An acquired taste that’s much like the rest of the author’s body of work: bloody, terrifying, triumphant.
A one-two punch of grindhouse horror from one of the craft’s most inventive practitioners.
Jones is riding high on his much-lauded vampire Western (The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, 2025) but this isn’t a step back by any means, just a palate cleanser, two novels joined back-to-back. These twinned tales of Final Girls under threat from paranormal entities swings less literary, but fans of the author’s Jade Daniels trilogy, not to mention slasher flicks in general, should be delighted with the gruesome results. Killer on the Road finds moody 16-year-old Harper hitting the road after a fight with Mom and hooking up with her best friends, Kissy and Jam, not to mention ex-boyfriend Dillion and tag-along little sister Meg. Before they get very far, they’re attacked by a malevolent truck driver with murder on his mind. This nasty business lifts from all sorts of genre touchstones to make its case—the cat-and-mouse game in Spielberg’s Duel is just one that includes serial killers, physical transformation, and good old American road violence. After the vociferous gore in Killer on the Road, readers might expect a respite from The Babysitter Lives, but no such luck. Harper would probably be friends with high school senior Charlotte, not least due to their shared Native American heritage and ferocious spirit. In Charlotte’s case, what’s a babysitter to do on the night before Halloween except babysit two creepy twins for their secretive, mistrustful parents? Except that, as her girlfriend, Murphy, reminds her, the scariest local legend is about a mother who drowned her children on that very night, years ago. What resembles a modern gothic quickly turns into something else, as Jones visits all sorts of horrors upon his creation, from insanity-inducing portals to somewhere down under, to murderous doppelgängers and other visitations.
An acquired taste that’s much like the rest of the author’s body of work: bloody, terrifying, triumphant.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781982167677
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
