A taut and effective (if familiar) thriller about an unknown menace among the peaks.
A group of young people face a mountain of danger in Michael’s thriller.
A young woman named Gail and her best friend, Danny, make a risky decision. For all of their lives, Gail’s Uncle Perkins has been telling “some doozies of tall tales” about the perils of nearby Finch Mountain (“He told me stories of this place before I went to bed, which kept me up at night with the lights on”). In response, Gail and Danny have decided that, on the cusp of beginning their adult-life jobs, they’re going to investigate those stories by exploring Finch Mountain—though they promise Uncle Perkins they’ll stay in the foothills. In grand thriller tradition, they’re fibbing; they intend to get together with Gail’s friend Neal; Danny’s girlfriend, Paula; and their goofy friend Sam (derided by Gail as an “immature weed head”) to scale the mountain, reassure themselves that there are no bogeymen up there, and then take a zip line back down. They haven’t been hiking long before things start to happen that make them wonder if all those stories from Uncle Perkins might have been true after all. The author conveys all of this with an energy that belies the fact that it’s all been written many, many times before. Readers may roll their eyes at the ridiculous horror-thriller contrivances (the group decides to leave most of their cellphones behind; they shrug off a destroyed campsite as no big deal), but they’ll appreciate the sheer gusto Michael brings to the tale. His characters are straight out of central casting: the take-charge alpha guy, the sarcastic girlfriend, the stoner nobody believes when he’s the first to spot trouble, and so on, but some of the twists that occur as the story spirals to its climax will catch even seasoned thriller readers by surprise. Those readers will likely wish Michael had developed this brief story into a longer novel.
A taut and effective (if familiar) thriller about an unknown menace among the peaks.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-1639884001
Page Count: 94
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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