by Kate Watterson ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 9, 2019
As much about a budding relationship as about a ticking-clock search for evidence.
Getting caught in a storm can’t stop a determined doctor in her quest for the evidence to put her childhood friend’s killer away for good.
Trapped in her car during a Midwestern snowstorm, Dr. Cadence Lawrence is preparing for what will happen when her body is found days later when help arrives—or does it?—in the form of the only other driver foolish enough to be out in the weather. Like Cadence, Mick McCutcheon had been testing his luck by going out when the weather report called for dangerous conditions, and he stops to pick up Cadence as an act of mercy. Cadence is anything but thankful. She’s been around long enough not to trust a man who wants to help her out of the goodness of his own heart. Her mistrust may come from her adolescence, when her best friend, Melissa, was kidnapped and likely killed by her controlling boyfriend, Dirk Lyons. Lyons has gone free for years. It wasn’t until very recently that Cadence stumbled on him all too coincidentally. In fact, Cadence was convinced he was stalking her and was in the process of leaving town to escape him when she got caught in the storm. Now that she’s been rescued by Mick, she can’t help feeling suspicious of his intentions. But the heat between Cadence and Mick is too much for either of them to deny as they’re trapped in his house, well off the beaten path, where they try to weather the storm. Meanwhile, FBI Agent Thea Benedict is trying in vain to contact Cadence. There’s disturbing news about Lyons’ latest activity, and Thea fears that he may have Cadence in his sights. While Cadence ponders what evidence could put Lyons away, Thea tries to track Cadence to make sure she’s not next on Lyons’ list. The higher stakes intensify the drama of this one-off departure from Watterson’s franchise series (Severed, 2018, etc.).
As much about a budding relationship as about a ticking-clock search for evidence.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68331-762-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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