A cautionary tale for men who wrong women.
When village men start getting attacked, one young woman finds herself caught in the middle.
Amara is an 18-year-old who lives in a Sri Lankan village with her mother, a talented seamstress whom she calls Amma, and her father, a spiritual leader and demon exorciser whom she calls Thaththa. Despite the influence of British colonialism and Christianity, Amara’s father holds fast to his traditional ways, causing him to be looked down upon by the community, which is rapidly Westernizing in order to gain access to power and wealth. Therefore, when local men start getting mysteriously and brutally attacked, villagers cast a skeptical eye toward Thaththa, whom they believe may be summoning demons to ambush innocent men. When the situation becomes more dire, Amara—herself something of an outcast, teased by her former schoolmates and called a witch—decides it’s her duty to figure out what the attacked men have in common so she can find out who (or what) is responsible. Along with Bhagya, an enigmatic new friend she met in the jungle, Amara sneaks around the village gathering insight into the men’s lives. But Amara has a nagging secret. Many nights in her sleep she finds herself the one vividly attacking, only to startle awake with the taste of blood on her tongue and the voice of a demon saying “You’re mine now” ringing in her ears. Jayatissa’s novel is slow to get going, and her characters feel a little flat. But the twists and turns to this fantastical mystery, as well as the author’s commentary on colorism, colonialism, and feminine outrage, shine through: “He would suffer as I once did. Suffer for everything he had done. Suffer for the wrongs that were committed before him and those that would no doubt come after him. That was all I wanted. For them to all suffer as I have.”
A cautionary tale for men who wrong women.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593549261
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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