An engaging tale with a disturbing subject, fraught relationships, and a touch of romance.
In this thriller series opener, the brutal murder of a teenage girl rocks the students of a New Mexico high school and reconnects their psychological counselor with her former best friend.
Five years ago, after her mother’s tragic death in an automobile accident, forensic psychologist Kate Medina moved back to her family home in Alamogordo to care for her widowed father, Frank. Now, she is working as a counselor in the same school that she attended almost 20 years earlier. It is Friday, and Kate goes home disconcerted. Her session with Mandy Garcia is unproductive, and another student, Gabby Greene, is missing. During a difficult dinner that night with her father and her sister, Tilly, Kate learns that Frank is dying. Tuesday morning, her world turns even darker. She arrives at school to find police Detective Roman Aguilar, the best friend she left behind so long ago, waiting in her office. Gabby’s mangled body has been found in a creek, and the police are assuming the murder is gang related. But Kate and Roman are both chilled by the memory of an eerily similar killing that took place 17 years ago when the two friends discovered the body of a teenage girl in a burned-out car by the creek. Little do Kate and Roman suspect that the ensuing investigation will put their lives in danger. Although the plotline sometimes feels like a cross between an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and a Hallmark Channel movie, Rivers ably tackles the frightening topic of domestic sex trafficking of underage girls by malevolent, powerful men as well as the emotional baggage carried by victims of rape. Not quite a page-turner, the timely novel is nonetheless engrossing, with enough tension and dramatic angst—especially between Kate and Roman—to keep things intriguing. Despite the evasion of justice by too many bad guys, the story leaves hopeful possibilities with plenty of strings to be followed in the sequel. And Kate has the potential to be a sufficiently strong protagonist to carry the series forward.
An engaging tale with a disturbing subject, fraught relationships, and a touch of romance.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73451-604-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Compathy Press, LLC.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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