An original yet ultimately flat family drama.
A young lawyer haunted by war trauma struggles to balance family loyalty against personal ambition.
It’s 2014. We meet the protagonist of Burt’s debut novel, Antonia King, as she chats with a wealthy Swedish airplane manufacturer in Minneapolis. He’s in town to start a factory, and Antonia—fresh out of Harvard Law School but reluctantly drawn back to Minnesota, where she has roots—is trying to help a fancy law firm land a major client. She does. But it leads to escalating clashes with her family and revelations about her past. Originally from Sarajevo, Antonia lost her parents to Milosevic’s genocide in the early 1990s, when she was 3. She and her brother, Paul, were adopted by two brothers from a small town in Minnesota, Christopher and Edward King. The orphaned siblings eventually end up living with Christopher, the rich owner of King Family Construction, and his family. Antonia promised to consider working for him after law school; he’s furious when she chooses the Swedish CEO instead. When her activist brother, Paul, who lives in their small hometown’s Somali community, goes missing after a violent protest at the site of their father's dream project—a glorified strip mall, the big dig of the title—Antonia agrees to help Christopher with damage control. She reunites with her tipsy adoptive mother, closeted gay brother, Instagram influencer sister, and an icky old flame with political clout—all while trying to quell a sex scandal for her new boss. Burt layers all of this on in a rapid-fire style and places Antonia in too many scenes with minor characters. The writing shines in the few moments of intimacy between people before Burt delivers a big reveal. But Antonia as a character fails to come to life even as she learns a real lesson about cutting the ties that bind.
An original yet ultimately flat family drama.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781640096042
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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
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
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