Tag:

Family Life

Review

The Summer House Murder

by Brian Kenney

Yes, it’s ridiculously early. But I’m ready to crown The Summer House Murder the most toxic family novel of 2026. Venom, backstabbing, competitiveness, lies, jealousy, greed, out-and-out hatred all come together to create their own totally riveting little house of horrors. At the center are three sisters—Esme, Piper, and Regina—who are off to Lake George, and their now deceased parent’s cottage, for their annual shared vacation. With three immensely different characters at work, it only takes a few drinks for the women to quickly point out one anothers’ faults, from not cleaning the kitchen to mishandling infidelity to, I kid you not, child abduction. As if that weren’t enough, how about a murder, with a direct connection to the three sisters? I loved this book, but more importantly, so will you. The perfect summer read.

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Review

A Killer in the Family

by Willy Williams

Ali Azeem is a successful Mumbai wedding photographer, but, to his worried Ma, his life will only begin when he marries the right Ismaili Muslim girl. However, on his first arranged meeting with pretty and reserved Maryam Khan, the daughter of New York real-estate tycoon Abbas Khan, Ali is attracted, not to Maryam, but to her divorced older sister, the sensuous and mercurial Farhan. Still, because of his father’s financial difficulties, Ali agrees to the match with Maryam. After the wedding (a marathon, multiday affair vividly described), the newlyweds move to Manhattan, and Ali finds himself in a glamorous world of money, power, and prestige. But the naive bridegroom soon learns that beneath the glittering surface lie dark family secrets. Farhan, with whom Ali has embarked on a torrid affair, warns him against her domineering father: “Papa is a monster.” What is Abbas’s connection to the serial murders of young Indian women in Queens, as Farhan implies? Shifting between Ali’s first-person narrative and Farhan’s diary entries, Ahmad skillfully builds page-turning suspense with carefully plotted twists and red herrings that keep readers guessing until the chilling conclusion. His exceptional thriller is also a layered portrait of an immigrant family that has made it big in America and the moral costs paid for this success. With rich character development (Farhan is larger than life) and emotional storytelling, it’s hard to believe this is a first novel.

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Review

No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done

by Henrietta Thornton

Let’s start by acknowledging that this book has been panned elsewhere—but that’s because it must be approached from the right angle. Readers expecting a straight murder mystery, à la Hannah’s Agatha Christie novels, won’t find that here (although Christie’s work does play a role). What to expect is a zany cozy-like caper that shines a light on feuding women in an upscale English village. Swaffham Tilney is the kind of place where book club disagreements and a feud between neighbors over a pet dog solve the too-much-time-on-their-hands problem. Sally Lambert is the owner of the dog in question, Champ (full name Champ Cuthbert Lambert), a pet that she considers her child and obsesses over more than even the worst helicopter parent. She’s horrified when Champ is accused of biting a neighbor’s daughter, Tess, culminating in the Lambert clan, furry and human, going on the run lest Champ is put on doggy death row. The instigator on the other side is Lesley Gavey, Tess’s mother, who’s hysterical over the bite and wants justice. Since there are teens in both families, social media plays a role in the chaos and soon #InnocentChamp fervor swamps the internet. In the end, the story returns to a more sensible world, but the wild ride that is Lambert vs. Gavey is wacky fun while it lasts. After enjoying this yourself, give it to your friends who call themselves “dog moms” and don’t look back.

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Review

Five

by Jeff Ayers

At 7:01 AM on an ordinary day, five people with significantly different backgrounds arrive at a London subway platform. One will die when the train arrives at 7:06 AM. Is it the gambler, a young man who can’t seem to shake the need to burn money for his habit? The child, a violent boy who takes pleasure in other people’s pain? The suffering mother who can’t seem to control her unruly kid? Or perhaps the old woman whose upbringing makes it difficult for her to convey emotions? The businessman whose quest for power overshadows his family obligations? As time ticks down to what is inevitable, Bannister explores the stories behind this unique group. Readers will choose favorites among them, rooting for some to succeed while wanting others to be lying on the tracks and hit when the time comes. The story the author has woven, and the way she delivers it on the page, is a stroke of genius that shouldn’t work, but it does. Bannister forces us to realize that everyone we see every day has a background that reflects how they became who they are. We all have a story. Five is worth the leap and will make a terrific audio experience as well.

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Review

A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage

by Brian Kenney

A lean, wonderfully written story of a husband and wife, serial killers who target only bad men who deserve it: primarily rapists and sexual abusers. While the two couldn’t come from more dissimilar backgrounds—British Hazel has dragged herself out of a childhood of poverty and neglect and is now a successful painter, while American Fox, a finance guy, descends from one of the USA’s wealthiest, most prominent families. But it was their joint passion for murder that brought them—and keeps them—together. Until, that is, in this version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Hazel discovers she is pregnant, and off to the London suburbs they go. At Fox’s insistence, they agree to no more murders until baby Bibi is 21—how can they risk incarceration, which would leave Bibi an orphan? But Hazel can barely tolerate motherhood, never mind forgoing murders, and it’s thanks to her one “mom friend,” Jenny, that she is able to keep it together. Until she suspects Fox of harboring secrets, she develops a few herself, and Jenny turns out to be, of all things, a cop. The pace is just perfect, the characters alternately funny and dark, and the head-spins relentless.

