An entertaining suspense yarn about complicated, success-driven women.
A New York City journalist investigates the duplicitous founder of a Silicon Valley biotech startup on the eve of its initial public offering in this contemporary novel.
At a conference in Manhattan, 28-year-old BusinessBerry journalist Jamie Roman alerts speaker Anna Bright, the 34-year-old founder of BrightLife—a California company developing BrightSpot, an intraocular biosensor lens with robust capabilities—that she has a hot mic after leaving the stage. Appreciative, Anna asks Jamie to do the BusinessBerry interview that Jamie’s boss was set to do and invites her on her private flight back to the West Coast. Anna, suffering from a headache, sleeps through the trip, but she reschedules the interview for after the weekend, allowing Jamie to spend time with Anna’s attractive assistant, Ian, and overhear gossip that BrightSpot isn’t ready for market. The narrative alternates between the women’s third-person perspectives as both handle challenges: Jamie, in addition to her reporting, competes with a male colleague for a promotion and deals with her estranged Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist father, and Anna keeps the truth from her board of directors and pushes employees to fix issues ahead of BrightLife’s looming IPO. As Jamie pursues a new investigative piece on BrightLife, her boss and, surprisingly, her father warn her to back off. Fans of the Hulu streaming miniseries The Dropout, about the scandal involving biotech company Theranos, will enjoy this page-turner by Schnall, who often concludes her characters’ sections with provocative cliffhanger teasers (“I don’t want to be the whistleblower—not because I don’t want to help you but because I know someone who knows way more than I do”). The author infuses a lot of fun and flavor into the narrative, as when griping employees call BrightSpot “BS,” and she gives Anna sympathetic shadings, despite her behind-the-scenes actions. Jamie, too, is a well-developed character beyond her reporting on BrightLife.
Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781684632527
Page Count: 344
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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