A finely wrought nightmare that will strike a chord for every parent who’s been troubled by dreams of losing a child.
Ten years after her son vanishes on his 10th birthday, a family physician encounters him anew—and he hasn’t aged a day.
No one but Dr. Maddi Libéri believes that Tom Fontaine is really Esteban Libéri, who of course would be 20 by now. Everyone else thinks the body that was recovered from the sea a month after Esteban disappeared from the Normandy beach where his single mother had taken him to swim was his. But the harder Maddi, who’s always resisted the idea that her son is dead, looks at Tom, the more convincing she finds the evidence that he’s Esteban’s reincarnation. The first time she spots him, he’s wearing an indigo swimsuit identical to the one Esteban was wearing on his birthday. Like Esteban, he speaks Basque, even though no one has ever taught it to him. And he has a birthmark identical to Esteban’s in exactly the same place. So after Maddi identifies his pregnant mother as Amandine Fontaine, she follows her to the Auvergne village of Murol and sets up shop as the town’s only doctor, a position that guarantees she’ll be seeing more of both mother and son. The gradual resolution of the mystery, which Bussi teases with strong hints of the supernatural, turns out to be entirely logical—“There is one coincidence in this story. Just one!” the architect of Maddi’s troubles announces during the big reveal—though more than a little far-fetched. But then, what did you expect from such an outrageous premise?
A finely wrought nightmare that will strike a chord for every parent who’s been troubled by dreams of losing a child.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781662509049
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
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
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
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