A somber and disquieting portrayal of human frailties and familial disconnection.
In Dwyer’s debut novel, a series of teenagers’ deaths brings about crises in the lives of a high school senior gridiron star and his deeply religious mother.
Forty-six-year-old Anne Norrisis a devoutly Catholic homemaker. Her husband, Dane, is a retired NFL star, and their sons, Dylan and Janus, are entering their senior and freshman years (respectively) at St. Ambrose High School in Asheville, North Carolina. Dylan, in particular, is highly sought by Division I college football recruiters. The boys’ rebellious, partying older sister, Maryanne, is estranged from their parents, so Anne has become overprotective of her sons to the point of driving Dylan away. After several St. Ambrose students are killed over the summer—four by accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, two due to reckless driving, one by suicide, and one from fentanyl-laced cocaine—a sense of dread descends on the community. Anne feels increasingly helpless, especially because Dane has embraced a hands-off parenting style. Dylan, with a sunny future laid out for him, experiments with drugs and meaningless sexual liaisons, which eventually draws unwelcome attention. Anne, meanwhile, commits a desperate act that cuts to the heart of her faith and marriage. Dwyer writes in the omniscient past tense, employing a flowing prose style that ably establishes people and places. The characters are distinct and memorable, and their personalities emerge organically from the story. The point of the novel is difficult to pin down: Is it about college football recruiting? Parent/teen relationships? Religion? Identity? Is there a supernatural element to the deaths? The result is an intricately themed, rather grim depiction of how human flaws can bring about tragedy. The work has an elegiacal sense of happier times fading, and the intrusion of a changing world upon Asheville is cleverly personified through Dane and Dylan, who represent similar figures in different generations. Although the narrative develops slowly, with lengthy backstories and too-long discourses on football and religion, readers willing to immerse themselves will be rewarded.
A somber and disquieting portrayal of human frailties and familial disconnection.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2022
ISBN: 979-8986400709
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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