A sexy, suspenseful romance.
A professional thief and the FBI agent tasked with catching her must collaborate to foil a kidnapping plot in DePaul’s romantic suspense novel.
Holly Bell is a thief. Her latest heist is interrupted by Jackson Kendrick, an FBI agent she finds foxy, even though he is her nemesis. She’s trying to steal a sword from a movie set; a huge explosion allows her to get away. In the chaos, Holly’s uncle, Liam, is kidnapped. The kidnapper, millionaire Darien Burton, demands a ransom: Holly must steal a device called the Infostrata Cryptix. Holly decides that the only person who can help is Jackson. She makes contact, and he tells her that the Cryptix contains a computer virus that can provide unfettered access to everything on the internet, including secure data. (It takes some doing, but he ultimately agrees to help.) Attraction zings between Holly and Jackson as they work together to find safe places to hide while they look for the Cryptix together. Tracking down a hacker to Saint Croix at a couple’s retreat, Jackson and Holly pretend to be a couple on the rocks, which only ratchets up the sexual tension between them. But in order to foil the kidnapping plot, Holly has to ask Jackson to compromise his values and put his job at risk, which he is reluctant to do—even for Holly, with whom he is starting to fall in love. The novel is a fun romp. There’s real danger, and Burton is a clever antagonist, but the dynamic between Jackson and Holly is the star of the show. The dialogue is zippy and the tension between the leads is thick enough to cut with a knife. (“If only Jackson hasn’t been living rent-free in my wildest fantasies. Working with him day in and day out has us discovering a sexy, unlikely obsession that can only lead to heartache since we’re on opposite sides of the law.”) There’s plenty of suspense to keep the story moving forward as Jackson and Holly have to wriggle out of various spots of trouble; overall, it’s a fun page turner.
A sexy, suspenseful romance.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781959324072
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Northfair Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© 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.
