If you can accept the shakeup of what looked like an overheated whodunit, the payoff is startling.
When a reality TV show crashes to a premature end with the death of one of its stars, its consulting therapist works frantically to clear her name.
Comeback Kids features seven actors whose careers were cut short by their addiction to drugs or drinks or unsuitable men. One of its producers, Gia Mathews—director of the treatment center Crystal Meadows, whose identity on the show has been kept secret so far—spotlights them individually and in groups as they pursue their healing regimens under the guidance of sobriety coach Dr. Laurel Harlow. The stars’ often erratic and hostile behavior can be tough to watch, but it’s made the show a hit that’s contending for an Emmy with Queer Eye until the youngest cast member playing herself, 19-year-old Maddie Hernandez, is found dead, a victim of anaphylactic shock as a reaction to ibuprofen, the one pharmaceutical she’s known to be allergic to. The last message Maddie recorded in the daily journal she was required to keep—“If something bad happens to me tonight, it wasn’t an accident”—makes Detectives Wallace and Boone of the LAPD treat her death as very suspicious indeed. They quickly choose Laurel, who narrates the story except for a series of flashbacks to a brutal gang rape in sections labeled “Then,” as the most likely perpetrator. Then Laurel herself makes one discovery too many, and the tale switches abruptly to an unflinching take on the damsel in distress betrayed by someone she thought she could trust, just like all of Berry’s other luckless heroines.
If you can accept the shakeup of what looked like an overheated whodunit, the payoff is startling.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781662526046
Page Count: 251
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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