The crash

A pregnant young woman seeks shelter from a winter storm and finds herself in far more harrowing circumstances in this solid if familiar outing from bestseller McFadden (The Boyfriend). Tegan Werner, 23 and eight months pregnant, lives alone in Lewiston, Maine, where she barely stays afloat by working double shifts at a supermarket. On a dark December evening, she sets out to visit her brother; soon, a gentle snowfall worsens into a full-blown blizzard, and her car spins out and crashes into a tree. Alone in the middle of nowhere, nursing a painful ankle injury and desperately anxious about the safety of her unborn child, Tegan is approached by a burly man who introduces himself as Hank and invites her into his nearby home. With no other option aside from freezing to death in her car, Tegan accepts--to her tremendous detriment. Narrated in alternating chapters by Tegan, Hank, and Hank's wife, Polly, McFadden's Misery-esque setup grows increasingly absurd on its way toward a preposterous series of late-stage twists. Still, the narrative's brisk pacing and frequent cliffhangers make it easy to wolf down in a single sitting. McFadden's fans will enjoy themselves. Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Jan.)

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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.