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Review

The Influencers

by Henrietta Thornton

Social media replaces life for the Iverson family, which is headed by freezing-cold May Iverson, whose Mother May I videos have chronicled the childhoods and now young adulthood of her daughters January, March, April, and twins June and July. Their real last name is Iniesta, but their Latino father and mixed-race identities are mostly swept under the carefully curated rug, except when it works for May to use it as content. The girls are both hyper-aware of their every movement as fodder for videos—how could they not be, when a genuine emotion is met with the request to do it again for the camera?—and bone-deep in the influencer life. It all threatens to collapse when May’s second husband, happily for the brand named August, is found murdered at their white-on-white home, a fire set seemingly to cover the crime. As though from multiple camera angles, the narrative unfolds over different time lines and from various characters’ perspectives, including, perfectly, “We Who Grew Up Watching the Iversons” and “We the Followers of Mother May I.” As the engaging and incredible lives of the Iverson/Iniestas unspool, a grotesque view of modern life is put under the microscope, with no pink-marble stone left unturned. One for We Who Grew Up Watching the Kardashians, of course, but also for fans of family drama and sociological skewerings.

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Review

Deep Beneath Us

by Danise Hoover

Tabitha is compelled by the spiteful actions of her ex-husband to move back to her childhood home. This is not a cozy, safe space as one might hope. It is a sort of compound: two schoolhouses on different sides of a reservoir, one occupied by her family, the other by her uncle’s family. In the past, four cousins, Tabitha the youngest, ran and played like a pack. But her mother is an unstable artist, her father and uncle killed themselves, and her sister and cousin married each other at age 16. Now, cousin Davey purportedly dies by suicide as well, leaving his property to Tabitha. But is that what really happened? Davey’s two cronies, along with three smart teens, use skills learned from TV crime dramas and DNA analysis to get to the bottom of it all. The characters are captivating, the atmosphere is dark and dour, and the wretched weather contributes to the overall tone of the book. The novel is set in Scotland and the use of Scottish dialect and expressions is sometimes daunting, but never gets in the way of the telling. To say that the plot here is a tangled mess may be an understatement, but the untangling is a treat.

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Review

Nesting

by Henrietta Thornton

Even during her sly, vicious husband Ryan’s “good” moments, Ciara feels “part of her body (toe tips, ear lobes, the backs of her knees) is listening, tense, on high alert.” And in his bad moments, “The toppled chair. The smashed bulb. The broken handle. Her bones and blood.” She’s left before, but his rage at her absence was too dangerous to endure. But when she sees a new opportunity, she takes her two small daughters and flees. Here the reader will begin to understand the naivete of “why doesn’t she just leave?” (Why doesn’t anybody ever ask why he doesn’t “just” leave?). Dublin’s rental market is impossible, so Ciara and the children are homeless, forced to stay in a cramped hotel room provided by the city. Ciara, who is pregnant with her third child, has no job, at controlling Ryan’s insistence, of course. Her mother-in-law tells her that she’s going to hell for treating “poor Ryan-Patrick” this way. Child support is non-existent, and Ryan is determined to take full custody of the children even though he appears to hate them and has never lifted a finger to care for them. Watching Ciara claw her way out of this is a gripping view of endurance, terror, bravery and the small and large kindnesses that make her life bearable. The characters here are superbly drawn, the dialog spot on, and I can’t wait for more from this debut novelist.

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Review

The Ones We Love

by Henrietta Thornton

The Jansen family is newly arrived in LA from Melbourne, Australia. Janus, the father of the family, is sure the screenplay of his successful novel will be their fortune. Things take a very sinister turn when daughter Liv wakes with a hangover and bruises, and her parents seem furious with her. Her bedroom is padlocked shut—it’s the law, Janus and wife Kay say, because there’s a mold issue. Son Casper suspects that there’s something much worse afoot; his parents won’t talk to each other and barely seem aware of him, and that locked room is suspicious. Liv herself can’t remember anything but starts to catch on that there’s a problem when her friend who was out with her on the mysterious night in question won’t return texts. What happened? That’s carefully revealed in a tense psychological thriller that masterfully examines love and fear from every angle. The fully fleshed out teenage characters make this a solid YA crossunder. Get it on your TBR list!

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Review

The Tokyo Suite

by Brian Kenney

A deep investigation into the lives of two women: a mistress and her maid. Maju is one of scores of the “white army,” maids and nannies in São Paulo; she cares for young Cora, whose parents pay the child little attention. Fernanda, Cora’s mother and a successful TV executive, is uniquely self-involved; even when Maju and Cora disappear one day, Fernanda can’t stop obsessing over an affair she’s having long enough to focus on her own daughter’s abduction. Dad, meanwhile, has pretty much checked out. But once Fernanda does realize her daughter is gone, her whole world begins to cave in. Maju and Cora, meanwhile, have boarded a bus for a multi-day trip that Maju barely plans—they have limited food and money—and that begins to unravel after the first day. Each woman is confronted by a harrowing series of events that forces them to confront maternal guilt, poverty, and society’s expectations.

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