A compelling story about the power of second chances and forgiveness that’s sure to spark conversation.
After calling off their wedding, a young couple gets stuck in a time loop, reliving the day of their catastrophic rehearsal dinner.
Megan and Tom are a picture-perfect couple. With her job as senior visuals editor at GQ and his job as a lawyer at his family’s firm, they’re living the dream. And now, they’re getting married on the picturesque San Juan Island, bringing together their friends and family as they celebrate their love. But all that perfection is merely hiding the problems under the surface. Megan’s and Tom’s families have never gotten along, and Megan has always felt that Tom takes his family’s side over hers. Unbeknownst to Megan, Tom has just accepted a job (at his family’s behest) in Missouri, meaning that they’ll have to move away from New York City and her job. Meanwhile, Megan privately feels guilt over having slept with Tom’s best friend (who is also his best man) years ago. When all the buried secrets come out at their disastrous rehearsal dinner, Megan and Tom angrily call off their wedding…but then they wake up on the morning of their rehearsal dinner, again. Megan and Tom figure out that they’re stuck in a Groundhog Day–style time loop, doomed to repeat the horrific day with the one person they never want to see again. Christie doesn’t hold any punches in her adult debut, allowing her characters to act out in surprisingly bold ways. Megan’s and Tom’s betrayals are explored compassionately and honestly, making both of them feel like fully rounded people who are, if not always completely likable, at least understandable. As Megan and Tom relive the same day and get to know each other in an entirely new way, it’s unclear until the very end what will happen with their relationship, creating a level of suspense that will keep readers turning the pages.
A compelling story about the power of second chances and forgiveness that’s sure to spark conversation.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-59299-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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