A swift, compelling thriller with unexpected swoops and swerves.
On the run from her abusive boyfriend, Lucy King holes up in Woodstock, New York. Her new neighbors, John and Vera, welcome her with open arms. But are they too good to be true?
In her first non–YA novel, Konen proves herself a master of weaving webs that slowly contract, strangling characters in the threads. Within minutes of meeting Vera, Lucy is warned off the couple by Maggie, who lives on the other side of Lucy’s cottage. She cautions Lucy that Vera Abernathy and John Nolan are charming but only care about themselves. But after Lucy’s hidden all of her valuables under the floorboards beneath her bed and closely documented everything in the cabin, determined not to let her violent boyfriend, Davis, gaslight her ever again, she drops by her neighbors' for dinner anyway. Soon, Vera, John, and Lucy are inseparable, their friendship fueled by alcohol and half-revealed secrets: Lucy confesses to Davis’ abuse but holds back the details of his surveillance; Vera alludes to unfriendly relations in town but won’t say why. And as the weeks progress, Lucy finds herself emotionally dependent on Vera and strongly desiring to kiss John. Yet questions persist: Why did their previous neighbor, Rachel, move out? Why are the townspeople leaving threatening notes in their mailbox and graffiti on their gallery downtown? Who is sneaking into Lucy’s cottage, leaving faucets running and mementoes rearranged? As tensions rise, Vera and John tell Lucy about their plan to escape the hostilities by faking a death, and Lucy seizes the opportunity to help. But when someone turns up actually murdered, Lucy has to solve the mystery before she is arrested and blamed herself.
A swift, compelling thriller with unexpected swoops and swerves.Pub Date: June 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-08547-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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