Deliciously, sublimely nasty: Mean Girls for grown-ups.
The blow-by-blow battle between two Silicon Valley wives over one of their husbands and a whole lot more.
In this corner is Catherine Winthorpe, effortlessly beautiful wife to sexy, rugged, demanding, fabulously wealthy William Winthorpe, who treats the high-salaried employees he’s pushing to perfect and market a breakthrough new medical device like serfs and his wife like a queen. In this corner is Neena Ryder, Winthorpe Technologies’ new director of motivation, who loses no opportunity to correct everyone who calls her Mrs. Ryder that it’s Dr. Ryder. Though her own amiable mate, demolition contractor Matthew Ryder, loves her to pieces and makes just enough to have bought the place next door to the Winthorpe’s baronial estate in untouchable Atherton, Neena’s determined to seduce William because she wants to trade up on husbands or, failing that, get a seven-figure payoff to go away—and because she’s taken a particular dislike to Cat, who represents all the women Neena’s fought over the years and who’s begging to be taken down a peg or 10. The rules of engagement are flexible—open flirting, barefaced lying, charity committee blackballing, and criminal conspiracy are all perfectly acceptable—but a prologue makes it clear that the rivalry will eventually end up under the purview of the Atherton Police Department. Torre raises the heat on the plotting and counterplotting with such delicate mastery that even readers who can see perfectly well where this is all going will race to watch it get there.
Deliciously, sublimely nasty: Mean Girls for grown-ups.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2019-0
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.
Three siblings on very different paths learn that their family home may be haunted by secrets.
Eldest daughter Beth is alone with her fading mother as she takes her final breath and says something about Beth’s long-departed brother and sister, who may not have disappeared forever. Beth is still reeling from the loss of her mother when her estranged siblings show up. Michael, the youngest, hasn’t been home since their father’s disappearance seven years ago. In the meantime, he’s outgrown his siblings, trading his share of the family troubles for a high-paying job in San Jose. Nicole, the middle child, has been overpowered by addiction and prioritized tuning out reality over any sense of responsibility, much to Beth’s disgust. Though their mother’s death marks an ending for the family, it’s also a beginning, as the three siblings realize when they find a disturbing videotape among their parents’ belongings. The video, from 1999, sheds suspicion on their father’s disappearance, linking it to a long-unsolved neighborhood mystery. Was it just a series of unfortunate circumstances that broke the family apart, or does something more sinister underlie the sadness they’ve all found in life? In chapters that rotate among the family’s first-person narratives, the siblings take turns digging up stories and secrets in their search for solace.
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798212182843
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
© Copyright 2025 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.
