A confident and wickedly sinuous debut.
Four women lived together at Yale. Three graduated—and one died. Twenty years later, it may be payback time.
Then: Sofia Eliades grew up on Nantucket, but without the trappings of wealth. When she met Caroline Archer one summer, however, her life changed, and for a few magical years, it seemed like she had found the friend—and more—of her dreams. But once Brooke Winters transfers from Brown and joins Caroline, Sofia, and their friend Jenna at Yale, Sofia sees her position supplanted by Brooke’s effortless wealth and class. So she hatches a plan to dethrone Brooke and get Caroline back, with the help of Caroline’s debauched artist brother, Leo. Now: Brooke and Caroline are struggling to find professional success—and Sofia is dead, killed in a car crash that also killed another woman. Jenna, a successful surgeon married to Caroline’s former boyfriend, is sitting on secrets of her own. When they all begin to receive messages from “Sofia,” it’s clear that the sins of the past are finally coming home to roost. Though there is no suggestion of anything supernatural, the mystery of who is tormenting the women—who wants them dead—takes place simultaneously through both timelines. And as expected, every single character has a secret so dark, or perhaps a revenge wish so visceral, that they would kill for it. The twists and turns and reveals are skillfully paced, and despite leaning on some character tropes, the novel has a lot of salient commentary on relationships—particularly when it comes to toxic men. The women might be dissolute in various ways, but at least their personalities are not restricted to their flaws. We understand at least some of their motives and desires, while the men around them misbehave and get away with it. At the end of it all, Trench is calling the men to account—and to punishment.
A confident and wickedly sinuous debut.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798522
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.
A woman fears she made a fatal mistake by taking in a blood-soaked tween during a storm.
High winds and torrential rain are forecast for “The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire,” making Casey question the structural integrity of her ramshackle rental cabin. Still, she’s loath to seek shelter with her lecherous landlord or her paternalistic neighbor, so instead she just crosses her fingers, gathers some candles, and hopes for the best. Casey is cooking dinner when she notices a light in her shed. She grabs her gun and investigates, only to find a rail-thin girl hiding in the corner under a blanket. She’s clutching a knife with “Eleanor” written on the handle in black marker, and though her clothes are bloody, she appears uninjured. The weather is rapidly worsening, so before she can second-guess herself, former Boston-area teacher Casey invites the girl—whom she judges to be 12 or 13—inside to eat and get warm. A wary but starving Eleanor accepts in exchange for Casey promising not to call the police—a deal Casey comes to regret after the phones go down, the power goes out, and her hostile, sullen guest drops something that’s a big surprise. Meanwhile, in interspersed chapters labeled “Before,” middle-schooler Ella befriends fellow outcast Anton, who helps her endure life in Medford, Massachusetts, with her abusive, neglectful hoarder of a mother. As per her usual, McFadden lulls readers using a seemingly straightforward thriller setup before launching headlong into a series of progressively seismic (and increasingly bonkers) plot twists. The visceral first-person, present-tense narrative alternates perspectives, fostering tension and immediacy while establishing character and engendering empathy. Ella and Anton’s relationship particularly shines, its heartrending authenticity counterbalancing some of the story’s soapier turns.
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464260919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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