Sisterhood is powerful in surprising ways in this twisty, satisfying thriller.
Breaking up isn’t just hard to do—it can be fatal.
The Blacksmith sisters have very different personalities—perfectionist Vera and chaos agent Ana often clash. But they’re bound by tragedy, having been orphaned after their mother was convicted of murdering their father, then died in prison herself. Vera and Ana were raised by their aunt, Agnes, a florist who also made traditional potions and teas for cramps, hot flashes, and other female ailments. She led The Cove, a group of similarly interested women, and hoped one of the sisters would eventually take over its leadership. But by the time this novel begins, Agnes is long gone and Vera and Ana have moved on. Ana hops from job to job and man to man while Vera is laser focused on her businessman husband, Brad Kline, and their teenage kids, fierce Coraline and goofball Grant, all of whom she tracks with digital devices. The sisters’ past comes back into play, though, when Vera hosts a brunch “ex-orcism” to celebrate Ana’s breakup with her latest bad boyfriend, Paul Hayes. He owns a high-powered advertising firm and has a rumored tendency to sexually harass his employees (or worse). Amid the mimosas, a police detective arrives looking for Ana, to let her know Paul’s body has been found in a shallow grave in a remote park. Things go from bad to worse when a guest, Ana’s college bestie Iggy Caine, who recently gave birth to her first child, faints. Though she recovers quickly, she soon falls ill and is hospitalized in a coma as her adoring husband, Brock (another of Ana’s exes), agonizes at her bedside. And one other thing—Ana had previously met the detective, Timothy Bandeau, via a sex-with-no-strings app called HookUp, but neither of them is talking. It seems everyone who knew Paul has reason to want him dead, but it’s hard to imagine who would harm sweet, guileless Iggy. As the intricate links between the crimes become clear, Unger keeps the suspense in high gear, skillfully swinging among several vividly portrayed first-person narrators.
Sisterhood is powerful in surprising ways in this twisty, satisfying thriller.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780778360056
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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