As dexterously shape-shifting as the legends it draws from.
Following her memorably creepy debut, Little Darlings (2019), Golding scaffolds an unsettling series of revelations on the folktale “The Mermaid Wife.”
As if eager to please Sgt. Friday, Golding begins with just the facts. Leonie Douglas is a toddler suddenly separated from her mother in a shop in the seaside town of Cleethorpes. Ruby Harper, violinist and teacher, shows up and claims Leonie as her daughter; she happens to be wearing the same outfit as Constance Douglas, the girl's actual mother. Diane Rathbone, the Social Services worker called to the scene by the fast-arriving police, questions Ruby briefly before letting her go, convinced that she couldn’t possibly harm the little girl she says is hers. Meanwhile, in response to a call from Sarah Stefanidis, who’s noticed a telltale drip from her ceiling, DS Joanna Harper and PC Steve Atkinson break into the silent flat above hers and find her neighbor Gregor Franks in his bathtub, filled with drugs, bleeding from a head wound, and close to death. A series of flashbacks show Ruby’s slow entanglement with Gregor and her baffled encounters with Constance, whom he describes as his housemate and ex-lover and who describes herself as a prisoner who longs to rejoin her people, the mythological selkies. Assigned to investigate the assault on Gregor, Joanna, who’s already demonstrated her cavalier attitude toward the rules, finds herself irresistibly drawn into an unauthorized search for Leonie and Ruby—and willing to tell just as many lies as Ruby about what she’s up to and why. Long before the end, readers will be questioning all their assumptions about who are the victims, who are the criminals, and exactly which facts really are the facts.
As dexterously shape-shifting as the legends it draws from.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64385-297-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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