Shamelessly soapy and dangerously addictive.
Who could have known that swapping spouses for one night could cause so much trouble?
High school senior Swallow “Low” Morrison has always been too tall, too intense, too strange. It doesn’t help that her parents are polyamorous, which, despite their Pacific Northwest island’s reputation as a haven for recreational spouse swapping, is still considered beyond the pale. After Low gets a glimpse of the ethereally beautiful Freya Light, she doesn’t hesitate to sign up for Freya’s pottery classes at her home studio. Before long, Freya is crossing boundaries with Low and shares a few of her darkest secrets. Freya and her husband, Max, a former professional hockey player, moved to the isolated Hawking to get away from a scandal that ruined Max’s career and tanked Freya’s status as a social media influencer. Low’s fascination with Freya quickly blooms into obsession, but Freya’s close friendship with Jamie Vincent, a local shop owner, threatens Low’s claim her. One night, Jamie and her husband, Brian, join Freya and Max for a night of magic mushrooms and steamy partner swapping. Jamie and Brian, whose relationship is already strained by their inability to conceive a child, are consumed by guilt, but Jamie isn’t about to let that night ruin her friendship with Freya. Unfortunately, Low witnessed all that night’s action from right outside Freya’s glass encased home, and she won’t hesitate to use it to her advantage. Of course, the fallout from that night, and Low’s simmering emotions, inevitably crescendos to a shocking point of no return. The narrative shuffles among all the major players except Freya, which adds to her aura of aloof perfection. As events spiral out of control, Harding’s deft handling of her characters makes it easy to believe that Jamie and Low could fall under the spell of someone like Freya, whose cool beauty hides dark multitudes, and nearly everyone in this passion play becomes delightfully unhinged in the end.
Shamelessly soapy and dangerously addictive.Pub Date: June 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-4176-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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