A taut, incisive look at two lives as they slowly implode.
A married couple grows apart in the wake of their daughter’s disappearance.
Some crises bring families closer together; others shatter them. The latter is the case in Tanzer’s new novel, which is pitched somewhere between Tom Perrotta’s suburban ennui and Ian McEwan’s tales of psychological turmoil. Narrated in alternating chapters by Hannah and Gabriel, the novel opens in the wake of their teenage daughter, Christa, going missing with her slightly older boyfriend, Josh. Soon enough, we learn that Hannah and Gabriel have been in a relationship since they were both in high school. Theirs is a close-knit community; John, the police officer on the case, is a former classmate of theirs. Early in the novel, the couple ponders what might have made Christa leave; Gabriel thinks, “We don’t know what we did to cause this. What clues we missed.” But as the months pass, the long-standing fissures in the marriage become more apparent. By the novel’s halfway point, Hannah opts for candor, thinking of Gabriel, “I kind of hate him and I’ve hated him for so long now.” She confides in her father’s fiancee about her lack of experience outside her marriage; throughout, there are hints that she could be bi- or pansexual but never had an opportunity to explore those feelings. A confession Gabriel makes late in the book at an AA meeting suggests he’s at a similar state of arrested development. By the novel’s final third, both Gabriel and Hannah are seeking escapes, whether physically or mentally. As Gabriel phrases it, “We are our memories, pain, and habits, and we’re destined to wallow in and repeat them, unless we can become unstuck, and find a way out.”
A taut, incisive look at two lives as they slowly implode.Pub Date: March 21, 2024
ISBN: 9798989121427
Page Count: 272
Publisher: 7.13 Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 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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