Marshall’s chilling new novel pushes all the right buttons when it comes to inexorable suspense and psychological frights.
Astonishing secrets come to light at a mountain retreat when a young woman goes to meet her fiance’s family.
In the opening pages of Marshall’s terrific—and terrifying—new thriller, Theodora Scott is on her way meet her fiance’s wealthy family. Having met and fallen for Connor Dalton at a friend’s party a mere six months earlier, Theo is ready to give love a chance. First, though, she has to navigate meeting his family at Idlewood, their isolated mountain retreat. As a rule, she learns, non–family members are not permitted apart from a handful of employees and a few locals who have special permission during hunting season. This delicious setup is promisingly sinister enough but, as Theo’s narration continues, it becomes clear that she has secrets of her own to keep: Some of that has to do with her earlier life as a child who was adopted by a fundamentalist religious couple, Beth and Joseph; some of it has to do with anonymous messages she’s been receiving, warning her to stay away from Connor. As the family gathering progresses, Theo survives the domesticity of “pie day” and a grilling by Connor’s sister, mother, and grandmother. Later, she also survives a far less domestic hunting session (and just as much of a grilling) with Connor’s grandfather. But it’s what Theo discovers when she snoops around an abandoned cabin in the family compound that threatens to blow everything she knew—and didn’t know—about herself wide open. Theo has always had vague, dreamlike, and splintered memories of her pre-adoption life—she was only 4 when she came to live with Beth and Joseph. But when her cabin exploration turns up an old photograph of herself as a child at Idlewild, that’s when Theo’s real-life (read: life-threatening) nightmare really begins.
Marshall’s chilling new novel pushes all the right buttons when it comes to inexorable suspense and psychological frights.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250343055
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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