Gigl uses her debut novel as a template, with diminishing returns.
A defense attorney takes on sex traffickers and child pornographers.
When a detective asks Erin McCabe to meet with a young woman accused of murder, he explains that he has two reasons. One is that, despite her admission of guilt, the detective thinks Ann Parsons is innocent. The second is that Ann is, like Erin, transgender. Her decision to represent Ann will end up putting Erin, her law partner, and her boyfriend in grave danger. And, as the action unfolds, she will also have to deal with her mother’s breast cancer and the knowledge that her boyfriend’s family won’t accept her. The setup is quite similar to that of Gigl’s debut, By Way of Sorrow (2021), as is the mix of legal thriller with interpersonal drama. Erin is an engaging protagonist surrounded by well-rounded secondary characters. But the emotional stakes here are less compelling, and the legal case is unsatisfying. In By Way of Sorrow, Erin was dealing with the fact that her brother and her father rejected her after she came out as trans, and she was negotiating a romance with a man who wasn't sure he could deal with her past. Watching Erin react to her mother’s illness slows the plot of this second book without revealing anything new about the protagonist and, here, that same boyfriend is almost too good to be true. The bad guys are also implausible. The idea of powerful people exploiting children is all too believable, but there’s something ridiculous about evil geniuses whose only response to a perceived threat is to just murder everybody. The emotional realism and the cartoon violence don’t fit together. The biggest issue, though, is the amount of information—about Ann Parsons and another key character—that Gigl keeps under wraps as the narrative unfolds. The reader never sees Erin asking—or even formulating—obvious and important questions about her client. To the extent that there are big reveals, they feel artificial and insufficient.
Gigl uses her debut novel as a template, with diminishing returns.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2828-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
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
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
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