A slow start evolves into a pleasing paranormal story.
A podcaster searches for an informant who's gone missing under mysterious circumstances.
Talia March, Pallas Llewellyn, and Amelia Rivers suspect that seven months ago, they were victims of an experiment designed to enhance their innate paranormal abilities—Talia, for instance, can now find hidden or lost objects, including dead bodies. Now the three friends co-host a popular podcast that investigates paranormal mysteries. When a devoted listener named Phoebe Hatch offers to sell them a list of possible subjects for the experiment they think they were part of, Talia heads off to Seattle to meet her. When she arrives at the designated spot, though, she discovers Luke Rand, another potential buyer, but no Phoebe. Luke believes he was part of a related experiment, with the goal of creating psychic assassins. Phoebe is missing, but Luke and Talia find several clues that point them to the Night Island, an exclusive getaway in the San Juans that promises meditation and a full digital detox. Determined to find the missing list and rescue Phoebe, they decide to go to the Night Island, posing as a married couple. The early chapters are overburdened with too much exposition, but the plot picks up once Talia and Luke arrive on the island, where the bioluminescent plants give off a strange, menacing energy. Krentz successfully leverages the creepy, isolated setting. A bout of bad weather postpones the daily ferry service, and the island is cut off from civilization with no cell service or Wi-Fi. The staff is curt and unwelcoming, and when several of them die under mysterious circumstances, there's no way to call for help. The guests are desperate to escape the murderous island even as the flora and fauna seem to become imbued with more power and energy. Talia and Luke continue their search for Phoebe and investigate the murders, even as their pretend relationship turns into a real romance.
A slow start evolves into a pleasing paranormal story.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593639856
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
Fresh and upbeat, though not without flaws.
An earnest grad student and a faculty member with a bit of a jerkish reputation concoct a fake dating scheme in this nerdy, STEM-filled contemporary romance.
Olive Smith and professor Adam Carlsen first met in the bathroom of Adam's lab. Olive wore expired contact lenses, reducing her eyes to temporary tears, while Adam just needed to dispose of a solution. It's a memory that only one of them has held onto. Now, nearly three years later, Olive is fully committed to her research in pancreatic cancer at Stanford University's biology department. As a faculty member, Adam's reputation precedes him, since he's made many students cry or drop their programs entirely with his bluntness. When Olive needs her best friend, Anh, to think she's dating someone so Anh will feel more comfortable getting involved with Olive's barely-an-ex, Jeremy, she impulsively kisses Adam, who happens to be standing there when Anh walks by. But rumors start to spread, and the one-time kiss morphs into a fake relationship, especially as Adam sees there's a benefit for him. The university is withholding funds for Adam's research out of fear that he'll leave for a better position elsewhere. If he puts down more roots by getting involved with someone, his research funds could be released at the next budgeting meeting in about a month's time. After setting a few ground rules, Adam and Olive agree that come the end of September, they'll part ways, having gotten what they need from their arrangement. Hazelwood has a keen understanding of romance tropes and puts them to good use—in addition to fake dating, Olive and Adam are an opposites-attract pairing with their sunny and grumpy personalities—but there are a couple of weaknesses in this debut novel. Hazelwood manages to sidestep a lot of the complicated power dynamics of a student-faculty romance by putting Olive and Adam in different departments, but the impetus for their fake relationship has much higher stakes for Adam. Olive does reap the benefits of dating a faculty member, but in the end, she's still the one seemingly punished or taunted by her colleagues; readers may have been hoping for a more subversive twist. For a first novel, there's plenty of shine here, with clear signs that Hazelwood feels completely comfortable with happily-ever-afters.
Fresh and upbeat, though not without flaws.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-33682-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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