A mesmerizing family tale, as compelling as it is artfully bizarre.
In this novel, a medical student is kidnapped—an experience that proves both emotionally illuminating and harrowing.
Hanna Bloom is a highly motivated overachiever—the valedictorian of her high school class, she’s accepted into Northwestern University’s prestigious seven-year medical program. Her goal is to become a doctor just like her father, Roger, an objective she pursues doggedly to the exclusion of a normal social life—she never bothers to make close friends, and she enters college a virgin. But her ambitious career plans are waylaid unexpectedly when she’s abducted by a woman—she comes to know her only as Mama—who blames Roger for the death of her husband, Charlie. From the beginning, Hanna’s relationship with Mama is terribly complex—on the one hand, the woman is her captor, but on the other hand, she is her “protector.” Mama shields Hanna from the sexual harassment of Luke and Chris, two of her three sons. In a bizarre enactment of what Mama considers biblical morality, she chillingly explains her plan for revenge: “In the Bible it says a tooth for a tooth. Instead of killing you, I’ve decided that you will marry one of my sons and have his children. In that way, my husband’s legacy will continue, and your family and mine will be even.” Hanna chooses Ben, the gentlest of the available options. Goldsmith sensitively examines the peculiar psychological transformation of Hanna, who comes to love Mama and Ben and embrace her new life, as well as the difficulty her parents experience coming to grips with her choices. The author’s writing style is plain and poetically unembellished, even bordering on anodyne. But the plot has a strange power of its own—it is by turns unsettlingly creepy and psychologically captivating. Hanna’s own mental health is tantalizingly presented as an unanswered question—readers are left to decipher her extraordinary decisions, and for that reason, the story will haunt them long after finishing the novel.
A mesmerizing family tale, as compelling as it is artfully bizarre.Pub Date: May 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781669860938
Page Count: 211
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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