Light on suspense but still a solid page-turner.
When a devoted husband and father disappears, his wife and daughter set out to find him.
Hannah Hall is deeply in love with her husband of one year, Owen Michaels. She’s also determined to win over his 16-year-old daughter, Bailey, who has made it very clear that she’s not thrilled with her new stepmother. Despite the drama, the family is mostly a happy one. They live in a lovely houseboat in Sausalito; Hannah is a woodturner whose handmade furniture brings in high-dollar clientele; and Owen works for The Shop, a successful tech firm. Their lives are shattered, however, when Hannah receives a note saying “Protect her” and can’t reach Owen by phone. Then there’s the bag full of cash Bailey finds in her school locker and the shocking news that The Shop’s CEO has been taken into custody. Hannah learns that the FBI has been investigating the firm for about a year regarding some hot new software they took to market before it was fully functional, falsifying their financial statements. Hannah refuses to believe her husband is involved in the fraud, and a U.S. marshal assigned to the case claims Owen isn’t a suspect. Hannah doesn’t know whom to trust, though, and she and Bailey resolve to root out the clues that might lead to Owen. They must also learn to trust one another. Hannah’s narrative alternates past and present, detailing her early days with Owen alongside her current hunt for him, and author Dave throws in a touch of danger and a few surprises. But what really drives the story is the evolving nature of Hannah and Bailey’s relationship, which is by turns poignant and frustrating but always realistic.
Light on suspense but still a solid page-turner.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7134-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
An irresistible hook, endless intricate complications, plucked heartstrings aplenty, and an inevitably disappointing windup.
Twenty-two years after waking up in Spain fouled with the blood of his lover of five days, an unlicensed investigator sees her alive once more in this dizzying standalone mystery.
Or maybe not. There’s no indication that anyone’s seen the woman Sami Kierce knew only as Anna since their last night together, which ended when he woke up in her bed clutching a bloody knife. And although the woman who crashes No Shit, Sherlock, the class Sami’s run for wannabe investigators ever since getting bounced from the NYPD after a rooftop pursuit left his quarry dead, looks just like Anna—well, it’s been over two decades, and all the evidence points to her actually being Victoria Belmond, the daughter of self-made millionaire Archie Belmond. Victoria has her own troubled history. She vanished from a New Year’s Eve party she was co-hosting three years before Sami’s fling with Anna and wasn’t seen again, except maybe by Sami, for 11 long years. Already unsettled because Tad Grayson, who was convicted on Sami’s testimony of murdering Nicole Brett, Sami’s fiancée, has been released because the court can’t trust the testimony of a dishonored cop, Sami meets with Belmond, who offers to share some personal information with him along with $100,000 if he signs a nondisclosure agreement and then offers half a million to dig up the truth behind Victoria’s presumed kidnapping. Just what is the truth about Anna? As Sami puts it: “She was Victoria. And she was not.”
An irresistible hook, endless intricate complications, plucked heartstrings aplenty, and an inevitably disappointing windup.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781538756355
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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