A thoroughly entertaining page-turner about the horrors of expecting.
After becoming pregnant, a woman starts to have violent fantasies that seem to bleed into real life in Junered’s psychological thriller.
Ophelia “Lia” Montgomery is a housewife recently transplanted from New York to the South. The other women in her friend group have surrendered themselves to child care, brunch with the ladies, and the occasional pro-life protest; very Not New York. The conservative culture of this place is not foreign to Lia—she grew up outside the city, where she witnessed the death of her father as a teen, and her remaining family (a sister and her mother) still live nearby. Lia and her husband, Evan, want to make things work, but when Lia’s IVF treatment is successful and she suddenly becomes pregnant, she finds she no longer wants a baby. In an act of rebellion, Lia takes on a job as a forensic anthropologist at the “Body Farm,” grounds where corpses are sent to allow researchers to study how bodies decompose. Evan isn’t happy about Lia’s interest in being a working mom. She meets a handsome colleague, Robbie, and the two start a clandestine affair. Lia’s macabre job at the Body Farm seems connected to an onset of violent visions and fantasies of dead bodies and murder, and she can’t tell if they’re real or imagined—especially when Lia discovers that someone she recognizes from the local coffee shop is now a body at the Body Farm. The riveting narrative follows Lia spiraling into her intrusive thoughts as the tension ratchets up. Junered’s prose is compulsively readable—the writing is often elegant, with a sinister undertone. Lia and Robbie “drift down the dark river and the stars swallow [them] up”; the devouring sky is rendered as simultaneously beautiful and horrifying. The novel also effectively and humanely captures Lia’s prenatal psychosis, seemingly induced by the stress of the baby, as well as unresolved trauma related to her father’s death.
A thoroughly entertaining page-turner about the horrors of expecting.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798896363880
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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