The prose is streamlined, the pace headlong, and the surprises satisfying on both sides of reality.
In a taut thriller with two timelines, both are packed with clever twists.
Jane and Esme Connor are sisters, but it’s been years since they were close. When they were teenagers, Esme was seriously injured in a car crash with Jane at the wheel, and things have never been the same. Now they’re in their 20s; Jane has a lucrative job at a financial firm, while Esme has married into a wealthy, socially prominent family. The sisters have recently moved their mother, Marjorie, into a memory care facility, and Jane, the dutiful one, is living in the family home in Connecticut to help care for her. (Marjorie and the girls’ father, Ivy League professor Carl, divorced acrimoniously years ago.) Self-involved Esme, an aspiring writer who never seems to write, is living her busy social life in Manhattan. Then one night she calls Jane, distraught. She’s left her husband and wants Jane to come pick her up at a Midtown bar. That’s the point at which this thriller divides into two timelines: one in which Jane drives through a storm and brings her sister home, and one in which Jane, tired of being used by Esme, tells her no—and Esme vanishes. Jane narrates both timelines, which track clearly in alternating chapters. In both plots, Jane is dealing with a recent breakup with her doctor boyfriend, Jamie, and rekindling a relationship with her teenage crush, Dylan, but with very different results. Esme’s disappearance leads Jane into a desperate search for her sister, but in the other timeline, Jane’s rescue of Esme results in a different set of complications and perils. Frick skillfully builds details into one plot that morph into something shockingly different in the other.
The prose is streamlined, the pace headlong, and the surprises satisfying on both sides of reality.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9781668022474
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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
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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