A thrilling and unpredictable hunt for answers that pays off.
A recently separated Brooklyn mother loses her one new friend and chases the woman down for answers.
As the book opens, Mary, who’s recently left her controlling husband, makes a new friend at the playground. Alex, Mary’s 2-year-old son, whines that he’s hungry, and the beautiful young mother sitting next to them on the bench offers up a bag of potato chips. This is Willa, and at this vulnerable moment in Mary’s life, she’s thrilled to connect with someone so attentive and engaging. After leaving her husband and the wealthy milieu that came along with him, Mary has been struggling to build a new life. Her relationship with fun, irreverent Willa is the one bright spot in her drearier new existence. Willa invites Mary to the opera, arranges play dates with their little boys, and fills in the gaps left by Mary’s now-estranged in-laws. Mary begins to rely heavily on Willa and maybe even love her, which is why, when Willa suddenly and inexplicably ghosts Mary, it’s so devastating. With nothing left for her in Brooklyn, Mary moves upstate with Alex, eager to start over. It’s a shock when she bumps into someone near her new home who looks exactly like Willa, but the woman insists her name is Annie. As the story unfolds, Mary learns information about Willa that she could never have imagined. This is a fast-paced, plot-driven novel that manages to poke fun at millennial parenting and the culture of wealthy Brooklynites. Although the number of coincidences and outlandish opportunities for scheming may stretch credibility, Konen does an admirable job of building suspense and keeping readers guessing. The story is perhaps tied up a bit too neatly at the end, but most readers will find themselves sufficiently surprised by the ultimate reveal.
A thrilling and unpredictable hunt for answers that pays off.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593544723
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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