A tension-ramping nail-biter of a novel.
When a woman starts having dreams that seem to foreshadow future events, she also begins to unravel a dark family secret.
Annabelle Reynolds has all the trappings of a happy, successful life: a handsome, solicitous neurologist husband; two beautiful daughters; a thriving career in media communications; a big, beautiful house in the most desirable part of town. So, when she wakes from a terrible nightmare in which her husband is choking and threatening her, she chalks it up to an overactive imagination. But soon there is another nightmare about a very specific plane crashing—and this one comes true. Could she be psychic? Her husband, James, is not only skeptical, he is downright dismissive. But Annabelle can’t lose the feeling of dread that bad things are coming. Of course, there are cracks in the facade of her perfect life, anyway: Her older daughter is texting with someone she met online, hoping to meet up with him IRL, and Annabelle herself hides a private grief. When she dreams of a handsome stranger who then becomes her next client, she realizes that, whatever the origin, her dreams are true signposts that something is wrong—in her past, in her marriage, and, possibly, with her children. Most of the chapters are told from Annabelle’s point of view, either in the present or in a time labeled “Before,” but occasionally there is a short interlude in the voice of “The Wife.” Whose wife? And what’s up with the husband she is so closely investigating? Despite a bit of mustache-twirling once the villain is revealed, the complex characters plus the hint of supernatural prophecy put a new spin on domestic thriller tropes. Women, Constantine roars, believe your instincts!
A tension-ramping nail-biter of a novel.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875209
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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