A taut thriller that examines the twin legacies of trauma and grief.
With her second novel, the author of Darling Rose Gold (2020) brings more multi-point-of-view fun to thriller fans.
When a mysterious emailer threatens to reveal her darkest secret, Natalie Collins journeys from Boston to an isolated island off the Maine coast to confess the truth to her flighty younger sister, Kit. Kit has spent the last six months at Wisewood, a self-improvement retreat that requires attendees to give up all connections, including contact with friends and family and all forms of physical affection. When Nat shows up, the other residents of Wisewood refuse to give Nat any information about Kit, citing rules which prevent friends or family members from attending together. While her sister turns out to be an elusive presence on the island, Nat can't shake the feeling that someone is tailing her. With a blizzard coming in to prevent all travel back to the mainland and Wisewood staff growing increasingly hostile toward her, Nat's racing against a ticking clock to accomplish her mission and get back to her normal life. Although the genre-savvy will see the twists coming from miles away, Wrobel manages to keep the lines of her narrative pulled taut here. The narrator's torch passes among Natalie, Kit, and a third woman who goes unidentified until the novel's midpoint. Through flashbacks to a childhood and adolescence spent trapped in her abusive father's unhinged training regimen—one designed to purge fear and self-doubt from the girl and her sister—this third narrator's story quickly proves to be the novel's most captivating thread. Unfortunately, because neither Nat nor Kit shares her story with the same immediacy or intimacy as this counterpart, readers will inevitably feel a deeper connection to the long-unnamed woman. Once her identity is revealed, however, they'll be left to wonder if that wasn't the point all along.
A taut thriller that examines the twin legacies of trauma and grief.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-10011-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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