An engrossing yarn about innocence-turned-malignant, by turns hilarious and haunting.
Schoolkids are as devious and dangerous as they are cute in Kelly’s slyly unsettling suspenser.
Tina is a single mom with a checkered past (she barely remembers the drunken hookup that derailed her life and produced her 10-year-old son Matty) who has a toehold in affluent Park Slope, Brooklyn, thanks to a below-market rental and a teaching job at L’il Learners preschool. She loves her charges—vomiting and poop jokes notwithstanding—but wonders about Jonah, a 3-year-old who never talks or plays, especially when his attacks on a little girl escalate from biting and hair-pulling to stabbing with a tack and worse. Jonah’s older sister Darla, Matty’s classmate, is also a problem; her more sophisticated bullying of an overweight boy named Byron progresses to subtle, disturbing bloodshed. Tina sympathizes with Jonah and Darla because their mother Laura recently died in a hiking accident (they say they can see her ghost) and grows even more sympathetic when she meets their handsome, ingratiating father Patrick. As Tina grows closer to Patrick and his kids, she puts aside others’ misgivings even as red flags appear, including hints that Laura’s death might not have been accidental. Kelly’s novel is a mordantly funny portrait of high-end preschools full of well-heeled, judgmental moms and exasperating, antic children. It’s also a plangent reflection on the fragility of relationships—Tina’s decade-long friendship with her landlady Cheryl, whose daughter Naomi she practically raised, goes by the wayside when Cheryl decides she wants more rent. The author’s clever, evocative prose illuminates characters in their labyrinthine complexity—especially Darla’s arresting mix of childishness and dark calculation. (“Darla hates the fat boy so much she would like to bite him and swallow the pieces. She wants to call him fatty-pants again, but this time Naomi and Matty would hear….Darla knows better than to show her friends what she feels.”) From this bad seed sprouts a page-turner.
An engrossing yarn about innocence-turned-malignant, by turns hilarious and haunting.Pub Date: July 3, 2024
ISBN: 9798988721369
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Flexible Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.
A woman fears she made a fatal mistake by taking in a blood-soaked tween during a storm.
High winds and torrential rain are forecast for “The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire,” making Casey question the structural integrity of her ramshackle rental cabin. Still, she’s loath to seek shelter with her lecherous landlord or her paternalistic neighbor, so instead she just crosses her fingers, gathers some candles, and hopes for the best. Casey is cooking dinner when she notices a light in her shed. She grabs her gun and investigates, only to find a rail-thin girl hiding in the corner under a blanket. She’s clutching a knife with “Eleanor” written on the handle in black marker, and though her clothes are bloody, she appears uninjured. The weather is rapidly worsening, so before she can second-guess herself, former Boston-area teacher Casey invites the girl—whom she judges to be 12 or 13—inside to eat and get warm. A wary but starving Eleanor accepts in exchange for Casey promising not to call the police—a deal Casey comes to regret after the phones go down, the power goes out, and her hostile, sullen guest drops something that’s a big surprise. Meanwhile, in interspersed chapters labeled “Before,” middle-schooler Ella befriends fellow outcast Anton, who helps her endure life in Medford, Massachusetts, with her abusive, neglectful hoarder of a mother. As per her usual, McFadden lulls readers using a seemingly straightforward thriller setup before launching headlong into a series of progressively seismic (and increasingly bonkers) plot twists. The visceral first-person, present-tense narrative alternates perspectives, fostering tension and immediacy while establishing character and engendering empathy. Ella and Anton’s relationship particularly shines, its heartrending authenticity counterbalancing some of the story’s soapier turns.
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464260919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.
Robots may be the future of warfare in this final father-son DeMille collaboration.
In Camp Hayden, Army Maj. Roger Ames is found dead, his skull crushed. Chief Warrant Officers Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor, special agents of the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division, are sent to the Mojave Desert, “a.k.a. in the middle of nowhere,” to investigate. In this fictional military installation, Army Rangers conduct field training exercises with lethal autonomous weapons. These “dangerous new toys,” nicknamed “tin men,” may become the future of warfare if they can be programmed to distinguish between friend and foe. Anyway, the Rangers’ job is to train the tin men, not the other way around. They are AI-driven robotic prototypes called D-17s, but even prototypes can kill. Did a bot kill the major? And was there criminal liability or intent, or was it a tragic accident? Brodie and Taylor discover that not everyone loves these beasts, and they must find out if humans are programming them for mischief or even trying to set up the program for failure. Meanwhile, the bots have nicknames. Bot number 20 is Bucky, seen on a video as a “seven-foot-tall titanium machine with hands covered in blood and brain matter” that has “a face but no eyes, with hands but no skin, with a body but no soul.” As scary as these beasties are, Brodie and Taylor must also look at the humans at Camp Hayden, because they learn that the “machines don’t have motives….They have inputs and outputs,” which naturally come from human programmers. They have neither brains nor courage nor honor; they do have brute force, speed, and agility. Obviously, plenty goes haywire in this enjoyable yarn. It feels a bit too believable for comfort, and that’s to the DeMilles’ credit as storytellers. Nelson DeMille had begun this project with his son Alex, who had to finish it alone after his father’s death.
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781501101878
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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