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Women

Review

Such a Good Mother

by Henrietta Thornton

Rose O’Connell’s never been confident. At her downmarket English school, she was bullied as “Rotten Rosie” after her father was publicly disgraced. While her life has since improved, her husband struggles to find work and they’re deep in debt. Then she gets her son, Charlie, into The Woolf Academy, an exclusive school in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood she grew up in. In fact, it’s her old school, but it’s now completely unrecognizable, as is the house she grew up in, where Amala Kaur, the CEO of the new school, lives. Woolf Academy seems too strict with Charlie yet indulgent of the other children, and while Rose is determined to do whatever it takes to help her son, she quickly finds that the mean girls she faced years ago have nothing on the circle of snooty women in charge here. It’s complicated and confusing when things begin to thaw and Rose is invited into the inner circle after the mysterious death of one of its members; slowly readers will begin to wonder if there’s anything she won’t do to please Amala and her ice-queen clique. By the time Amala wants something that made me gasp out loud—just the first of several gut-punching twists—it seems too late for Rose to salvage her marriage, her career, and even her sense of self. For readers of mean-girl titles and those who enjoyed The Hawthorne School by Sylvie Perry.

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Review

The Nurse’s Secret

by Henrietta Thornton

Una Kelly is a pickpocket in 1883 New York City, artfully dodging the police and turning her loot over to the head of her pickpocket ring, the quietly ruthless Marm Blei. Una is saving her pay to leave this miserable life, but it’s slow going, so she chances a side gig—selling a trinket she steals rather than turning it over to Marm. This puts her at the site of a murder, and now she’s accused and on the run. Her unusual hiding place—one of the country’s first nursing schools, at Bellevue Hospital—is the intriguing, politics- and emotion-laden setting for most of the book. Only educated ladies are accepted as nurses, but Una is neither schooled nor genteel, and faking both. Her nervous, always-on-your-toes code switching will be familiar to immigrant readers as well as anyone who’s reached for something out of grasp, and heavy doses of realism are thrown in as Una fights bullies while making a great friend and even finding romance. Skendandore’s (The Second Life of Mirielle West) intrepid heroine continues investigating the crime she’s accused of, too, making the book a thoroughly enjoyable and compelling medical history, mystery, and romance. Side benefit: a look at attitudes toward the then-emerging science of blood transfusion.

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Review

Good Husbands

by Henrietta Thornton

Bath, England strangers Priyanka, Stephanie, and Jess each receive the same letter telling them that their husbands together raped a woman decades before, with the letter writer, Holly, claiming to be the daughter of one of the men. The women think that confronting their husbands will be the end of the story. (That’s if they decide it’s true and if they can bring themselves to tell the men that they know about the rape, neither of which they find a given at all.) The husbands, too, think their troubles are over. They’re still members of the same upmarket social club where Holly says the crime took place, and still lead fine lives, unlike the victim and her daughter, with the mother now dead and the daughter near death from alcoholism. As the women meet one another and move from emotional paralysis to action, we’re brought to what seems like a definitive showdown. But it’s not the end at all. Ray’s U.S. debut reminds readers, through her storytelling and her portrayal of the women’s undulating emotions, that sometimes what we think will be the end might not even be the most significant part of the story; these women make their own ending, and it includes a startling closing twist. The sadness of lives destroyed is palpable here, but so is the healing force of friendship, not to mention determination. Psychological thriller fans who enjoy strong women characters should add this to their reading plans.

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Review

The Lies I Tell

by Henrietta Thornton

Meg (as she’s currently called) knows now that she was born to be a scammer, but she didn’t always know it. It took losing her childhood home to a con artist, then living in her car and going on dates to get food, to wake her up to her dubious talents. Now she’s a pro at the long game, tricking men into letting her clean out their bank accounts before she hits the road, on to the next mark. Sometimes she hurts others along the way, such as Kat Roberts, a journalist who’s now on Meg’s tail, hoping to get revenge as well as success by breaking a high-interest story about a female con artist. But the plan isn’t as smooth as Kat hopes. Kat begins to like Meg and maybe even trust her. Adding complication, Kat’s boyfriend is also a scammer, a gambling addict who uses distractions, fake outrage, and even-more-fake promises when he’s caught, only to do it all again. Kat, and the reader, don’t know who’s at fault and whom to trust when she notices her bank statements missing and other red flags. The roller coaster story here, coupled with the fear and uncertainty endured by Kat as she learns to trust again only to be betrayed again, will stay with readers. And the facts of the various cons—this is virtually an instruction manual for fraud!—are fascinating. For those who like a story in which women fight back.

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Review

Geiger

by Henrietta Thornton

Talk about jumping right into the thick of the story. As Skördeman’s debut opens, a wife says goodbye to her visiting daughters and grandchildren, picks up the phone, and, hearing just the word Geiger, shoots her husband in the head. We have no idea why she would do this nor where she’s headed after immediately going on the run, and what unfolds is more bizarre than we could have imagined. It’s also much weirder than the Swedish public ever thought could happen to the victim, a beloved TV presenter and jolly father figure known as Uncle Stellan. Espionage involving Sweden’s relationship with East Germany during the Cold War and after, and the relationship between Uncle Stellan’s spoiled, mean daughters and their childhood friend and bullying target Sara—now a police officer who elbows her way into the investigation—are highlights of this tale, as are the frequent head-spinning twists. Potential readers should note that child sexual abuse is a major plotline here. For fans of Elizabeth Elo’s Finding Katarina M., which also has echoes of a communist regime.

