A serviceable thriller with a few unexpected twists.
A woman living in her car saves a wealthy housewife from drowning, sending both of their lives into turmoil.
Lee Gulliver was once a plucky young restaurateur in New York City. That is, until the pandemic hit and her business—and life—fell apart. On the run from a shady businessman to whom she owes money, Lee flees to Seattle to start a new life, with very little to her name. One morning, when sleeping in her car near the beach, Lee hears a disturbance and awakens to find a beautiful young woman trying to drown herself in the ocean. Lee saves the woman, whose name is Hazel Laval, and, after a brief misstart where Hazel is annoyed at said saving, the two forge an unlikely friendship. As the women get closer, Hazel reveals that she and her husband, Benjamin, are in a BDSM relationship turned deeply abusive, and she begs Lee to help her escape. Lee, desperate for companionship in her itinerant life, wants to do anything she can to save Hazel (again). But all is not as it seems, and as Lee starts to get closer to handsome and charming Jesse Thomas, whom she meets while getting her car fixed, secrets and lies begin to unravel. Switching between Lee's and Hazel’s perspectives, the story is fast-paced and packed with action. The dialogue, however, is stilted and clichéd, with a villain saying things like “It played into my hands nicely” and a heroine waxing poetic about how in “this next chapter, I must rely on my wits and courage to survive.” While this book won't satisfy readers looking for psychological intrigue, it does check certain boxes: It's quick moving with a plot intricate enough to keep the reader hooked.
A serviceable thriller with a few unexpected twists.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781538726761
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
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
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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