Celebrates and empowers the women who bear witness to injustice and tell about it.
A college student is forced to face past cruelties and mistakes when a childhood friend is murdered.
Rachel Nardelli, a senior at Denman College, feels stuck and uncertain about her future. She’s isolated herself from her fellow journalism students, committed instead to her toxic boyfriend, Cam, who flirts with freshman girls during the epic parties he throws in his dorm room while Rachel drinks to the point of blacking out. One night she thinks she sees Alison Petrucci, a friend from her childhood, leaving one of Cam’s parties; when her former friend’s body is discovered the next morning, Rachel is forced to reveal some of her darkest, most shameful adolescent memories as the journalism team investigates. The novel unfolds through these two timelines: the present day, as the journalism students look into Alison’s murder with the help of Michaela Stannard, a sympathetic faculty member; and the past, where we learn about how Rachel and Alison became best friends—and then how the friendship was picked apart and destroyed. There is a mystery here, but the book is more truly an exploration of adolescent friendship, bullying, and social pressures, plus the guilt that follows these broken relationships. Secondarily, it’s a condemnation of male misbehavior and entitlement. And thirdly, it’s a story of how a young writer finds her path with the right guidance and support. Rachel doesn’t always come across as the most relatable or sympathetic protagonist, but she is shatteringly human, and in that authenticity lies her appeal. “Be bold, write about the things you care about, not just the things you think you should,” Stannard challenges Rachel in the end. And so, Rachel—and Russo—do.
Celebrates and empowers the women who bear witness to injustice and tell about it.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780593850688
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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