Somewhere beneath a clutter of extraneous details lurks an interesting premise trying to get out.
When a New York socialite is murdered, a clever witness manipulates the case.
Ruby Johnson has spent her whole life on the same posh block of West 74th Street on New York’s Upper West Side. In her childhood, her well-off family lived there, but when she was a teen, her father left Ruby and her mother, and they lost their home. Since then, she’s held jobs with various families on the block as a maid and nanny to support herself and her mother, who has medical issues. Late one night, as a party goes on a few doors away, Ruby leaves work and witnesses a murder. She knows the victim—Margaret “Maggs” Blakemore, notorious for her many affairs—and she knows who the killer is, too. (Although the reader doesn’t.) But then things get strange: Ruby frames an apparently innocent man, a saintly pediatric surgeon who is one of her employers. The mystery of this novel is less about identifying the killer and more about figuring out why Ruby does what she does. Guiding the reader through it is Eddie Flynn, a wisecracking con man–turned–defense attorney, who has a rather shocking number of people trying to kill him for various reasons. He’s also got multiple sidekicks—a wise older adviser, a brilliant female law associate, a fearless detective who doubles as a bodyguard, a former FBI agent with a shady past. It’s a promising setup, but the plot bogs down in stereotypical characters (mob guys, corrupt cops, eccentric hit men—yes, plural), repetitive descriptions, excessive exposition, several narrators, and multiple subplots that take us away from the main story for such long stretches that it loses all momentum.
Somewhere beneath a clutter of extraneous details lurks an interesting premise trying to get out.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781668049372
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.
An author is targeted by a fan who just can’t let her go.
Arden Bowie has had plenty of tragedy in her life, but now she’s finally on top. After her parents died when she was a teenager, she moved from Brooklyn to Ohio to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She soon became part of their loving family and grew up to become a writer and bookseller. When her debut novel is published, she meets Dustin Dubecki at her first event. He showers her with praise, asks for writing advice, and wants to take her out for coffee. Arden tells herself he’s just a little awkward, but then he keeps showing up at her local events—and, even stranger, she’s sure she sees him lurking at her event in New York City. When he bursts into her apartment one night and assaults her, Arden’s calm life is shattered. Dustin gets a five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility; Arden spends most of that time rebuilding her sense of stability. Eventually, she moves to Oregon to start a new life where Dustin can never find her. But even though she has a beautiful home, a thriving career, a doting family, new friends, and even a potential love interest in a former cop named Gideon Riley, Arden can’t escape Dustin’s rage when his sentence is finally up. Roberts toggles between Arden’s point of view and Dustin’s, giving the reader occasional glimpses into his extremely twisted mindset. Although Arden’s attempts to escape Dustin are engrossing, the story stalls in the middle when far too many pages are dedicated to Arden purchasing and decorating a house. But the excitement picks back up when Dustin, a truly odious villain, re-enters the story. It’s also satisfying to see Arden grow into someone who refuses to be a victim, even as she deals with horrifying circumstances.
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250413581
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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