A smart send-up of Lovecraftian horror that doesn’t quite stick the landing.
A young boy uncovers secrets and conspiracies in a small Massachusetts town with his new best friend in Ludwigsen’s coming-of-age horror novel.
The down-on-their-luck Castillo family leaps at the opportunity to move from Queens to a seaside New England town rent-free while the father, Ted Castillo, works to set up an off-shore oil rig. Bud Castillo, the family’s 13-year-old son (and the book’s narrator) is more than happy to tag along after a mysterious incident leaves him ostracized by his Boy Scout troop. Massachusetts promises a fresh start: a new school, new friends, and new scout troop. Unfortunately, when Bud and his family arrive at their new home, they discover a town in a state of total decay, with only one other child roaming around. This child, Aubrey Marsh, quickly befriends Bud; the two decide to form a scout troop together (with the support of Bud’s mother) and investigate the town’s dark past. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that something strange is afoot in the Lovecraft-inspired town of Innsmouth—after all, as Bud’s mother astutely asks, has anyone “ever heard of oil in Massachusetts?” Ludwigsen does an excellent job building tension and a conspiratorial atmosphere as Bud and Aubrey try to uncover what’s really going on in Innsmouth and determine what lurks just off the coast. With an eclectic array of townsfolk, anchored by the charismatic and frightening Reverend Pritchett, who runs the outwardly progressive (but also kind of cultlike) local church, the author slowly lays out the pieces of a compelling mystery. This mystery starts to fall apart by the final third of the book, however; in the narrative’s earlier sections, Ludwigsen mesmerizes with a distinct narrative voice, but events unfold rather abruptly as the climax nears. It’s an excellent set-up with a disappointing pay-off.
A smart send-up of Lovecraftian horror that doesn’t quite stick the landing.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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