An often engaging novel with a perceptive protagonist but uneven characterization.
After witnessing a stabbing at a carnival, a man goes to great lengths to protect his sister, who knew the victim, in this thriller sequel.
Twenty-six-year-old Zane Clearwater isn’t having an easy time raising his 15-year-old sister, Lettie. He works a maintenance job at the zoo as well as a summer job at the carnival to be able to afford the rent for their two-bedroom apartment. A fight breaks out between two inebriated men at the carnival, resulting in one of them getting stabbed; the perpetrator flees, and as the victim lies bleeding, he calls out Lettie’s name. She tries to comfort him, but he dies in an ambulance. Later, when Zane asks his sister about the dead man, it’s clear that she’s hiding something that truly scares her. When the killer pays a visit to their home, Zane understands that his sibling could be the next to die. He pulls her from her class at school and takes her to their grandmother’s place, but before long, the girl goes missing, and Zane must work together with Lettie’s boyfriend, Angel, to find her and bring her home. Lipinski, who wrote Bloodlines(2015), returns with a gripping and well-paced follow-up. The novel offers action from the get-go and then paints a vivid picture of the relationship between Zane and his sister. He’s clearly shown to be traumatized by his past, in which his father killed his mother, but he cares deeply for his similarly scarred sibling and does everything he can to provide for her; he lacks a support system but does his best with what he’s given. But although his perspective is clear, readers may wish that the novel offered more of Lettie’s side of the story and provided more insight into the siblings’ relationship. Indeed, readers only get glimpses of Lettie’s personality, which keeps her from truly coming alive on the page.
An often engaging novel with a perceptive protagonist but uneven characterization.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9964676-8-1
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Majestic Content Los Angeles
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2021
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
