Whatever the opposite of family values is, Rouda seems intent on perfecting a genre that enshrines it.
A woman's sudden decision to move into a house being sold by a minister and his wife exposes fault lines that undermine virtually every relationship in Orange County.
After a teasing frame that shows an unnamed woman terrified by the realization that there’s a man inside her home, the narrative rewinds two days to show the Rev. Doug Dean and his second wife, former Sunday school teacher Sandi, turning over the keys to their Oceanside home to Julie Cohen. Julie, an aesthetician and office manager who apparently had every cosmetic surgery imaginable before she was plucked from her job by big-time real estate developer Roger Jones, has secretly taken their 17-year-old daughter, Jess, and left him and his checkbook for good. Roger, not the type to take this kind of behavior lying down, schemes with an amusingly interchangeable roster of attorneys to cajole her into returning. Jess, a high school student who can’t understand why her mother would undermine her seamless transition to USC, flirts with Tom Dean, a self-described incel who’s refused to follow his father’s orders and leave the carriage house on the property. The power dynamics are seriously complicated by a self-inflicted set of one-two punches: Jess is caught on viral video in a prominent position at a drunken party at which a round of beer pong turns into a queasy game of Nazis vs. Jews, and a pair of FBI agents arrest her father on a moral charge. If the circular firing squad that follows lacks the inevitability of the conflict in The Next Wife(2021), it allows more room for readers to wonder how things could possibly get worse.
Whatever the opposite of family values is, Rouda seems intent on perfecting a genre that enshrines it.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2611-6
Page Count: 229
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
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
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.
An author is targeted by a fan who just can’t let her go.
Arden Bowie has had plenty of tragedy in her life, but now she’s finally on top. After her parents died when she was a teenager, she moved from Brooklyn to Ohio to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She soon became part of their loving family and grew up to become a writer and bookseller. When her debut novel is published, she meets Dustin Dubecki at her first event. He showers her with praise, asks for writing advice, and wants to take her out for coffee. Arden tells herself he’s just a little awkward, but then he keeps showing up at her local events—and, even stranger, she’s sure she sees him lurking at her event in New York City. When he bursts into her apartment one night and assaults her, Arden’s calm life is shattered. Dustin gets a five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility; Arden spends most of that time rebuilding her sense of stability. Eventually, she moves to Oregon to start a new life where Dustin can never find her. But even though she has a beautiful home, a thriving career, a doting family, new friends, and even a potential love interest in a former cop named Gideon Riley, Arden can’t escape Dustin’s rage when his sentence is finally up. Roberts toggles between Arden’s point of view and Dustin’s, giving the reader occasional glimpses into his extremely twisted mindset. Although Arden’s attempts to escape Dustin are engrossing, the story stalls in the middle when far too many pages are dedicated to Arden purchasing and decorating a house. But the excitement picks back up when Dustin, a truly odious villain, re-enters the story. It’s also satisfying to see Arden grow into someone who refuses to be a victim, even as she deals with horrifying circumstances.
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250413581
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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