A hypnotic page-turner about the frightening haziness between past and present.
A woman’s seemingly perfect life unravels in this debut novel that explores what happens when past traumas resurface.
Kate Whittier, nee Barton, lives in a “Southern California movie script”—a dream life with her wealthy husband, Jacob, and their two children, Becca and Logan. But tensions arise when Jacob comes home after a debauched evening unable to recollect exactly what happened but convinced that he and his wife should be tested for sexually transmitted infections. Kate’s positive HPV result, after years of fidelity to her husband, seems to confirm the one-off affair. With her marriage now under serious pressure, Kate feels that her position in her haute social world is precarious. In a circle that focuses so much on pedigree, Kate’s traumatic and abject past threatens to undo the life that she has built. Zadeik’s novel is not really about the strained relationship between Kate and Jacob. Rather, their knotty bond becomes a catalyst for Kate’s coming to terms with her past and present. While her husband’s infidelity sours their unity, that betrayal is not what haunts Kate in the form of waking nightmares and horrifying memories, or what will keep readers glued to the page. What troubles Kate are the unseemly characters of her past—her villainously cruel brother, Daniel, and their drunken father. Kate’s past and present become like a Russian nesting doll of grief, where the glossy surface projects a beautiful, polished version of herself. But underneath are all the iterations of the protagonist and the various grotesque experiences she suffered at the hands of her brother and his loathsome friends. When Daniel reenters Kate’s rocky life, the effect is truly riveting, and readers will be left wondering if she can ever truly escape her past. The author’s tale is as chilling as it is affecting. With a cast that includes the intriguing and mysterious Ryan, who becomes Kate’s main source of emotional support, the story will keep readers wanting to learn more about the protagonist’s past and her new possibilities (perhaps involving a new man?) for the future.
A hypnotic page-turner about the frightening haziness between past and present.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-379-7
Page Count: 312
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
