Horses and young riders are center stage, but dysfunctional adults steal the show in this moody mystery.
Brazier takes readers deep inside the rarified and competitive world of “horse girls” in this tale of jealousy and deadly secrets.
This irresistible novel opens with police asking questions about “an unimaginable tragedy” but quickly spins backward in time, exploring the months leading up to the suspicious death of one of its major characters, whose identity remains a mystery throughout most of the book. Brazier’s juicy narrative gives credence to a detective’s comment that “there were no people quite like horse people,” as she perfectly describes the back-stabbing day-to-day life at an equestrian school in California. The school is run by the megalomaniac trainer Kieran Flynn, an imperious man who makes or breaks horses as well as their riders. Young girls are his beleaguered students, but their overinvolved mothers are holding the reins, and Brazier expertly captures their arrested development, broken relationships, and neediness. Heather, rich and oh-so-sad, wants her teenage daughters to fulfill her lost dream of being a champion show jumper. Daughter Piper, a natural equestrian, won't ride because of the overbearing Heather's interference. Her timid sister, Maple, is afraid of horses but is pressured by Heather into riding. Ex-addict Pamela is broke but wants her daughter, the chaos-loving Vida, to have the same opportunities as Heather’s girls and will do anything to make that happen. This tale of the horsey set unpacks enough mean-girl drama and emotion to fill a horse barn. Equipment tampering, underage drinking, and animal doping will keep readers turning the pages, and long-kept secrets, unplanned pregnancies, and power-hungry manipulators add to the novel's can't-look-away storyline. Laughing at rich-people problems is a popular theme, but Brazier makes us feel for her characters, rich and poor, and delivers a blue-ribbon story of the haves and have-nots.
Horses and young riders are center stage, but dysfunctional adults steal the show in this moody mystery.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780593438886
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
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
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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