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Review

The Old Woman with the Knife

by Henrietta Thornton

This startling work upends every stereotype of old ladies and killers. Known as Hornclaw, our protagonist is only 65 but welcomes the invisibleness of appearing elderly so as to better function as a disease control specialist: a hired killer. Under her baggy, mismatched clothes, Hornclaw has such a fearsome body that a TV producer at the gym asks her to be on a show about unusual people. But she fears being forced into retirement soon, a euphemism for being killed by the other specialists at the disease control agency. As we observe the abusive childhood that led Hornclaw to obsessively love her dog, Deadweight, but blithely kill strangers, we’re led toward a hairpin turn in her personality, when she finally cares for someone but it is part of a deadly trap. The story, which immerses readers into everyday life in Seoul, is made unforgettable by Gu’s language as she draws readers into the chilling, beautiful wanderings of Hornclaw’s mind, which flits from contemplating someone eating a peach (“she watches a perfect small world being smashed inside his mouth”) to considering the home of a newly butchered man (“the hallway to the living room seemed to loll like a dead person’s tongue”). For lovers of literary fiction and book clubs that will try something different.

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Review

The Lying Club

by Henrietta Thornton

The recent college-admissions scandal comes to mind when meeting the rich, competitive seniors of Colorado’s Falcon Academy High School and their even more fiercely cutthroat moms. Former friendships are thrown to the side when Mia and Sloane, best friends since grade school, both try for a soccer scholarship to UCLA. Their moms, who’ve spent countless hours together at soccer-pitch sidelines over the years, are increasingly at war too. It’s all eye-rolling entertainment for the staff at the school, who must please the moneyed families no matter how ridiculous their obsessions. Probably the most jaded by these mind games is Natalie, a secretary to the principal who has a front seat to the show and whose personal life is slowly being followed down the drain by her professional one. With so many dysfunctional characters and moral rollercoasters, readers won’t know whom to point at or root for when a body is found in the gym. Ward (Beautiful Bad, 2019) does a great job of portraying the disarray caused by meanness and greed, and when characters show unexpected sides, she deftly makes that switch. Note that there’s sexual abuse “off camera” here. For Liane Moriarty’s legions of followers.

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Review

The Lies I Tell

by Brian Kenney

Ingenious grifter. Con-artist extraordinaire. Feminist Robin Hood. Add to this just plain old brilliant and you have the incredible character of Meg Williams. When her mother gets conned out of the family home by a sleazeball boyfriend—then dies shortly afterwards—18-year-old Meg vows this will never happen to her, and she flips the narrative and figures out how to steal from men. She begins small—seducing a high-school principal—but slowly works her way up the food chain as she deftly separates men, one more despicable than the last, from their money. When enough of their assets are in her accounts, she suddenly disappears, off to another city, another persona, another man. While Meg thinks she’s getting away with it all, one woman, journalist Kat Roberts, is watching her. Kate has her own reasons to expose Meg, and the two of them dance around each other as Meg lays the groundwork for her biggest con yet, worth millions of dollars and putting a political career at risk. With two super-strong characters, a remarkably credible and terrifying depiction of high-level scamming, and a pace that’s relentless, Julie Clark has given fans of the domestic thriller a real treat.

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Review

Miss Aldridge Regrets

by Brian Kenney

We’re in 1936 London and Lena Aldridge has had her share of troubles. Alfie, her beloved father and only parent, has recently died. Alfie was a gifted musician, and Lena has followed in his footsteps, eking out a living as a nightclub singer. Until a gig in a worn down Soho nightclub, when her best friend’s husband, also the club owner, is poisoned and dies right in front of her. Time to get out of town! Fortuitously, Lena has been approached by a stranger, who claims to represent an old friend of Alfie’s, with a remarkable offer: come to New York and headline in a Broadway musical. With nothing to lose, days later Lena’s traveling first class on the Queen Mary. But she hasn’t left all her troubles behind. As a mixed-race woman (Alfie was African American, unknown Mom was white) who passes as white, Lena is anxious about her reception in the U.S., and when there’s another murder on the boat that’s all too similar to the nightclub homicide, her anxiety really ramps up. Hare does a wonderful job of depicting the era, including the big themes—like the rise of Nazism and the pervasiveness of institutionalized racism—as well as the small details, like Lena’s wardrobe. And in Lena, she has created a compelling and empathetic hero whom I would love to follow as she disembarks in NYC. Readers of female-led, historical mysteries from Rhys Bowen, Victoria Thompson, and Mariah Fredericks will be pleased to meet Lena Aldridge.

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Review

Dark Circles

by Brian Kenney

A foray into the wacky world of wellness led by my favorite character of the year, Olivia (Liv) Reed. Thirty-something Liv, an actor starring in a long-running TV series, is a bit down on her luck. The paparazzi caught her making out with a man who is not her boyfriend, and photos of her ensuing meltdown on the streets of Manhattan were published everywhere. Liv’s also a bit too hands-on with the booze and pills, and her relationship with her one friend, also her publicist/handler, is on the ropes. Begrudgingly, she agrees to check in to the House of Light—don’t call it rehab!—in upstate New York, which bills itself as a spiritual center. But before you can say namaste, the body of a young woman turns up in the adjoining lake—she had ties to House of Light—and when Liv learns she’s just the latest in a series of what are being called suicides, she’s off and running. Smartly, Liv uses her celebrityhood to start a podcast that becomes wildly successful and allows her to present the investigation in nearly real time. Comparisons to Nine Perfect Strangers, the Liane Moriarty book/Hulu series starring Nicole Kidman, are inevitable—and should be helpful in promoting this book—but Dark Circles is even better. After all, it’s got the sarcastic, sophisticated, completely credible, and even sometimes vulnerable voice of Liv Reed.

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