Kiste fights for friendship and love to pull her characters through.
In an oppressive 1980s U.S. suburb, forgotten women locate their power and rescue themselves.
Talitha Velkwood, a stagnant middle-aged woman, is plagued by the tragic and mysterious disappearance of the suburban neighborhood where she grew up 20 years ago. This cosmic anomaly, in which everything and everyone on this single block vanished behind a seemingly uncrossable veil, left behind only three college girls—Talitha, Brett Hadley, and Grace Spencer. In a world obsessed with spectacle, it’s no surprise that the mysterious circumstances of the Velkwood Vicinity caught the attention of occult theorists, some ill-intentioned tabloid journalists, and now a sympathetic paranormal researcher named Jack. He theorizes that only the three women are capable of crossing the border, and when both Brett and Grace reject his offer to try it, he approaches Talitha, convincing her to go back for her younger sister. What she finds is a street full of ghosts ready to plunge her back into the traumatic past she tried desperately to run from. Somewhere between real life and the supernatural, Talitha must confront the reality that past and present are always intertwined, no matter how hard you work to erase it. After all her years of running, Talitha turns back for another moment with her sister and a reconnection with her estranged friends to repair the Velkwood Vicinity and heal themselves. While the haunting is original and atmospheric, the dark history of Talitha’s suburbia has a predictable underbelly, leaving the scares a bit hollow and the emotional peak at a disappointingly low elevation. On the other hand, a character-driven novel that employs a metaphor for the time warp of trauma and women refusing to stay silent about abuses they’ve undergone is a worthwhile undertaking.
Kiste fights for friendship and love to pull her characters through.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781982172374
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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