An engrossing, quietly original take on what women must do to survive in 21st-century small-town America.
Lee debuts with a sometimes eerie, sometimes pragmatic story about three women whose lives intersect in a small upstate New York town during the Great Recession.
Hoping for a new start with her troubled husband, childless Manhattan attorney Claire Pedersen, 43, buys an old house in Caliban in 2009. The reluctant seller, April Ives, whose great-grandfather built the place, is currently a cash-strapped single mother who cleans other people’s houses for a living. When Claire’s husband develops a “fetish” for Anna, a pregnant young Korean American woman belonging to the local branch of an otherwise white Christian cult, tragedy results. Over the next two years, the three women, all outsiders in their communities, crisscross paths as their fortunes alter and each considers the role of luck (especially bad luck), choice, and God’s role in life’s vicissitudes. Claire initially discounts April as a loser, but then Claire’s own life unravels. Having lost her husband, her financial stability, and her health, she feels a growing empathy for April’s hand-to-mouth struggles. But unlike Claire, April finds reserves of inner strength while facing crises concerning her young son and his ex-con father. She also forms an unexpected bond with Anna, who is suddenly forced to question the strict, narrow religious world in which she’s grown up and finds herself re-evaluating her beliefs while discovering the strength of genuine love and trust. Lee’s first novel is refreshingly out of sync with current trends; she manages to engage readers without relying on a big plot hook or trendy issue, and her point-of-view remains disquietingly ambiguous. Are the hints of the supernatural at work merely in the characters’ minds? Should Anna’s earnest theology be taken seriously? Readers may wonder at times where the open-ended plot is going, and the ending, while logical and satisfying, is not predictable. Life these days seldom is—which may be the novel’s ultimate message.
An engrossing, quietly original take on what women must do to survive in 21st-century small-town America.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781951213770
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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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