Silence your notifications and lock the doors, then indulge in this delightfully distasteful, cozily creepy thriller.
A British "Instamum" navigates the dangers of fame—and finds herself the target of a killer.
Former fashion editor Emmy Jackson traded her magazine cred for Instagram fame with her first pregnancy. Now her life is more breastfeeding than brunches, and she works hard to convince her tribe of eager mamas that she’s barely keeping up—just one of the many myths she's constantly perpetuating. In truth, she has to be savvy and tough, three steps ahead of everyone else, commiserating with the sleepless one minute, plugging one of her sponsors—perhaps a toilet paper company?—the next. Her husband begins to feel like his wife is always performing, like he barely knows her anymore, especially when she turns their 4-year-old daughter’s birthday party into a public event or ignores her best friend’s messages with a wave. But when their daughter temporarily disappears at the mall and then there’s a break-in at their flat, they begin to worry that the price of Emmy’s fame might just be too high. Someone is posting stolen pictures; someone else is watching and waiting for the opportunity to take revenge. The first half of the novel is a delicious guilty pleasure: hyperbolic descriptions of the glamorous superficiality that we all suspect lies at the heart of most Instagram lives and experiences. But the second half takes us to a darker place as Lloyd explores the pitfalls of living a life on the internet, especially when that life involves kids. How can we ever assume privacy and safety? And when does the line between persona and person no longer exist? Despite a rather melodramatic climax and rushed conclusion, this one will get under your skin.
Silence your notifications and lock the doors, then indulge in this delightfully distasteful, cozily creepy thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-299739-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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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