A hot mess.
Wealthy owners of a luxury hotel on a Greek island run afoul of a cult of wild women living on the beach.
Pochoda’s venture into dark horror is a clunky revision of The Bacchae revolving around four women and one uptight male jerk. Lena is the wealthy widow of a Greek hotel developer who died under suspicious circumstances on the site of his unfinished Agape Villas. Her son, Drew—as rigid, controlling, and misogynist as his father—has completed the project and now brings Lena; her best friend, Hedy; and his own pregnant wife, Jordan, to the island for a kind of soft opening where they will be the only guests. Already in situ is Luz, a former powerful drug dealer who did time in prison when her son turned her in to save his own hide; this backstory is the only remnant of the kind of book Pochoda has been so successful with in the past. Luz has become the leader of a group of women who live on the beach that adjoins the Agape property. Their nightly revels revolve around a DJ named BaXXus who has golden blood and takes the form of a mountain lion during sex, one of the various versions of “ecstasy” that may make this book off-putting to some readers. Also unpleasant are the constant expressions of revulsion for the aging female body. Drew on Lena: “Here’s his goddamn mess of a mother at last. Look at the state of her. That fucking caftan hiding fucking nothing. ‘Mom.’ To think that morning he’d thought of her as anything more than a saggy fifty-four-year-old ex-ballerina.” Lena feels about the same about her “worn,” “desiccated,” and “weathered” body, once so lithe and lovely (54 seems to be the new 94 here). At the heart of the story is the idea that “we grow the monsters that take us down”—both Lena and Luz have vile, treacherous sons, and pregnant Jordan is quickly picking up the vibe. You know those Greek myths—this won’t end well. Pochoda’s reliance on sentence fragments and single-sentence or single-word paragraphs add to an overall hasty feel, and probably not the kind of horror the author intended.
A hot mess.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780593851173
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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