If you can accept the shakeup of what looked like an overheated whodunit, the payoff is startling.
When a reality TV show crashes to a premature end with the death of one of its stars, its consulting therapist works frantically to clear her name.
Comeback Kids features seven actors whose careers were cut short by their addiction to drugs or drinks or unsuitable men. One of its producers, Gia Mathews—director of the treatment center Crystal Meadows, whose identity on the show has been kept secret so far—spotlights them individually and in groups as they pursue their healing regimens under the guidance of sobriety coach Dr. Laurel Harlow. The stars’ often erratic and hostile behavior can be tough to watch, but it’s made the show a hit that’s contending for an Emmy with Queer Eye until the youngest cast member playing herself, 19-year-old Maddie Hernandez, is found dead, a victim of anaphylactic shock as a reaction to ibuprofen, the one pharmaceutical she’s known to be allergic to. The last message Maddie recorded in the daily journal she was required to keep—“If something bad happens to me tonight, it wasn’t an accident”—makes Detectives Wallace and Boone of the LAPD treat her death as very suspicious indeed. They quickly choose Laurel, who narrates the story except for a series of flashbacks to a brutal gang rape in sections labeled “Then,” as the most likely perpetrator. Then Laurel herself makes one discovery too many, and the tale switches abruptly to an unflinching take on the damsel in distress betrayed by someone she thought she could trust, just like all of Berry’s other luckless heroines.
If you can accept the shakeup of what looked like an overheated whodunit, the payoff is startling.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781662526046
Page Count: 251
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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