An often crafty whodunit laced with traditional elements of mystery and suspense.
A hard-driving assistant district attorney’s unflinching dedication to the law threatens the safety of her beloved daughter in Smith’s legal thriller.
Milwaukee assistant DA Rachel Elizabeth Matthews is the kind of tough-as-nails prosecutor who easily withstands the murderous threats from the punks she’s convicted as they're hauled off to jail. As Rachel proudly observes, she’s “immune” to that sort of thing. That immunity, however, comes at a price: Putting the law ahead of everything else in her life following the death of her daughter Charley’s father has slowly driven a wedge between Rachel and the struggling teen. Even Rachel’s widower father—the man who inspired her to follow him into the law—warns her that cold statutes are poor substitutes for warm human companionship. Beautiful blond socialite Olivia “Liv” Reid befriends Rachel at a gala event and asks to join her book club; Rachel obliges readily enough, largely due to her immediate desire to stick it to Liv’s overbearing and abusive husband, Zach. Rachel soon has more than Zach’s creepy come-ons and threatening overtures to manage: A stalker suddenly pops up in her life, seemingly determined to make her existence a living hell. But why? And who exactly is this stalker? The one thing she does know is that acting like “a rabbit on the run” is “no way to live.” Rachel decides to stop letting her stalker call the shots and instead “go after him for a change, maybe even set a trap.” But the no-nonsense ADA hasn’t always lived according to the letter of the law—Rachel’s got a skeleton in her closet that she’s desperate to keep hidden. Smith’s carefully unfolding exploration of the protagonist’s intricate psyche deftly parallels the rising action as ADA Matthews moves ever closer to unmasking the stalker’s true identity, while her taut, economical prose leaves plenty of room for the revelations to flow freely.
An often crafty whodunit laced with traditional elements of mystery and suspense.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 309
Publisher: Puzzle Box Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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