Replete with “huh?” moments.
This Washington thriller achieves suspense mostly through misdirection.
At one point, a character wonders what another is really up to, but most of the characters here actually have hidden agendas. Case in point: Avery Chambers. As a therapist, she’s gone rogue, having lost her license thanks to unorthodox methods that include a combination of detective work, with all the data-mining and surveillance that entails, and prescriptive advice. She tells clients what to do—and sometimes does it for them. Matthew Bishop, a high-powered Washington lawyer, and Marissa, his wife, come to Avery for help. At the first session, Marissa confesses to infidelity with, she lies, a guy from her gym. Suddenly, this “curated Instagram” marriage is on the rocks. Can Avery salvage the relationship in her trademark 10 sessions and done? She cases the gym in question, the Bishops' opulent residence in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and looks into Marissa’s boutique and her slightly unhinged shop assistant, Polly. There's more to Marissa’s story than meets the eye, Avery thinks, somewhat superfluously. The truth could explode any chance of reconciliation. At times, Avery’s tactics seem unusually cruel, even sexist: She busts up one marriage where the wife is unduly controlling but appears to ignore her own initial suspicion that Matthew might be that way, too. Avery’s intrusiveness has made enemies, among them drug company Acelia, which she’s reported to the FDA on behalf of one of her clients who hesitated to be a whistleblower. The Acelia subplot feels superfluous, but it must be pivotal, because it takes up so much space while telling elements of backstory are withheld. There are some sharply observed class dynamics, and the final reversal is unexpected—but only because it is not foreshadowed. There’s a thin line between gaslighting characters and gaslighting readers, and this novel crosses it.
Replete with “huh?” moments.Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-2502-7320-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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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