A thoughtfully written, suspenseful story of intertwined lives that draws the reader quickly along to an unexpected ending.
An Instagram influencer living in Atlanta finds herself at the center of a revenge plot—but is it aimed at her or her husband?
@UnapologeticallyAlex is many things: She's Alex Hutchinson, 39; mother of twin 12-year-olds Penelope and Gigi; a cheerful, supportive Instagram influencer who's proud of herself, pregnancy stretch marks and all; and wife to Patrick, 46, a “self-made moneyman” and nightly news personality. She is also very, very fake, from her perfect photos to her bleached teeth, false eyelashes, and plastic surgery. The night she hits a million followers on Instagram, she gets extremely drunk with AC, her personal assistant, and her husband has to put AC into an Uber and pour Alex into bed. When she wakes up the next morning, she’s unexpectedly gone viral with a post she made while plastered. @UnapologeticallyAlex has done the opposite of what her fans have come to expect: She’s called out a 16-year-old celebrity for being a “two-bit whore” with the “brains of a dodo bird.” When she starts thinking about damage control, she realizes that AC is missing. And then her life starts to unravel—the death and rape threats against her and her girls begin and then get worse, she is doxxed, and her husband gets more and more evasive as the police look into him in their efforts to find the missing AC. Alex’s and Patrick’s stories parallel another: Anna Claire is a maid in a divey motel, picked up and delivered to work one day by a rich, sunglasses-clad stranger in a BMW when her car is put out of commission by a flat. He wines and dines her, and she ends up pregnant and laundering money for him—moving enormous amounts of cash through the motel where she works. The stories touch on murder, torture, implied rape, and violent threats without glorifying graphic details.
A thoughtfully written, suspenseful story of intertwined lives that draws the reader quickly along to an unexpected ending.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-778-33325-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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