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
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
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
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