Just watch I Know What You Did Last Summer instead.
The past is about to catch up to a group of friends that may have accidentally killed a serial killer.
A weekend music festival in the woods featuring 1990s cover bands seems like the perfect way for Liverpudlians Matt Connolly, his live-in girlfriend, Alexandra, and their childhood friends Stuart, Chris, Nicola, and Michelle to reconnect and shake off the middle-age doldrums. The fun turns into terror when Matt awakens in the middle of night to Stuart’s screams. The group eventually catches up to Stuart, who is fighting for his life with a machete-wielding maniac. Matt’s group soon gets the upper hand, and in the end, it’s not clear who dealt the killing blow, but the stranger is undeniably dead. Despite his friends’ urging, Matt nixes calling the authorities. For some inconceivable reason, he thinks they’ll be accused of killing the man in an alcohol- and drug-fueled frenzy. They bury the guy and plan to skedaddle, but they then discover the body of a young man next to a flickering red candle. They reason that the man they buried could be the mythical (so far) killer dubbed the Candle Man who leaves behind red candles when he abducts someone. But no bodies have been found, suggesting he’s a mere urban legend. Yikes, definitely time to leave and never speak of the incident again. Flash-forward a year. Guilt has been eating at Matt, whose narrative alternates between past and present, and his friends. After one of their own supposedly jumps in front of a train, they begin finding the distinctive red candles in their homes. They suspect the man they killed may have had an accomplice who is now targeting them one by one. Unfortunately, the narrative largely consists of Matt and the gang arguing the merits of confessing versus keeping their secret, and after slogging through a glacially paced story nearly devoid of suspense, readers might find it’s too much work to get to a shock twist that isn’t fully earned.
Just watch I Know What You Did Last Summer instead.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-78748
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
High-concept and highly entertaining.
Fiction writers compete to finish a famous author’s abandoned novel.
Seven writers, all but one published, have received invitations to spend the weekend with crime novelist Arthur Fletch, the world’s most successful author, on his private island off the coast of Scotland. When they arrive at his cliffside castle, they expect to take part in one of the literary salons for which Fletch is famous; instead, they’re greeted by his agent, who informs them that Fletch is dead. Why has there been nothing about this in the press? Because “there are some…loose ends that must be tied up first.” Fletch has left his eagerly anticipated final novel unfinished, so the agent has summoned the writers to the island for a competition: One of them will get to complete Fletch’s book. As premises go, this one’s a humdinger, courtesy of fantasy writer V.E. Schwab and YA author Cat Clarke, here joining forces as Clarke. The story contains an amusing throughline about the indignity of being an uncelebrated novelist; as the agent tells the assembled writers, the contest winner will receive both cash and something equally valuable: “a way out of the midlist.” The novel’s wandering perspective allows each writer to vent their private frustrations, especially with the publishing industry and with the book world’s genre hierarchy (the YA writer among the competitors understands that she and the romance writer are “supposed to support each other against the general snobbishness of the other genres”). Readers who have come for the crimes and the twists, both of which are plentiful, might grow impatient with all the characters’ backstories, but these readers will likely warm to the shop talk, which at its funniest plays like a kvetchy midlist-writers’ support group.
High-concept and highly entertaining.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063444614
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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