A tense and engaging womancentric thriller.
Two women risk everything to leave their troubled lives behind.
In just a week, Claire Cook’s husband, Rory, will announce his campaign to be a U.S. senator from New York. No surprise there, since his family is chock full of high-profile politicians. As Rory’s wife, the poised and beautiful Claire seems to lead a charmed life, but it’s getting harder to hide the bruises under a carefully cultivated veneer of elegance. Claire tried to leave him once, an attempt that ended with cracked ribs. But this time, she’s ready. She’s been squirreling away cash, she’s secured a fake ID and passport, and a trip to Detroit will provide the perfect opportunity to make her escape. However, before Claire leaves for the airport, Rory decides to send her to Puerto Rico to meet with a humanitarian group instead of going to Detroit. Even worse, Rory goes to Detroit in her place and intercepts the package containing her cash and papers. At JFK, Claire, seemingly by chance, meets Eva, a grieving woman looking to make a new start after her husband’s death. Claire suggests that Eva take her flight to Puerto Rico, and Claire will head to Eva’s home in Berkeley, where she’ll attempt to slip into Eva’s life. After touching down, Claire learns that Eva’s plane crashed and Claire is presumed dead, but she’s not out of the woods yet. Claire cleverly set up a way to keep track of Rory’s messages to his head honcho, and when evidence suggests that Eva might not have actually been on that doomed plane, Claire's plans take on a new urgency and it’s revealed that Eva’s story masked a dark truth. Propulsive prose drives Clark’s tale of the intersecting lives of these two smart and resourceful women, and emphasis is placed on the importance of female friendship and support. Readers will surely find themselves hopelessly invested in Claire's and Eva’s ultimate fates.
A tense and engaging womancentric thriller.Pub Date: June 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7282-1572-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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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