A finely wrought and deeply disturbing work of psychological terror.
An abused woman is pushed to the point of fracture in Murray’s literary horror novel.
Bernadette “Birdie” Black lives in fear of setting off her boyfriend Russ Swinbank’s explosive temper. He flies into a rage if she doesn’t make a dinner he likes, for instance, and she’s afraid to tell him about her plans to go to nursing school. “He loves me,” she insists to her best friend, who regularly encourages Birdie to leave him. “He does! He just has a hard time showing it.” On some level, Birdie feels that she deserves Russ’ cruelty: She blames herself for the accidental death of her son, Noah, and for an affair that she had that destroyed her first marriage. As Birdie works around Russ’ moods—and his frequent nights away from the house—she frets over her future, experiments with a grief group, and even reconnects with her ex-husband, Noah’s father. As her story unfolds, the novel intersperses chapters from the viewpoints of other women—all victims of a local serial killer, including one who’s already dead and moldering in the woods. Can Birdie overcome her self-hatred enough to save herself from Russ, or is she, like the victims of the killer stalking her community, caught in a trap that will inevitably destroy her? Murray writes with a horror novelist’s sense of tension and dread. Her skills are particularly on display in the chapters about the killer’s victims, as in this passage about a woman named Maeve: “she’d left a window cracked and a man she’d seen four days before at a gas station, a stranger who’d eyed her up and down and given her the creeps, had checked every door and window each day since he followed her home.” The book also persuasively dramatizes the mindset of an abused person, and although it takes her situation to its darkest extremes, it never abandons a sense of emotional verisimilitude.
A finely wrought and deeply disturbing work of psychological terror.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781954899216
Page Count: 336
Publisher: SmallPub
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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