Oh, dear.
A hotel built on the grounds of a sanatorium has more dead bodies than paying guests.
A police detective on sabbatical after flubbing a case, Elin Warner travels with her boyfriend, Will, to Le Sommet, a remote, glass-walled, five-star hotel in the Swiss Alps, at the invitation of her estranged brother, Isaac. Isaac is throwing a party to celebrate his engagement to Laure, assistant manager at the hotel, which has been the focus of local controversy due to its shadowy history. Elin's creepy feelings about the trip are quickly confirmed as a storm cuts off access to the mountain, a receptionist is kidnapped, a dead body is found in the snow, and Laure disappears. As overloaded, grisly, and ultimately silly as Pearse's locked-room debut may be, the biggest mystery is how Elin ever made it out of the police academy. As she slowly reasons her way through the unfolding situation, her deductions of even the most obvious points appear in italics—"That means Laure has another phone." "This…it isn't an accident. She's been killed. This is murder"—as do what seem to be the protagonist’s questions to herself about how to move things along. "So where could they have gone?" "So what are my next steps going to be?" "She examines the glass balustrade in front of her. Can I get over it?" What Elin can't get over is a tragedy in her childhood for which she holds her brother responsible; it comes up every few pages until being resolved with a not-too-believable twist that may or may not be retwisted in a mystifying epilogue. Fortunately for Elin, she does have a few insider tricks up her sleeve. "She knows that there is an app called Find My iPhone...it would show the last location where it had a signal." Wait. Why are you laughing? This is a thriller!
Oh, dear.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-59-329667-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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