Review by New York Times Review
GIVE ME YOUR HAND, by Megan Abbott. (Little, Brown, $26.) Abbott, who always immerses readers in hothouse subcultures in her novels - cheerleading, gymnastics - here explores the relationship between competitive scientists at a cutthroat university laboratory. THE SINNERS, by Ace Atkins. (Putnam, $27.) The latest crime novel featuring Sheriff Quinn Colson revolves around a high-end marijuana operation, Fannie Hathcock's thriving strip joint/ brothel and a crooked trucking outfit based in Tupelo, Miss., that cons drivers into hauling stolen goods. ONLY TO SLEEP, by Lawrence Osborne. (Hogarth, $26.) A thriller that jolts Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's iconic private investigator, out of his quiet Mexican retirement and back into the world of scams and seductions. Osborne, who worked as a reporter along the border in the early 1990s, knows Mexico well and he passes that knowledge along to Marlowe. CONAN DOYLE FOR THE DEFENSE: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Writer, by Margalit Fox. (Random House, $27.) Fox, a recently retired obituaries writer for The Times, tells the thrilling story of Arthur Conan Doyle's involvement in a real-life case that might have intrigued his hero, Sherlock Holmes. A DOUBLE LIFE, by Flynn Berry. (Viking, $26.) In this thriller, a London doctor searches for her father, a man of power who long ago disappeared after a murder it appears he committed. Berry tells stories about women who seethe over the knowledge of violence and are fueled by a howling grief for its victims. AFTER THE MONSOON, by Robert Karjel. (Harper/HarperCollins, $26.99.) Karjel's Nordic-noir thriller refreshingly shifts the action from bleak Scandinavia to Djibouti, at the Horn of Africa, where spies and kidnappers converge and Swedish special forces confront the region's jihadists. THE PRICE YOU PAY, by Aidán Truhen. (Knopf, $25.95.) Imagine "Pulp Fiction" crossed with Martin Amis on mescaline, and you'll have a sense of this cocaineinfused, high-octane caper, a brilliant latticework of barbed jokes, subtle observations and inventive misbehaviors at once knowing and brutal. NEVERWORLD WAKE, by Marisha Pessl. (Delacorte, $18.99.) Pessl's first young adult novel is a dazzling psychological thriller in which four high school classmates determine to find answers about the death of a friend. THE BANKER'S WIFE, by Cristina Alger. (Putnam, $27.) In Alger's cerebral, expertly paced Swiss thriller, an American expat wife sorts through the conflicting stories surrounding her husband's death. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Kit Owens has a secret actually, it's Diane Fleming's secret, shared when the two of them were teens, but the shocking revelation creates a burden and a twisted bond Kit wishes they didn't have. The adult Kit is a postdoc lab worker fighting for a spot on the research team of the spiky, darkly glamorous Dr. Severin, who's just won an NIH research grant to study premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Like PMS only much, much worse, according to Kit, PMDD, in its worst extremes, drives women to violent and destructive acts. When Diane makes an unexpected reappearance in Kit's life, in her lab, there are fatal consequences, and Kit finds that the cord connecting her to Diane may strangle them both. Once again, Abbott (You Will Know Me, 2016) plunges us deep into a vividly realized world of intense competition and creates life-or-death stakes where we wouldn't have known to look for them. There's claustrophobic tension between scrappy, striving Kit and Diane, the golden girl who always seemed a little bit off; even better is the nested power struggle between the three female characters, studying a misunderstood women's health issue in the mostly male milieu of research science. Procedural fans may have a few nitpicks, but this is a brilliant riff on hard science, human nature, and the ultimate unknowability of the human brain.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Kit Owens and Diane Fleming, the protagonists of this nuanced tale of soured friendships, blood-soaked ambition, and desperate murder from Thriller Award-winner Abbott (You Will Know Me), were once fast friends-until Diane tells Kit a secret so dark that it shatters their friendship, sending Kit into a minor tailspin. But high school is drawing to a close, and Kit hopes she'll never see Diane again. Fast-forward more than a decade, and Kit is working in a lab under the impressive Dr. Lena Severin. When a new grant is announced to study premenstrual dysphoric disorder, Kit can hardly contain her shock as Diane reappears as a newly poached superstar from a competing lab. Kit and Diane each want coveted spots on Dr. Severin's PMDD research team, and as the only women in the male-dominated lab, they must deal with their colleagues' thinly veiled misogyny. When Diane's secret pulses to the surface, lives are lost and futures are put in doubt in a mad rush to keep the past in its place. No writer can touch Abbott in the realm of twisted desire and relationships between women, both intimate and feral. Agent: Daniel Conaway, Writer's House. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Soon after Kit Owens meets Diane Fleming in high school, the two are both bonding and competing, academically in chemistry class and athletically on the track. But then Diane proposes trading secrets, and what she tells Kit is so big it's a burden. After graduating as valedictorian and salutatorian, respectively, Diane (from a well-to-do family) and Kit (daughter of a single mom) go the separate ways, only to meet a decade later, after Kit thought she'd put Diane and the past behind her. Now working for the renowned Dr. Lena Severin and eligible for one of the few slots on a prestigious research grant, Kit learns that Lena has recruited a rising star to the lab-Diane. Once more, Kit and the admittedly more brilliant Diane are in a contest, with the weight between them of Diane's secret-and the possibility of Kit revealing it. As the story unfolds, plot twists build tension and the body count rises, as Abbott (You Will Know Me) skillfully strings out the tales of three ambitious women excelling in a man's world. Verdict From teenage girls huddling in a bedroom to a research lab as crime scene, this novel adds to the author's reputation as a significant writer of suspense. [See Prepub Alert, 1/22/18.]-Michele Leber, Arlington, VA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A rising star in a famous laboratory can track her success back to the one person in her life she'd like to forget.As a teenager, Kit Owens is fine with doing just enough to set herself up for a comfortable life. She never had a compelling reason to push herself until Diane Fleming quietly stepped into her life. The new girl with a troubled past, Diane seems to care only about achieving perfection, and she doesn't understand why Kit wouldn't want the same. The two become each other's motivation to do better, go harder, working toward the common goal of a science scholarship funded by a doctor famous for her research on taboo disorders related to the female sex. Until one night, when Diane shares something with Kit that is terrible enough"the worst thing anyone's ever told me"to erase any bond they have. More than 10 years later, Kit is the hardest working member of Dr. Severin's lab, angling for a coveted spot on the new premenstrual dysphoric disorder research team. Her lab mates, all men, are convinced she has it in the bag. But then Dr. Severin drops the bomb that she's poached a stellar researcher from Harvard who will join the team immediately. That person is Diane. Kit has buried the memory of her old friend under years of pipetting, thousands of precisely cut samples, and days bent under a fume hood: "After a bad dream, a Diane dream, I avoid the mirrorcertain that if I looked, she might be there." Who could truly forget Diane? And when she walks through the lab door the next day, "everything begins again." Abbott (You Will Know Me, 2016, etc.) has made the dark desires and secrets of the female psyche the life force of her novels. Under the surface of Kit and Diane's research on women plagued by an "unbearable push of feelings, feelings gone out of controla wretched curse" lives their own shared curse, something strong enough to tip the balance of their carefully regimented, chemical-clean world.In Abbott's deft hands, friendship is fused to rivalry, and ambition to fear, with an unsettling level of believability. It will take more than a cold shower to still the blood thumping in your ears when you finish this. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
