Shines most when asking complicated questions; as a thriller, it’s a little too neat.
When her husband is accused—and seems guilty—of committing a violent crime, Camilla Deschamps must decide whether she truly believes in his goodness and innocence.
In the sweet—and sometimes challenging—blur of her first nine months of motherhood, bookworm Cam has found domestic joy with her daughter, Polly, and her husband, Luke, as well as enough downtime to do some pleasure reading, so she’s nervous about returning to her job at a London literary agency. Her first day back certainly doesn’t turn out as she imagines: Unable to find Luke, she drops Polly off at day care and goes to work. When Luke doesn’t answer her texts for hours, she starts to worry. Then, on a television in her office, she sees live footage of an ongoing siege at a nearby warehouse—and realizes her husband seems to have taken three people hostage. Several hours later, despite the intervention of Niall Thompson, a trained police hostage negotiator, two of those three people will be dead, and Luke will be in the wind. Seven years pass, and while both Cam and Niall seem to have moved on in various ways, they’re both tethered to the memories and pain of that June afternoon. Niall’s wife left him that same day, and ever since he’s been troubled with dreams of the gunshots that destroyed not only the lives of the hostages, but also his career. Cam finds joy in Polly’s growth, but she can’t let go of her love for her husband—and her deep-rooted belief that he must still be out there, and may have an explanation for everything. Cam’s fierce love for Luke is admirable, but it also feels somewhat naïve, even as she and Niall begin to uncover discrepancies and coincidences about that day and the weeks leading up to it, many of which seem like quite a narrative stretch. The sweet mundanity of Cam and Luke’s “before” relationship is the true treasure of the book, as is the tension of the early chapters. McAllister asks us to consider whether blind faith in those we love is always justified—and worth the cost.
Shines most when asking complicated questions; as a thriller, it’s a little too neat.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780063338425
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
