Missing the je ne sais quoi that makes a silly thriller built on clichés and stereotypes fun.
Deep in the Mexican jungle, a New York model wrangles with a cult leader for the estate she's inherited from her uncle.
"A stately pleasure-dome" à la Kubla Khan was the inspiration of self-help author/vitamin magnate Paul Bentzen when he created a retreat center called Xanadu on the grounds of an isolated villa built by a drug lord, empty and languishing on the real estate market after a mass killing ended the kingpin's reign. Though she has warm childhood memories of her uncle Paul, Svetlana Bentzen and her widowed single mother became estranged from him for reasons she has never fully understood. Therefore it's quite a surprise when she learns that he's died and left her his entire estate—$180 million, as Chase, her dishwater-dull fiance, learns when he asks Alexa. Why wouldn't the man leave it all to Kali, the common-law wife with whom he ran The Mandala, a spiritual program which requires aspirants to abandon their lives and move to Xanadu? With her engagement to Chase on the rocks, Sveta travels down alone, though luckily she's joined at the last minute by Lucas Baranquilla, a handsome lawyer whose late father worked with her uncle (and whom she'd hooked up with as a teen). At Xanadu, the pair quickly learn that Uncle Paul's death was far from straightforward and that Kali has both some disturbingly potent herbal tea recipes and an alternate version of the will that was signed at the last minute. Sveta, who has her doubts about wealth and the wealthy, might not have put up much of a fuss, but when she finds out that forced dieting and body-shaming are part of the quest for enlightenment, it really rubs her the wrong way. For all the intriguing issues addressed in the book—jungle psychedelics, spiritual faddism, cultural appropriation, and more—it lacks the satiric edge of St. John's debut, The Lion's Den (2020), and the plot is marred by unnecessary complications with hasty resolutions.
Missing the je ne sais quoi that makes a silly thriller built on clichés and stereotypes fun.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-322405-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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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