A fast-paced thriller with a protagonist worth rooting for.
In Thompson’s novel, set in Silicon Valley, a young man chases a life-changing payout that just might cost him everything.
It’s 2014, and 25-year-old Mario Kennedy just wants to put his past behind him and build a new life for himself—preferably as a rich tech company executive. For now, he runs a pizza shop called Prospector’s. When a restaurant-focused tech startup called MenuAi declares that they’ll soon be having an initial public offering, he remembers giving the founders advice a few years before—and that, as payment, they offered him a chance to buy 2% of the company at a discounted price. He consults a lawyer, who tells him that all he has to do is make it past the 90-day “lockup period” after the IPO, and then he can sell his stock for millions—and all his dreams might come true. (“I feel like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I’ve got the Golden Ticket.”) During this period, Mario runs into a diverse cast of characters, all with their own agendas: Noah Stern, the CEO of MenuAi, is a reclusive, slightly unhinged genius; his partner, Ravi Singh, is a venture capitalist who’s willing to do whatever it takes to get his money. There’s also Jamie Villanueva, a young tech reporter who’s determined to take the new company down—but she finds it hard to follow through when she starts to fall for Mario. As he navigates the tech world, and the exorbitant wealth within it, he’s suddenly faced with an unthinkable task, which will force him to decide between his dream future and the values that drive him. Over the course of this novel, Thompson crafts a smart, satirical take on the world of technology and Silicon Valley. The characters are well developed, with distinct personalities and motivations, and the cast feels cohesive rather than chaotic. The prose is engaging throughout, enlivened by dialogue that feels authentic. Readers who enjoy a quick-paced tale with complex characters and unexpected twists will find this novel appealing, whether they have an interest in the tech world or not.
A fast-paced thriller with a protagonist worth rooting for.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9798995320111
Page Count: 422
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
© 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.
