A young woman’s foray into online dating becomes a heartbreak—and then a deadly nightmare.
A psychological thriller spins a dark tale of hidden identities and buried pasts.
Wren Greenwood is skeptical about looking for love, or even for a hookup, online. But one of her best friends, vivacious Jax, presses her. At 28, Wren is totally focused on her job writing and podcasting an advice column called “Dear Birdie.” She’s so intent on helping her audience with their personal lives she barely has one of her own. So Wren signs up for a Tinder-like service called Torch, and there he is. Adam Harper, broodingly attractive, enigmatic—and quoting Rilke in his profile. Rilke fan Wren falls for him as soon as they meet, and for a few months it’s bliss. Then he vanishes. She’s hurt and bewildered—and then she’s frightened, as what she thought she knew about his identity seems to be an opaque mask. But why is she getting strange texts from unknown numbers, catching glimpses of a tall figure watching her from a distance? Then a private detective named Bailey Kirk starts asking questions about another woman who connected online with a man who looks like Adam—a woman who has disappeared. Unger crafts Wren’s first-person narration skillfully, creating an engaging, witty character and drawing the reader into her life and only slowly revealing that she has secrets of her own. Almost no one in this thriller is who they appear to be. Unger always ratchets up the tension, and the revelations, in her final chapters. But in this book, she spins like Simone Biles—and sticks the landing.
A young woman’s foray into online dating becomes a heartbreak—and then a deadly nightmare.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-778-31104-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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