Reliable suburban creepiness for some night when you already can’t sleep.
A grim trauma from 20 years ago returns in the person of an old friend who survived it to wreak vengeance on a strong heroine who turns out to be surprisingly vulnerable.
Penelope Ritter Cox used to have it all—congenial job, successful husband, perfect children, established New Jersey home—but her yield went down to maybe 70% when Brett Cox’s insurance firm went bankrupt and he lost his job. Now things are getting worse on a daily basis. The slide begins the day Willamena Blaine turns up uninvited on Penelope’s doorstep, pleading for Pip (a nickname Penelope loathes) to take her in because she’s fled her abusive husband, Trent, and has nowhere else to go. Penelope hasn’t seen Willa since their gap year after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, which they spent sharing a disused church with charming, abrasive Jack Avila, asexual virgin Bree Haren, and Bree’s male friend Flynn Lockhart. The year ended badly when a fire in Church House claimed the life of one of its tenants, an incident Penelope secretly has good reason to feel guilty about. Once she’s grudgingly allowed Willa into her house, her old buddy wastes no time in poking around among her belongings, wearing her jewelry, encouraging Penelope’s children to confide in her, and seducing Jaime Heller, the widowed neighbor and friend Penelope’s developed a crush on. Moretti, who’s plowed this territory before, amps up the betrayals inch by inch until you’re wondering if things can possibly get worse. They absolutely can, and not just because of that anticlimactic secret Moretti reveals in a carefully calibrated series of flashbacks.
Reliable suburban creepiness for some night when you already can’t sleep.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2171-5
Page Count: 333
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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