5 Page-Turners That Will Surprise You (More Than Once)
Love a book with suspense, tension—and shockingly good writing? Pick up one of these new novels—and be prepared to finish it the same day.
By Leigh Newman
2 of 5
Just What Kind of Mother Are You?
By Paula Daly
256 pages;
Grove Press
Lisa Kallisto is the kind of mother who has already decided
what her headstone will say: "She was just so overwhelmed." Her
husband is a cab driver; she runs an animal shelter that is perpetually short
on funds and overflowing with unwanted pets. She has three kids, three dogs, a
drafty rental house with a stack of unpaid bills on the kitchen table. Her best
friend, Kate Riverty, on the other hand, has a smoking-hot husband who brings
in enough money from his vacation-rental business to allow Kate to drop their
two immaculately presented children off at school and come home to do nothing
more than "put her washing machine on and write thank-you notes to people
she doesn't really like." Then Kate's 13-year-old daughter Lucinda
goes missing, while she was supposed to be staying overnight at the Kallisto's
house. Everyone in their tiny town in the English Lake District is a suspect,
but a secret that Lisa and Kate's husbands share—sorry, not
telling—further complicates the plot of this taut novel. Daly has
said she wrote this novel because "possibly the only thing worse than your
own child going missing would be to be responsible for the disappearance of a
friend's." Another reason? Because we all need a reminder that no
woman has it all under control, not even in fiction, where anything
imaginable—zombies, vampires and handwritten thank-you notes
included—is possible.
— Andrea Walker
Published 10/28/2013