The fate of this modern-day Heloise and Abelard unfolds with minimum surprise but maximum impact.
In their first collaboration, veterans Gerritsen and Braver unfold a painful, and painfully familiar, fable of adultery and its fatal consequences.
The tale begins with the death of one of its principals: Commonwealth University senior Taryn Moore, whose ruined body is found on the sidewalk five floors beneath her Boston apartment. Detective Frances Loomis, who catches the case, wonders why Taryn, a beautiful, accomplished student who worked her way up from her mother’s hardscrabble Maine household to be offered admission to Commonwealth, would have ended her life. Apart from some backbiting by jealous students, the only flaw Frankie can find in Taryn’s litany of accomplishments is her recent breakup with Liam Reilly, the hometown boyfriend who’d joined her at Commonwealth. A series of alternating chapters, however, gradually reveal the grand passion in Taryn’s life: her attachment to professor Jack Dorian, whose course in star-crossed lovers she’s internalized to a dangerous degree. Even as she’s pressing worshipful fellow student Cody Atwood to shadow Liam and tell her what he’s been up to (no bombshells there), Taryn’s falling under the spell of her charismatic teacher, who’s feeling neglected because of the long hours his wife spends at Mount Auburn Hospital. The revelation that both his wife and his student are pregnant sends Jack spiraling into despair just as Frankie, back in the present, is absorbing the same news in the context of Taryn’s death.
The fate of this modern-day Heloise and Abelard unfolds with minimum surprise but maximum impact.Pub Date: July 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2615-4
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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
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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