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
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
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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