A crime story that’s difficult to take in.
After playing good Samaritan to a woman in trouble, the head of a crime organization gets caught up in a homicide investigation in Travis’ novel.
In Oakland, California, Sincere is finishing up in his recording studio when he hears a woman scream outside. He grabs his gun and finds a man named Doja shoving a woman into the trunk of his car. Sincere shoots Doja and rescues the woman, Sorya. The homicide case eventually lands with Sincere’s adoptive father, police Detective Colding. Sincere is tangled up in a number of conflicts with people in his community—for example, his right-hand man, Face, is in danger because of a recently released convict named Banks, whose wife Face slept with (“she only did that shit out of spite. She just used me to get even with him”). Sincere leads a larger criminal syndicate, despite being brought up by law enforcement professionals; he tells his family it’s just “business” (which seems dubious, because Sincere owns several luxury cars). Because Sincere continues to see Sorya, he feels like the walls are closing in when Colding calls him to ask if he’s heard anything. Trouble follows Sorya around, too, and Sincere’s continued involvement with her also puts him in the crosshairs—the largest threat is the police, who have connected Sorya to Doja’s murder. When it becomes clear that Sincere was involved in the killing, Colding is conflicted and feuds with the other police detectives working the case. There’s a compelling story here, but the novel is difficult to read, due in part to some violent scenes and because the language used in the dialogue is a constant barrage of slang and profanity (“I don’t need no fake ass bitches coming up in here starting no drama. Because I will beat a bitch ass”). Maybe that’s realistic given the milieu, but there’s a feeling here of playing into stereotypes (authenticity may be in the eye of the reader). The plot is also complex and a little hard to follow.
A crime story that’s difficult to take in.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 9789695492406
Page Count: 380
Publisher: WT3 Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
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
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