Joe Goldberg might be a narcissistic, manipulative, murderous, utterly unreliable narrator, but he’s damn entertaining.
Has serial killer Joe Goldberg finally met his match—in a creative writing class?
In the previous three books in this series, beginning with You (2014), hopeless romantic and occasional murderer Joe has found himself in perilous situations. But who knew the most terrifying yet would be a creative writing fellowship at Harvard? Joe has written a novel, titled—what else?—Me, and has finagled himself into a workshop headed by Glenn Shoddy, author of a critically acclaimed novel called Scabies for Breakfast. Joe discovers that most of his fellows in the workshop are real writers, not just aspiring—Ani is an Obie-winning playwright, Sarah Beth the author of a successful mystery series. Mats and Lou have both completed promising first books, and nepo baby O.K. hasn’t finished writing a book yet, but her mother is an NPR star. Shoddy himself comes to class in bike shorts and talks more about his rides than his writing. But, of course, Joe finds a soul mate in the lovely Wonder Parish, who’s just as insecure about her place in the seminar as Joe is. She still lives with her blue-collar family, caring for her wounded veteran dad and managing a Dunkin’. And she is, as Joe sees when he starts reading her manuscript, Faithful, a truly gifted writer. He is soon madly in love with her, and she responds, although their affair doesn’t go smoothly. Joe has other things to worry about, too. One is a podcast that's the topic of lively discussion in the seminar: The Body on Bainbridge—a body Joe knows too much about. When you leave as many unsolved murders in your wake as he has, someone is bound to do a true-crime show about one of them. Another is Shoddy’s wife, the aptly named Sly, who has her own secrets. When the bodies start dropping, Joe has to wonder if he’s the only killer in class. Kepnes gleefully portrays the most back-stabbing seminar yet, dropping literary names with abandon as she twists the plot.
Joe Goldberg might be a narcissistic, manipulative, murderous, utterly unreliable narrator, but he’s damn entertaining.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780593133811
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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