Grady Green's wife has inexplicably gone missing. Still overcome with grief a year after her disappearance, Grady takes a trip to a small Scottish island, where he spots a woman who looks just like his wife. Bestselling Feeney's (Good Bad Girl) latest receives a 150K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert. Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Eager to give his wife, Abby, the exciting news that he's just made the New York Times bestseller list, Grady Green calls her while she's driving. She tells him she sees a woman lying in the road; he urges her to stay in the car, but she does not heed his warning. The police later find Abby's car with the door open and her phone on the seat, but no one is inside. As the days and weeks pile up, Grady is no longer able to write, such is his grief and worry over his missing wife. Then Grady's literary agent, a longtime friend of the couple, suggests he visit her cabin on a Scottish island. It's remote, beautiful, and a good place to recover and write again. The island is idyllic, the cabin quaint, but Grady keeps seeing Abby's ghost. The longer he stays, the more foreboding it becomes. VERDICT Feeney (Rock Paper Scissors) pens another superb domestic psychological thriller with plenty of twists, as her readers have come to expect. Demand will be high.—Cynthia Price

Feeney (Good Bad Girl) stumbles with this hackneyed tale of a grieving mystery author who seeks solace on a remote Scottish island. A year after bestseller Grady Green's wife, Abby, disappears, his life hits the skids—he hardly sleeps, he's late on delivering his new novel, and his financial troubles force him to move into "the worst hotel in London." Salvation comes via Grady's agent, Kitty, who offers him the use of her deceased client's cabin on the secluded Isle of Amberley. On the ferry over, Grady thinks he sees Abby; soon, his hallucinations worsen, and he grows wary of the frosty locals. With zero cell service, no car, and a variety of macabre surprises waiting in his cabin, it takes Grady a while to notice Amberley's conspicuous absence of birds—and men. Feeney assembles her plot from familiar parts: elements of The Wicker Man, Gone Girl, and Shutter Island jostle for space among flat descriptions ("The house... is enormous, by far the biggest I've seen on the island. It should have been called the Big House on the Hill") and flatter characters. Worse, her trademark twists are more far-fetched than ever. It's a letdown. Agents: Kari Stuart, CAA, and Johnny Gellar, Curtis Brown U.K. (Jan.)