An adept and timely courtroom drama.
A judge confronts the rigors of an appellate court in this latest legal thriller in Kemanis’ series.
Dana Hargrove has come up in the world. The post-pandemic world finds Dana as an associate justice of New York City’s appellate division, meaning that she must now debate and compromise with other judges before handing down verdicts. Her current troublesome case is that of Josie Merced, a 17-year-old with Hodgkin’s lymphoma who’s been removed from her aunt’s care by Child Protective Services, who claim that the aunt has failed to provide Josie with lifesaving treatment. The case is tricky, however; it was Josie’s decision to refuse chemotherapy after seeing what it did to her late mother. Further complicating the matter is the fact that Dana’s son, Travis, is now an appellate attorney representing CPS, and his potentially career-making argument is at odds with Dana’s core beliefs. Meanwhile, Dana remains obsessed with a 2-year-old murder case in which both the victim and perpetrator are cops. Accusations of nepotism and coverup haunt the present investigation and trial, and her daughter, Natalie, a psychology grad student, is connected to one of the people involved, further muddying the waters. Can Dana maintain the objectivity that justice requires? Kemanis writes with typical elegance and control, spinning the intricacies of the law into moments of humor and drama, by turns. Here, for instance, she describes Dana’s reaction to being outvoted on the court: “She makes the effort to convince, even with those colleagues who stand firm in wet cement, daring her to watch it dry as she talks herself blue in the face.” The characters, new and old, bring with them a depth of history that lends the novel a gripping feeling of verisimilitude. With this book, Kemanis has brought Dana into roiling legal battles of the present day, dealing with issues of bodily autonomy and police violence that feel particularly urgent and timely. Dana hasn’t softened with age, and fans of the series are sure to enjoy this latest installment.
An adept and timely courtroom drama.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7378479-0-8
Page Count: 317
Publisher: Opus Nine Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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