At the heart of this multicorpse thriller is a love that dare not say its name. Come on out, Jane.
Former classmates at Oxford’s MFA writing program become locked in a vicious death match at a Manhattan writers conference.
Sutanto’s campy thriller follows two successful YA novels and a cozy mystery (among other books) and shows the marks of both genres, with confessional, in-your-face, first-person narration and minimal gore, well off-screen. It begins when Jane Morgan, an unhappy midlist writer of what she calls “lit fic,” learns that her former classmate (crush, obsession, idol, muse—all of the above) Thalia Ashcroft has hit the bestseller list with a thriller that seems to be partly based on their friendship. Despite their initial intense closeness, Thalia and Jane became estranged after a mysterious incident their first year, and while Jane came back to finish, Thalia never did. Now Jane, mired in a dull marriage to a dull man, with an equally uninspiring career, is determined to reconnect with Thalia and jump-start her life. When she learns that her old friend will be appearing at SusPens Con in New York City, she pawns some apparently stolen jewelry to pay for a plane ticket and hotel room and plows ahead despite the fact that husband Ted insists on tagging along and her literary agency won’t help her get into the show. Jane reveals early on her self-diagnosis: “Pretty sure I’m a sociopath. I’m not ashamed of it; in fact it’s something I quite like, and I carry the thought in the recesses of my mind like a lucky charm, returning to it the way one might stroke a rabbit-foot once in a while.” In fact, the reason the American Jane chose England for her graduate studies is that it’s considered the third rudest, most unfriendly place in the world (after Russia and France), and life in sunny California is driving her to constant thoughts of mayhem and murder. The plot in both present and past is quite silly, but crazy stalker Jane is kind of fun. Her self-knowledge seems limited, however—despite swoony sexual fantasies about Thalia, she continues to believe she’s not attracted to women. When the point of view switches in the second half, with supporting characters streaming in and twists piling on twists piling on twists, some eye-rolling may ensue. On the other hand, Sutanto’s renderings of Jane’s Chinese Indonesian heritage and her experience at Oxford, both autobiographically based, are strong.
At the heart of this multicorpse thriller is a love that dare not say its name. Come on out, Jane.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2023
ISBN: 9780593546918
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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
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
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