A bold and absorbing thriller.
An 11-year-old boy navigates domestic violence, demonic visitations, and family secrets in Mansouri’s coming-of-age tale.
It’s 1985 in Southern California, where Samuel McCammon is the devout and fiercely observant only child in a volatile household rife with alcoholism, discord, and domestic abuse. In his strict religious school, his demonic visions have already made him notorious. As children begin disappearing from the neighborhood, Samuel’s visions grow darker and more disturbing, and he experiences supernatural events that he can’t fully understand. His parents interpret these episodes in very different ways. His father, a charming and deeply troubled man with secrets of his own, sees a medical problem to be managed. His loving mother—who calls herself “a prayer in a dark closet”—believes her son has been chosen by God. She encourages him to embrace this destiny. Samuel finds an unlikely confidant in Glen, a rough-edged neighbor boy who harbors unsettling information about Samuel’s father. As the dark mysteries at the heart of Samuel’s family grow more sinister, his visions push him toward a devastating reckoning. As written by Mansouri, Samuel’s voice is by turns hilarious, harrowing, and heartbreaking. The relationship between him and his mother is dynamic and complex, combining a fierce love with a heavy dose of denial. The author walks a tightrope between dark psychological realism and the supernatural, leaving readers uncertain as to whether Samuel’s visions are divine, demonic, or the product of a traumatized mind. Suggestions of the occult add a dark frisson to the proceedings as Samuel tries to uncover the secrets of the past. The action sequences are visceral and hallucinatory, building toward a genuinely shocking climax and an ending that will linger with readers long after the final page. With its considerable length, the novel occasionally loses momentum, but readers willing to surrender to its dark, immersive world will be richly rewarded.
A bold and absorbing thriller.Pub Date: April 8, 2026
ISBN: 9798993688213
Page Count: 438
Publisher: Atreyu Press
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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