A thoughtful coming-of-age story enfolded inside a cleverly crafted double mystery.
A sudden death unsettles a Northern California community for women.
As the quarterly “reenactment of horror that led to the creation of our sanctuary” tells it, Red Grove was founded in the 19th century by Tamsen Nightingale, the survivor of a trek to California on which her sisters were killed and eaten by their starving husbands. Tamsen escaped, and when her own murderous spouse tracked her to this secluded grove of redwoods, she discovered that no woman could be harmed within its magical space. Sixteen-year-old Luce Shelley—who was brought to Red Grove at age 8 by her mother, Gloria, in 1989 after her beloved aunt Gem was beaten nearly to death by a boyfriend—believes fiercely in the place as refuge from the violent male world. Its healing atmosphere resuscitated Gem, albeit only to an “everdream” state that Gloria claims makes her a conduit to the dead loved ones, whom paying customers from nearby towns come to Red Grove to contact. As the novel opens, one of these “seekers” has a heart attack during a session and later dies in the hospital. The man’s son, buying into outsiders’ hostile depictions of Red Grove as a coven of witches or a lesbian commune, thinks Gloria willfully let him die and turns up menacingly at her front door; when Gloria disappears shortly thereafter, Luce suspects the son and vows to find her mother. Fontaine first paints a rich portrait of simmering tensions both between Gloria and Red Grove’s leader, Una, and within Gloria’s family, then launches a propulsive narrative of Luce’s quest for her mother, which leads her to the real story of Red Grove’s founding and the uncomfortable knowledge that violence is not exclusively employed by men. An affirmative finale shows Luce acting on her faith that Red Grove, newly based in truth, can continue to fulfill its mission as a place of peace and healing.
A thoughtful coming-of-age story enfolded inside a cleverly crafted double mystery.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9780374605810
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
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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