Come for the not-so-bad whodunit, stay for the whip-smart, heart-hurt, very entertaining heroine.
When her estranged ex–reality-star younger sister turns up shoeless and dead of an overdose on a Bronx playground, Lena Scott has to prove to herself—and everyone else—that it was not an accident.
Lena may be just 28, but she’s as hard-boiled as a millennial gets. A loner, she hasn’t had a relationship with her hip-hop–mogul father since she was 4; her mother and grandmother both died five years ago; and she hasn’t seen her best friend, who’s burying herself in a master’s program in nonprofit management at Columbia, in a year. A fan of friends with benefits, she’s “never been big on relationships.” She doesn’t even do social media except to keep tabs on her sister, Desiree, another exile from her life after Desiree's DUI two years ago. Since the police have zero interest in pursuing what Lena knows are suspicious circumstances around Desiree’s demise, she hits the streets, uptown and down, by foot and bike, mass transit, and Uber, tracking down leads with baby sister’s friends, flings, and—uncomfortably for her—family. If the first 60 pages have a few too many implausibilities (ubiquitous dashing reporters) and bad similes (“her eyes were as dry as my sex life”) and the last 60 devolve into eye-glazing digital forensics (“I was about to close Safari when I noticed the GoFundMe site”) and a rushed, too-pat end, everything in between crackles. The writing is sharp, the commentary wry, and Lena is irresistible: “I’d never wanted to see a cop more in my twenty-eight years of being Black.”
Come for the not-so-bad whodunit, stay for the whip-smart, heart-hurt, very entertaining heroine.Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-25670-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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