A suspenseful tale of resilience that will resonate with anyone who has ever yearned for a fresh start.
Six years after a violent home invasion and the mysterious disappearance of their older cousin, two sisters begin to put together the pieces of what actually happened.
No one ever leaves the backwater town of Beaumont, Missouri. Amelia and Kylee Crow’s older cousin, Grace, comes closest to getting out—she was both at the top of her class and the first in their family to get into college—but all that changed the night she vanished while babysitting them. Years have passed since that fateful, bloody evening, and while most of Beaumont’s residents have moved on with their lives, Amelia can’t shake the feeling that the truth of what happened is still out there waiting to be found—and so is Grace, dead or alive. When the body of a young woman is discovered on a piece of property in town, old questions are dredged up, fingers are pointed, and Amelia and Kylee soon learn that their family might not be the only one with skeletons in the closet. The story is told in alternating sections, starting with chapters narrated by Amelia as she and Kylee search for answers, and then switching to chapters written from Grace’s point of view leading up to the night of her disappearance. Grace’s chapters help readers fill in the pieces that Amelia and Kylee struggle to put together, as well as emphasize the love that exists among all three girls in a world that is extremely unkind and violent toward young women. Where McHugh’s writing truly shines, however, is in her descriptions of the town of Beaumont and its residents. From Amelia and Kylee’s pole-dancer mother—who loves and deeply resents her daughters in equal measure—to the meatpacking plant where everyone works after high school, she deftly captures the hardships of a small and insular community with vivid detail.
A suspenseful tale of resilience that will resonate with anyone who has ever yearned for a fresh start.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593448854
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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