thea offers art therapy to patients in a New York psychiatric ward; by night, she drinks too much and obsesses about how she was groomed by her pastor as a teenager, and the impact his abuse continues to have on her life. When a catatonic patient is admitted to the ward, Thea is shocked and excited to discover that it’s Catherine O’Brien, star of Stargirl, a movie that sparked a lot of her teenage fantasies, and who could almost be her twin. When Catherine is signed out from the ward by two people pretending to be her parents, Thea decides to follow a few breadcrumbs the former actor seems to have left her—most notably, a podcast recorded by people named Moon and Sol, who run something called the Center for Relational Healing in the New Mexico desert. Thea signs up for retreat at the CRH, and when she arrives, she’s shocked to see Jonah, a guy with whom she’d nearly had a one-night stand back in New York. He says he’s actually a private investigator hired by Catherine’s family to find her. Aligned in their goal, Thea and Jonah sneak around trying to dig into Moon and Sol’s secrets, while still attending the sessions meant to break open their relationship blockages and help them connect to past lives. Clearly, there’s something sinister going on, and when they do find Catherine, their fears are amplified rather than assuaged. Bartz takes her novel, and its characters, to places beyond where other authors stop short; this is a harrowing story that tackles human vulnerability head-on. She shows us how evil actors can take full advantage of people in pain for their own material and psychic gain and how emotionally susceptible people can make tragic decisions.
Melodrama of the first order, but frightening all the same.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781982199494
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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
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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