A well-paced and creepy novel with a strong message.
A taut psychological thriller set in the eerie remnants of an abandoned asylum.
In 2012,Kyle Hampton leads a happy life with his wife and young daughter, but he’s plagued by memories of his childhood in Rose Hill Asylum, where he was born. There, abuse was rampant, and scores of children died over the years before it was shut down 28 years ago. Many years later, he and his best friend, Randy, a fellow former asylum resident, still find themselves drawn back to the closed-down building, which retains its sinister atmosphere. Lawrence paints these visits vividly, and the asylum itself becomes the work’s most fully realized locale as the friends’ visits become increasingly unsettling. Throughout, the author also successfully intersperses this story with Kyle’s troubling recollections—particularly of his encounters with bullies and of the fact that his younger brother, Roy, was not adopted with him; Kyle escaped the brutal asylum, but his sibling didn’t, leaving him guilt-ridden. There’s an underdeveloped plotline involving Kyle’s difficult relationship with his wife, as well. However, Lawrence also takes readers into the mind of a serial killer known as Stitches—a man who haunts the asylum, dressed as a clown, and currently preys upon local women; as the killer slowly makes his existence known to Kyle, a tense cat-and-mouse game plays out. The author manages to keep the villain shrouded in mystery by carefully unveiling his connections to the asylum over the course of the story. Throughout the novel, including in Stitches’ horrific monologues, the author presents a searing indictment of the mental health and asylum system in the United States over several decades. Action scenes dominate the work’s latter sections, but the novel’s strongest aspects are its forbidding atmosphere and its damning depiction of what happens to kids who fall through cracks in the system.
A well-paced and creepy novel with a strong message.Pub Date: March 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-50-923522-3
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
