A hard-to-believe setup and unsatisfying conclusion mar this thriller.
A sexual game goes dangerously wrong for two couples in this domestic thriller.
Elena and Adam feel lucky when they move to Wimbledon Village to housesit for Adam’s aunt. Their old flat in London was tiny, their neighbors loud. Now they marvel over the shops and pubs and adore their peaceful nights. That peace is doomed, however, when Elena meets Sophia at a local coffee shop and strikes up a friendship with her. Sophia and her husband, Finn, are glamorous and gorgeous, with a casual way around money that impresses Elena, who didn’t grow up in a wealthy home. But their friendship takes a dark turn when Sophia suggests she and Elena swap husbands for a night without telling Adam and Finn. Relying on blackout curtains, uncharged cell phones, and strategically unscrewed light bulbs, Sophia says, they can have naughty fun and their partners will never know. This plan does not seem likely to succeed in any way in real life, of course. Elena is reluctant at first, but as her relationship with Adam begins to fray and she finds herself attracted to Finn, the swap seems more appealing. But what starts out as a playful romp could have far-reaching consequences. Sophia has an ulterior motive, one that any reader will figure out quickly. Samson does venture a little beyond the obvious, touching on how class distinctions and unrealistic expectations take a toll on a marriage. She makes a token nod to the joke that men are so inattentive they wouldn’t notice such a swap and so amorous they wouldn’t mind if they did. But she never builds on that irony, and her novel grows more improbable as the story draws to its oddly unsatisfying conclusion.
A hard-to-believe setup and unsatisfying conclusion mar this thriller.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780593656013
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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