Set aside a chunk of time for this Hitchcockian tale—you'll have a hard time not finishing it in one sitting.
A woman with motion blindness becomes obsessed with a new neighbor whose husband, she's convinced, wants to kill her.
When Leah Anderson was 8, she suffered both the sudden death of her father and a freak accident—unspecified until late in the book—which left her with akinetopsia, a rare condition that causes an inability to see movement. Desperate to protect her daughter, Leah's mother took her out of school and confined her to their Manhattan apartment. Now 28, Leah is reeling from her mother's recent death, balancing profound grief with hope for this opportunity to claim her independence. Her world thus far has been small, mostly contained within walking distance of her home in Morningside Heights, but at the same time, it's more expansive than those around her can comprehend: Her heightened senses of hearing and smell allow her to track her neighbors' movements and give her access to others' most intimate moments, whether she wants it or not. When a woman named Alice moves into the apartment abutting hers, Leah can't avoid the sound of her sobbing or her heated arguments with her husband. Leah becomes obsessed with the idea that Alice's husband is breaking into her apartment, that she and Alice are in real danger—and that she's the one who must protect them. This conviction is strengthened by Alice's sudden intense attachment to Leah, alarming on the page ("We're like Thelma and Louise!" she says on a trip upstate) but intoxicating for Leah. Tonally and narratively reminiscent of Rear Window, this novel expertly draws the reader into Leah's unique perspective, which leaves her convinced of an imminent tragedy she alone can see. It's not only a gripping, surreal examination of the effects of isolation on the mind but also a good old-fashioned thriller.
Set aside a chunk of time for this Hitchcockian tale—you'll have a hard time not finishing it in one sitting.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781982197506
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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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