Despite a few flaws, this tale’s inventive worldbuilding and appreciation for bloody thrills shine.
Evil emerges in a small coal town in this horror novel.
Something is attacking people in Blackrock, Pennsylvania. And it seems that the town’s miners are the first to encounter the phenomenon. When Hye Song disappears after cleaning himself up and getting a job in coal, his sister, Moon, hires private eye Ben Sawyer to investigate. What they find in Blackrock is a bit stranger than Ben’s usual cases. The whole town seems to be acting oddly. Professor Saladin Zewail, who teaches at a Penn State satellite in the area, is the first to notice something awry when a former student who was recently killed in a hit-and-run accident comes back to visit him. The dead are returning, and the event is connected to what happened in the mine. Ben, Moon, and Saladin eventually learn there is a supernatural explanation, a portal to a parallel universe from which doppelgängers of Blackrock’s population are trying to escape and replace their counterparts in this world. Still, this realm isn’t going to give up without a fight, and it’s up to Ben, Moon, and Saladin to close the portal and save the town. Brosky’s thriller is a bit slow to develop, especially concerning some of the secondary characters from the other world. And a subplot focusing on Ben’s family history of dementia feels tacked on. This story doesn’t need it: There is too much creepy fun to be had in the worlds the author has created. He shows he knows how to grab readers’ attention in the gory prologue, piling up bodies in the subterranean world of the shafts, where the darkness is so unrelenting that “the color black has a weight to it.” The tale is sometimes sluggish after that until the pieces come together in the third act. There is the clue of Saladin’s former student, but a more robust explanation of the details comes late, which doesn’t so much create suspense as confusion earlier on. Still, there is plenty here for horror fans to chew on, including the many ghastly delights of Smithwick’s mortuary, the best of which involve severed body parts attacking the undertaker. Overall, readers will find much to enjoy in this imperfect but original and entertaining story.
Despite a few flaws, this tale’s inventive worldbuilding and appreciation for bloody thrills shine.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73658-674-7
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Timber Ghost Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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