Lapena’s talents shine in this irresistible novel about revenge, betrayal, and secrets.
So many suspects, so little evidence in Lapena’s latest tale of domestic suspense.
Busy mom Bryden Frost doesn’t see it coming after a morning fender bender involving a Tesla and its charming owner, Derek Gardner, sets her on a collision course with fate. Or does it? Just as in her other fast-moving, women-centric novels, including her breakout The Couple Next Door (2016), Lapena’s female protagonists appear to be living normal lives that some people might even envy—at least at first. When Bryden’s husband, Sam, returns home from work in Albany, New York, to find her missing but her purse and phone still in their apartment, a police investigation ensues. Did Bryden run away? Was she kidnapped? Or could she still be somewhere in the building? Sam is the prime suspect until police Det. Jayne Salter and her team hear from a source that Bryden was having an affair with Derek, something he denies. As Lapena builds her twisty plot, we soon see that these two men aren’t the only people who could be responsible for Bryden’s disappearance. Her sister, Lizzie, who has always been jealous of Bryden, has an addiction she’s hiding from the police, and Bryden’s best friend, Paige, carries a damaging secret as well. And what about the neighbor who was recently accused but not charged with kidnapping and raping a woman? Lapena excavates everyone’s secrets, exposing what’s really going on in the lives of Bryden’s family and friends. None of it is pretty. Lapena’s timely tale mixes the formidable dangers involved with online true-crime addiction with classic police work in a story that will make you wonder what secrets your family and friends are hiding and who, if anyone, you really know or can trust.
Lapena’s talents shine in this irresistible novel about revenge, betrayal, and secrets.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9780593832448
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
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
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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