An often intriguing narrative about loss and enduring hope.
In Ruskin’s thriller set in 2012, a married couple hoping to adopt a child contend with a dangerous stalker with dark secrets.
Billie Campbell and her hard-driving attorney husband, Tyler, are in their 30s and considering adoption after unsuccessfully trying to conceive a child. Adopting a child won’t be easy, though, due in part to their financial struggles. Billie finds herself becoming increasingly distraught and frustrated, and her job at a local adoption agency makes matters worse, as she keeps witnessing people living the life that she wants but can’t have. Her anguish parallels that of a mysterious woman from Tyler’s past named Anne, who also yearns for a child she can’t have. As she begins stalking Tyler and Billie, he keeps Anne’s identity a secret from his wife, which also threatens to undermine their quest to build a family. Ruskin uses this explosive dynamic to place Billie and Anne on an inescapable collision course, foreshadowing disaster at every step. The labyrinthine twists and turns that follow are, indeed, messy, but they also contain moments of real sweetness and profundity, as when an adult adoptee talks about her relationship with her adoptive dad: “Sometimes, after a particularly tough day…my father would come in, open the window to my room, and help me step out onto the roof. We’d lie there looking at the stars. He’d pull out some chocolate, and we’d share it without ever saying anything.” The author’s depiction of Anne’s increasing instability is particularly heart-wrenching and thought-provoking. The story engagingly examines what drives a person to commit villainous acts, and whether such acts are necessarily committed by bad people. By story’s end, it’s clear that, for some people, the answers to such questions can be nuanced and complex.
An often intriguing narrative about loss and enduring hope.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781647427245
Page Count: 336
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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