A gripping tale of suspense that takes fundamentalism to dystopian extremes.
In this speculative-fiction series entry, a megalomaniacal religious leader forms a cult that kidnaps unmarried pregnant women.
Stacey Davenport has been elected to the Kansas state legislature to oppose the ultrareligious Certainty Party, led by Reverend Ezekial. He attempts to pass bizarre laws that severely restrict women’s lives, such as the Make Our Motherhood Strong (MOMS) Act that aims to force unmarried mothers, unmarried pregnant women, and their sisters over the age of 12 to marry men of his congregation. Stacey, who’s unmarried and with child herself, stops its passage, so Ezekial and his motorcycle gang, the Genesis Riders, launch a terror campaign, kidnapping women who have children out of wedlock. One of the abductees, a young woman named Ruth, has been made one of Ezekial’s wives. Stacey’s sister, Amy, and father, Don, help Ruth escape, and she becomes a soldier in the fight to free the women of Kansas—including her own sister, Renee.Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Grant, the father of Stacy’s unborn child, navigates state laws as he starts a new relationship with co-worker Eleni. The “Consent to Sex” form has been signed, and he and Eleni seem well-matched, but he can’t stop thinking about Stacey. Can the pair find each other again? This second installment of Keech’s Red State/Blue State Confessions series is an absorbing read, and it manages to effectively combine social critique with nail-biting suspense. Ruth is a particularly memorable character as a teenager whose militancy was forged in fear and violation, and other figures over the course of the story are similarly dogged and sincere. However, although the narrative delves into the implications of Red State Kansas’ harsh political atmosphere in some detail, its criticisms of Blue State efforts to legislate equality feel more thinly developed.
A gripping tale of suspense that takes fundamentalism to dystopian extremes.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Real Nice Books
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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