Poignant and engrossing, with small and large surprises leading to the final reveal.
A multilayered psychological thriller set in the fictional small coastal town of Misty Pines, Oregon, where a 14-year-old girl is abducted.
Sheriff Jax Turner is a broken man. Five years earlier, his 4-year-old daughter, Lulu, died from cancer, and Jax’s inability to move through his grief finally led his wife, Abby, to divorce him. We meet the sheriff as he drives to the shoreline and places his gun in his mouth. He hesitates just long enough with his finger on the trigger to receive a call from headquarters: Allison Krueger is missing. One more case. One more chance to redeem himself after the failure a quarter century ago in Portland to save Madeline Massey, who was taken along with her younger sister, Elena. Although Elena escaped, Madeline was found too late. It’s the cold case that has always haunted him and his former partner and was one of the reasons he and Abby moved to the quietude of Misty Pines. Now, with his chief deputy on an Alaskan fishing trip, Jax must depend on a trio of newbies to begin the investigation. Allison’s mother, Emily, has been raising the teenager on her own ever since her husband, Daniel, left them to marry psychotherapist Elena Massey—the same Elena who’d been abducted 25 years ago. Keliikoa’s brooding mystery gradually fills with eclectic clues that link the two cases, signaling the possible return of a psychopath bent on taunting Jax and Elena, two characters whose own emotional stability is already compromised. Jax’s debilitating angst and self-doubt are viscerally portrayed, especially via his compulsive efforts to finish the dollhouse he had been building for his daughter. But his overwhelming anxiety nearly overpowers the thrill of the narrative. Fortunately, he slowly regains his professional footing, and Keliikoa builds the tension steadily as time runs out and Jax must sort through a combination of solid leads, twisty secrets, and several red herrings.
Poignant and engrossing, with small and large surprises leading to the final reveal.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
