A tense, riveting follow-up thriller that surpasses its solid predecessor.
Qnert’s sequel to Crackshell (2023) centers on a writer, wife, and new mother who takes care of herself and her loved ones in alarming fashion.
Research for a true-crime book sent Sydney Long to “teeny-tiny” Rock Narrows, Maryland. But as she got close to siblings Jake Swann and Maggie Craill due to their ties to the book’s subject matter, things quickly turned personal. Now she’s Maggie’s best friend and happily married to Jake, with whom she has an infant daughter. Some people stand in the way of the family’s joy, though, such as Maggie’s abusive ex-husband, who still causes trouble in their lives. But then Sydney takes offense to mere slights and conjures up ways to rectify other people’s behavior; one such “punishment” involves sunscreen. Before long, Deena, a friend of her husband, unearths evidence of a few of her misdeeds—and suspects that Sydney may have added murder to that list. (Readers find out the answer very early on.) There’s simply the matter of proving Sydney’s the culprit without her realizing that someone’s onto her schemes. Qnert skillfully links this taut second installment to its predecessor; Sydney, for example, still aims to publish her original manuscript. There’s ample suspense, from Sydney’s worries that she’ll be caught to her targeting the next person whom she believes deserves “punishment.” Elsewhere, a subplot centered on Maggie is enthralling as she stumbles onto romance and revisits a past trauma. She’s one of a handful of superb characters, most of whom are returning, except for a teenager who’s perhaps a bit too flirtatious with Jake. Nevertheless, Sydney steals the spotlight once again; the sublimely complicated woman is a relatable mother (devoted to raising her baby through all the aches of breastfeeding) but also exhibits signs of sociopathy. The final act accelerates an already brisk pace that doesn’t let up until the wonderfully dizzying conclusion.
A tense, riveting follow-up thriller that surpasses its solid predecessor.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 391
Publisher: manuscript
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.
An author is targeted by a fan who just can’t let her go.
Arden Bowie has had plenty of tragedy in her life, but now she’s finally on top. After her parents died when she was a teenager, she moved from Brooklyn to Ohio to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She soon became part of their loving family and grew up to become a writer and bookseller. When her debut novel is published, she meets Dustin Dubecki at her first event. He showers her with praise, asks for writing advice, and wants to take her out for coffee. Arden tells herself he’s just a little awkward, but then he keeps showing up at her local events—and, even stranger, she’s sure she sees him lurking at her event in New York City. When he bursts into her apartment one night and assaults her, Arden’s calm life is shattered. Dustin gets a five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility; Arden spends most of that time rebuilding her sense of stability. Eventually, she moves to Oregon to start a new life where Dustin can never find her. But even though she has a beautiful home, a thriving career, a doting family, new friends, and even a potential love interest in a former cop named Gideon Riley, Arden can’t escape Dustin’s rage when his sentence is finally up. Roberts toggles between Arden’s point of view and Dustin’s, giving the reader occasional glimpses into his extremely twisted mindset. Although Arden’s attempts to escape Dustin are engrossing, the story stalls in the middle when far too many pages are dedicated to Arden purchasing and decorating a house. But the excitement picks back up when Dustin, a truly odious villain, re-enters the story. It’s also satisfying to see Arden grow into someone who refuses to be a victim, even as she deals with horrifying circumstances.
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250413581
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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