The beginning of what could be a top-notch technothriller saga—entertaining and as thought-provoking as it is disturbingly...
The first installment in Michaels’ Aegis saga explores issues ripped from the headlines in a page-turner of a technothriller.
Alex Mercer’s childhood has been far from idyllic. Orphaned as a child in southeastern Europe and eventually landing in the U.S., she endured a horrific foster family experience before ending up with a couple living in the San Francisco Bay area, who’d recently emigrated from South Korea. Now 18 and a freshman in computer engineering at the University of Michigan, the hacker prodigy finds herself in a potentially deadly situation. Not only is she being blackmailed by a corrupt mayoral candidate who wants her to manipulate voting results, but a cyber terrorist, about to unleash a “digital plague” on the world, has her in his sights because of her online meddling. The cyber terrorist, nicknamed Cipher, obsesses over making America pay for their involvement in Bosnia decades earlier and the horrors they facilitated on the country’s populace, which included Cipher’s family. His ultimate goal is simple: “to see the world burn.” As Alex desperately tries to stop Cipher’s master plan before he kills her and those close to her, she begins to put together seemingly disparate puzzle pieces, some of which include an army of North Korean hackers, a top-secret branch of the U.S. Cyber Command, and jaw-dropping revelations about her biological parents.
There’s no question that Michaels delivers the goods to thriller fans. From the very first page, the pacing is pedal-to-the-metal, and the tension is palpable throughout. Alex’s paranoia bleeds through the pages: “Her attacker could be any of the people wandering the campus, searching for her. Ready to pull the trigger. Assuming they had a trigger. For all she knew, they’d dispatch her through more stealthy means like poison, or worse, a shiv wielded by a seemingly innocent passerby, the cold steel hidden beneath a benign smile.” But the real power here is Michaels’ character development. Alex’s complicated relationship with her foster parents and her revered Aunt Min—coupled with her own struggles to find herself and her place in the world—make her a three-dimensional, undeniably endearing hero. Additionally, there’s a subtle philosophical thread throughout, which gives the reading experience a profundity: “Hate exists not as a permanent scar upon the heart, but as a challenge, a call to action for each of us. It is an invitation to embark on the most noble of journeys: To reach out with an open heart, to listen with a compassionate ear, and to build, with the bricks of our shared humanity, a world where love triumphs over hate, understanding overcomes fear, and unity replaces division. This is the path to a brighter, kinder future—a world not of hate, but of hope.” Lastly, the author savvily leaves Alex, and other supporting characters, at a natural jumping-off point. Future installments could go in countless directions and be set anywhere in the world. The one minor criticism is that some plot twists are a bit predictable, especially for those who read a lot of thrillers. The beginning of what could be a top-notch technothriller saga—entertaining and as thought-provoking as it is disturbingly believable.Pub Date: May 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781958800171
Page Count: 420
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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