Slyly escalating head games that will make you think twice about booking that next getaway.
A group of university friends who’ve flown to an island paradise to mark the passing of one of their number finds that her death has brought the conflicts among the survivors to a boil.
Lissa Kateb, Georgie Ayers, and Bronwyn Miller were all competitive swimmers when they were in school together. So it seems especially ironic that Lissa has drowned in Kanu Cove, where her husband, Jem Kateb, manages a luxury resort. Now that the survivors have accepted Jem’s offer of free accommodations on the occasion of Lissa’s memorial service, cracks gradually begin to appear in their nostalgic group portrait. Years ago, Bron had cheated on her husband, Rob Miller, with Lissa’s first husband, Graeme Williams, who’s since died. Eternal singleton Georgie’s friendship with Lissa looks more and more like a rivalry. Nor are all the group’s problems in the present. Someone is sending Bron and Georgie mocking, vaguely threatening notes. Someone attacks Georgie—maybe a mugger, maybe someone after a bigger prize than her money. The sudden resignation of Jem’s assistant manager, Cristina, coincides all too neatly with the news that the resort is bleeding money and that Lissa’s high school buddy Duncan, a private equity powerhouse, has a larger stake in it than Georgie or Bron ever suspected. The question of whether Cristina has been embezzling only deepens when she turns up shot to death. As the paying guests drift away, the old school friends, left to ask how Lissa could possibly have drowned, realize that “once you suspect one of us, you have to suspect all of us.”
Slyly escalating head games that will make you think twice about booking that next getaway.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593098-69-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.
Following the mysterious disappearance of his wife, a struggling London novelist journeys to a remote Scottish island to try to get his mojo back—but all, of course, is not what it seems.
Grady Green hits the pinnacle of his publishing career on the same night that his life goes off the rails—first his book lands on the New York Times bestseller list, and then his wife, Abby, goes missing on her way home. A year later, Grady is a mere shadow of his former self: out of money and out of ideas. So, when his agent, Abby’s godmother, suggests that he spend some time on the Isle of Amberly, in a log cabin left to her by one of her writers, it seems as good a plan as any. With free housing for himself and his dog and a beautiful, distraction-free environment, maybe he can finally complete the next novel. But from the very beginning, Grady’s experiences with Amberly seem weird, if not downright ominous: As a visitor, he’s not allowed to bring his car onto the island; the local businesses are only open for a few hours at a time; and there are no birds. At all. Not to mention the skeletal hand he finds buried under the floorboards of the cabin, the creepy harmonica music in the woods, and the occasional sighting of a woman in a red coat who’s a dead ringer for Abby. As Grady falls deeper and deeper into insomnia and alcoholism, he begins to realize his being on the island is no accident—and that should make him very afraid. Through occasional chapters from before Abby’s disappearance, told from her point of view, we learn that Grady is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and the book’s slow unfolding of dread, mystery, and then truth is both creative and well-paced. Every chapter heading is an oxymoron, like the title, reminding us of the contradictions at the heart of every story.
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781250337788
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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