A fast-paced thriller that plays up the disorientating nature of isolated locations.
When a woman takes a caretaking job at a remote motel, she begins to wonder if she’s losing her mind. Sound familiar?
This take on The Shining—which is referenced on Page 3—opens as Kerry arrives at the empty, snow-covered Twilite Motel, in a sparsely populated area of upstate New York. She’s chosen to spend a month in this isolated location so she can write more and drink less. When she arrives, however, she doesn’t find the property in the state she expected. One room shows evidence of a recent party and someone—the prior caretaker or a forgotten guest?—possibly still in residence. As she tries to find the potential squatter, she’s horrified to discover a dead body buried in the snow. Due to the recent storm, power is out, and Kerry’s on her own with her dreadful discovery. As she trudges through the snow looking for help, she meets the owners of neighboring properties, each of whom seems more suspicious than the last. She also learns that the previous month’s caretaker was none other than her estranged best friend, Siobhan. Meanwhile, evidence keeps disappearing from the motel, making new acquaintances—and Kerry herself—doubt her sanity. As she tries to figure out what nefarious events occurred before she arrived, she grows increasingly concerned that she might be her own worst enemy. The book is told from Kerry’s perspective, with chapters narrated by Siobhan woven throughout. Full of creepiness and tenable red herrings, the story is solidly engaging, with the author offering just enough breadcrumbs to hint at the truth without giving anything away too soon. Both narrators are presented as potentially unreliable, and their voices can be hard to tell apart; also, drunkenness is overused as a device. Still, the setting of the secluded motel is evocative and entirely eerie, and the story is sufficiently dire to keep readers engaged. As the characters try to make sense of their situation while also tackling weighty issues like addiction and self-doubt, things eventually become clear.
A fast-paced thriller that plays up the disorientating nature of isolated locations.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593715895
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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