The perils of the real and virtual worlds collide effectively in this relentlessly paced thriller.
Engaging characters meet for a game that turns deadly.
Adele Crane’s life was shattered when her seemingly wonderful husband, Miller, vanished along with millions of dollars embezzled from the tech company he founded. Adele has been struggling to make a living and raise her traumatized kids: fiercely independent Violet and sweet-natured introvert Blake. Always athletic, she’s rebuilt her confidence with half-marathons and an online presence as a health influencer. So, it makes sense when Blake suggests she apply for a streaming reality competition for influencers called Extreme Hide and Seek. Contestants are taken to some challenging location, where they hide from the Extreme team. Last one found wins $1 million. That’s how Adele finds herself on remote Falcão Island, the site of Enchantments, a luxury resort built in the 1980s but long abandoned and now about to collapse. It’s quickly apparent that the Extreme team itself is on the verge of chaos. Its founder and star, Maverick Dillan, began his career as a kid doing skate stunts for viral videos, but now he heads a hugely successful enterprise—or so it seems. Maverick is approaching middle age, and all his past injuries and current pressures are catching up with him, accelerated by the fact that on the last round of Extreme Hide and Seek, one contestant, a young woman named Chloe Miranda, hid and was never found—something that internet vigilantes won’t let him forget. Maverick’s girlfriend, no-nonsense Angeline, is holding him and the company together, but it’s tough. The team’s other three members are his oldest friends, but fractures are appearing. Adele’s competitors, a former kids’ show host called Wild Cody and a famous young mountain climber named Malinka Niqui, have problems of their own. As they assemble on Falcão for the contest, they’re warned to leave by a mysterious old woman with a paramilitary backup team—and then a huge tropical storm blows in. Weaving together multiple points of view from her believable characters, Unger plunges the reader right into a sense of dread, then skillfully ratchets up the physical terrors of the challenge while revealing one disturbing secret after another.
The perils of the real and virtual worlds collide effectively in this relentlessly paced thriller.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780778333364
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
BOOK REVIEW
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