Harrison pens a good, basic story stretched thin by unnecessary and distracting detail.
Harrison’s first novel tells the story of a couple splitting apart, with alternating chapters featuring the viewpoints of the main characters.
Jodi Brett and her longtime companion, Todd Gilbert, have been in a satisfying 20-year relationship. Jodi, a psychotherapist, works out of their expensive Chicago condominium, seeing two clients a day during the week and spending the remainder of her time taking classes in flower arranging, walking their golden retriever, Freud, and preparing gourmet meals. Todd, who worked his way up in independent development by flipping properties, had an unhappy childhood. Their comfortable life, marred only by his occasional straying eye, seems to suit them both, at least until he catches sight of Natasha. The daughter of an old friend, Natasha is no longer a pimply teenager with black nail polish and garishly dyed hair. Instead, she has turned into a curvaceous coed who becomes involved in a tempestuous relationship with Todd, the man Jodi thought would always be there for her. Now, Natasha is demanding that Todd leave Jodi and seems determined to make that happen, even if she has to resort to a few nasty tricks of her own. But Jodi isn’t through with Todd, nor is she ready to roll over and play dead: In fact, if anything, she’s prepared to make sure someone else meets that fate if that’s what it takes to stop the events that threaten to disrupt her carefully ordered existence. Harrison, who in real life is also a psychotherapist, writes a neat atmospheric tale that examines life from both characters’ points of view but sometimes works a bit too hard to cram extraneous detail into the story, particularly when it comes to psychotherapy and Jodi’s present clients. While readers can probably get over a few mentions of Jodi’s work, the Q-and-A style rendition of her own therapy and references to different schools of psychological thought may make readers’ eyes glaze.
Harrison pens a good, basic story stretched thin by unnecessary and distracting detail.Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-14-312323-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
An engrossing and haunting psychological thriller.
A young newlywed's life is upended, and a picturesque neighborhood is shattered, when she is suspected of a savage murder.
At the beginning of a new year, Joey Mullen moves back to England from Ibiza with Alfie, her husband, whom she hastily married out of grief over the death of her mother. Jack, Joey’s older brother, invites the young couple to move into his painted Victorian house in the upscale Bristol neighborhood of Melville Heights so they can get on their feet financially and help with the baby that Jack and his wife, Rebecca, are expecting. Joey quickly becomes infatuated with their neighbor Tom Fitzwilliam, a new headmaster charged with improving the local school. Her crush only intensifies when Alfie suggests having a baby, and Joey begins to suspect her marriage was a mistake. Meanwhile, Tom’s wife, Nicola, struggles to fill her days and remains oblivious to their son, Freddie, who regularly spies on his neighbors and the village's teenage schoolgirls, taking their photos and keeping a detailed log of everyone's activities. This surveillance exacerbates the paranoia and mental illness of another neighbor, the mother of 16-year-old Jenna, one of Tom’s students. Jenna’s mother is convinced that she knows the Fitzwilliam family from a vacation incident years earlier (and that the family is now stalking her), but Jenna is more concerned that Tom may be having an inappropriate relationship with her best friend. After several months, tension in the neighborhood explodes, and Joey is suspected of a brutal murder. However, as the police gather evidence, it becomes clear how many secrets each family has been hiding. Jewell (Then She Was Gone, 2017, etc.) adeptly weaves together a complex array of characters in her latest thriller. The novel opens with the murder investigation and deftly maintains its intensity and brisk pace even as the story moves through different moments in time over the previous three months. Jewell’s use of third-person narration allows her to explore each family’s anxieties and sorrows, which ultimately makes this novel’s ending all the more unsettling.
An engrossing and haunting psychological thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9007-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
A page-turner with the kind of small details that lend unquestionable authenticity.
A spy dealing with personal trauma is called back into action to stop the use of a dangerous chemical weapon.
A former Army helicopter pilot and FBI special agent, Bentley delivers his debut novel with the introduction of Defense Intelligence Agent Matt Drake. After an op in Syria went sideways and his best friend was maimed, Drake walked away carrying heavy emotional baggage. Haunted by those he couldn’t save and in self-imposed exile from his wife in order to protect her, Matt wants nothing to do with his old life at the Defense Intelligence Agency. But when he's brought back under duress to help stop terrorists from using an untraceable chemical weapon against Americans, Drake feels a lurking sense of obligation, and before he knows it he's back on duty. The seeming purity of Drake’s call to serve is contrasted with the petty political infighting within the highest reaches of government. A chief of staff for the president is angling to jam a CIA director who has political ambitions of her own, and Drake’s mission falls right in the middle of this elaborate political scheme. While the flow of the story seems most natural during the shoot'em-up action scenes, this is a novel with an emotional core, and that may be what makes it stand out from other thrillers of a similar ilk.
A page-turner with the kind of small details that lend unquestionable authenticity.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0511-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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