A promising but ultimately confounding suspense yarn.
In Welde’s novel, a married couple in witness protection, face danger from the Mafia and from a disturbed former FBI agent.
After schoolteachers Ann and Steve Kent were forced to flee Miami for Los Angeles, the one shining light is the recent adoption of their son, Peter Ford. But drug lord William Vitello, whose brother, Frank, is responsible for the shootings, unearths their location and arranges a hit. Fortunately, the authorities find out in time and move the family to sleepy Cambria, 200 miles north of Los Angeles. Then FBI agent Hank Gifford soon spills their history to their new neighbor, David Boone, a hardboiled retired fed whom Gifford knows. Gifford asks Boone to keep an eye on them, and Boone happily obliges. However, he’s instantly obsessed with Ann, who reminds him of his late wife, Susie—a fellow agent who was killed in the line of duty. He creepily installs a secret camera in the couple’s bedroom without their knowledge. When a suspicious man arrives in town asking about the family, it appears that Vitello’s henchmen are closing in; Boone, meanwhile, is hearing strange voices and becomes fixated on avenging Susie’s death, which may have involved the Vitellos. Welde’s novel has a high-stakes premise and well-executed scenes of violence, and the twisty final chapters will keep readers guessing as they speed toward the conclusion. However, his prose feels unpolished, with stilted dialogue and melodramatic moments; for example, when Ann encounters gnats during a walk, it’s likened to a “biblical pestilence” and “salvos of aggression.” An excessive number of characters and convoluted plot points (including bizarre psychic experiences) make it difficult for readers to know where their sympathies should lie, and the third-person narration confusingly jumps between various players. There are also occasional errors; for example, readers are told that Peter that was adopted at the age of 15, and then at 12.
A promising but ultimately confounding suspense yarn.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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