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 particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.
An author is targeted by a fan who just can’t let her go.
Arden Bowie has had plenty of tragedy in her life, but now she’s finally on top. After her parents died when she was a teenager, she moved from Brooklyn to Ohio to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She soon became part of their loving family and grew up to become a writer and bookseller. When her debut novel is published, she meets Dustin Dubecki at her first event. He showers her with praise, asks for writing advice, and wants to take her out for coffee. Arden tells herself he’s just a little awkward, but then he keeps showing up at her local events—and, even stranger, she’s sure she sees him lurking at her event in New York City. When he bursts into her apartment one night and assaults her, Arden’s calm life is shattered. Dustin gets a five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility; Arden spends most of that time rebuilding her sense of stability. Eventually, she moves to Oregon to start a new life where Dustin can never find her. But even though she has a beautiful home, a thriving career, a doting family, new friends, and even a potential love interest in a former cop named Gideon Riley, Arden can’t escape Dustin’s rage when his sentence is finally up. Roberts toggles between Arden’s point of view and Dustin’s, giving the reader occasional glimpses into his extremely twisted mindset. Although Arden’s attempts to escape Dustin are engrossing, the story stalls in the middle when far too many pages are dedicated to Arden purchasing and decorating a house. But the excitement picks back up when Dustin, a truly odious villain, re-enters the story. It’s also satisfying to see Arden grow into someone who refuses to be a victim, even as she deals with horrifying circumstances.
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250413581
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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
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