Myles’ sharp sense of the objects and perks that spell entitlement isn’t enough to save this inflated, overdetailed affair.
Television producer Myles’ debut novel anatomizes the ways three points in a stratospheric Los Angeles triangle can screw, and screw with, each other.
Despite their opulent lifestyle, Emily Webb’s marriage to serial adulterer Doug Markham is less like a fairy-tale romance than a strategic alliance between Beyond the Brand, Doug’s market research firm, and RFG Entertainment, the talent agency to which Emily preemptively lured her star client, lifestyle guru Dr. Maryn, when she was at the point of leaving Emily’s old agency. The come-on Emily and Doug dangled was data mining, a neglected revenue stream based on the scads of personal information Dr. Maryn’s clients shared with her. But there are several flies in the ointment. In order to launch his own pet project, a portable EEG that registers its wearer’s levels of engagement with goods and experiences whose merchants would love to know more about, Doug needs more money, so he teams up with tech consultant Erik Powell to sell medical information they’ve stolen from Dr. Maryn’s database. Dr. Maryn continues to have strong opinions of her own, some of them highly ethical, others not so much. Most disruptive of all is Doug’s receptionist, Chloe, whom he sends to Emily hoping that RFG can represent her on the strength of her work with Common Parlance, a pop-up performing troupe. Chloe and Emily don’t bond, but Chloe and Doug do, early and often. When her romance with Doug has run its all-too-predictable course, Chloe is unexpectedly taken up by Emily, who has ideas of her own about how best to turn the situation to her advantage. But so, it turns out, does Chloe.
Myles’ sharp sense of the objects and perks that spell entitlement isn’t enough to save this inflated, overdetailed affair.Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2745-8
Page Count: 385
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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