A relentless descent into familial fears made manifest, both haunting and terribly familiar.
Anxiety metamorphoses into terror for a young Black woman fiercely protecting her own.
Like a good scary movie, this debut novel never fully explains the monsters within, but sharp portrayals, staccato wordplay, and an absolutely bloodcurdling atmosphere ameliorate the frustration of murky explanations for what follows. When we first meet 25-year-old Calla Williams, there’s not much sign from the outside that her world is falling apart, though she’s struggling at her job, trying to connect with a new boyfriend, and attempting to make a life for herself. Unfortunately, her two younger brothers, Dre and Jamie, are making it damn near impossible. With their father dead and their mother gone, the three siblings are stuck with each other, to everyone’s constant discontent. Middle sibling Dre means well, but he’s a flake who can’t be counted on to show up when it really counts. The real troublemaker is 16-year-old Jamie, full of a uniquely adolescent combination of bravado and recklessness, prone to trouble with school, drugs, and law enforcement. “It’s so hard keeping black boys alive,” Calla thinks, and her particular angst soon gets twisted into a scenario Jordan Peele might admire. When a racist cop stops Jamie at a civil rights protest, it looks like he’s about to be another fatal victim of violent injustice, but fate—or something darker—has other plans. When a spooky little girl eviscerates the officer and shortly after a terrifying series of encounters leaves Dre marked by strange, unexplainable wounds and Calla haunted by visions of a vengeful specter, they realize taking off may be their only chance at survival. As the trio flees to a remote cabin in the woods (always a good plan in a horror story), spooked readers may find themselves checking to see what’s gaining on them.
A relentless descent into familial fears made manifest, both haunting and terribly familiar.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250906328
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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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