The timeless battle between good and evil has never been trashier. Hooray.
The bitch is back!
After four intervening novels of varying success, the sisters who write as Constantine have returned to the well, bringing back the craven sociopathic hussy we loved to hate in their breakout debut, The Last Mrs. Parrish (2017). The good news is, Amber Patterson Parrish, a.k.a. Lana Crump, is worse than ever. As the novel opens, she’s visiting her handsome, deeply horrible husband, Jackson, at Camp Fed, where he’s soon to wrap up his sentence and return to Amber’s loathing arms. “Amber had worried at first that the scandal would make her persona non grata in Bishops Harbor, but apparently tax evasion was a crime that didn’t garner much antipathy among the one-percenters.” Each of them has plans to dump the other just as soon as they can get through the welcome home party, and each has their own evil scheme for what happens after that. His: to get back the first Mrs. Parrish—sweet, confused, abused Daphne, who took the girls and moved to California after the divorce, where she divides her time between much-needed therapy and her cystic fibrosis nonprofit. Hers: to rob him blind and fly the coop, dumping little Jackson Junior with the nanny. I mean, he’s cute, but...you gotta do what you gotta do. What Amber doesn’t know is that Daisy Ann Briscoe, whose father was so briefly married to Amber that Daisy Ann didn’t even know Amber existed before he died “in a hunting accident,” has alternate plans for her former stepmother. She just has to find a way to prove what actually happened out in those Colorado woods. There’s no manipulative unreliable narrator, no contrived backstory shoehorned in at the eleventh hour, and the over-the-topness—like Amber meeting a shady diamond dealer named Mr. Stones—reads as funny and intentional. You go, ladies.
The timeless battle between good and evil has never been trashier. Hooray.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780593599921
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 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
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