Review by Booklist Review
Prolific writer McFadden had a breakthrough year in 2025, releasing three brand new titles as well as several formerly self-published works. Now she's poised to make a big splash in 2026 with this exciting yarn in which a suburban advice columnist practices what she preaches. Debbie Mullen's life might look picture-perfect on the surface: she's been happily married to her accountant husband, Cooper, for decades. She's raising two talented, if sometimes surly, teenage daughters. She pens an extremely popular advice column for her local paper, and her garden is so stunning it's going to be featured in Home Gardening magazine. Then things start to go wrong, threatening to unravel the Mullens' lives and unearth secrets they've been keeping from each other. But Debbie is no shrinking violet, and she's more than ready to meet these challenges head on. McFadden is an expert at keeping the pages turning and misdirecting her audience, ensuring several surprises. The same readers who fell in love with Millie from McFadden's most popular outing, The Housemaid (2022), and its sequels will also be rooting for Debbie. With this title slated for TV adaptation, along with the movie of The Housemaid, expect McFadden's star to continue to ascend. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: McFadden's rapidly growing legion of fans will devour this, as forecast by the humongous print run.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller McFadden (The Intruder) returns with a nasty dive inside the mind of the brilliant, psychopathic advice columnist Debbie Mullen. Thirty years ago, Debbie was an MIT computer science major en route to becoming the next Bill Gates. Now she writes an agony aunt column for her local newspaper in suburban Massachusetts and tries to be a supportive wife and mother to two teenage daughters. After Debbie is fired from her job at the paper for advising a reader to divorce her abusive husband, she comes into contact with an old enemy from college, and decides to take a more proactive--and less socially acceptable--approach to seeking justice. Drawing on her sharp computer skills, Debbie begins doling out twisted comeuppance to members of her shiny suburban set, including self-important book club attendees and predatory educators. Debbie's dark but consistent moral code makes her easy to root for, but once the action kicks into high gear, it becomes a tad monotonous. Still, this darkly funny thriller will put a wicked smile on readers' faces. Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Jan.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands. Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens' Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning "like a well-oiled machine." In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares "the fruits of [her] wisdom" with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes forHingham Household, a local "family-oriented" newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters' accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she's both honored and excited whenHome Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief ofHingham Household axes her column because she'd counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband's miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter's sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter's chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being "chubby." Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice--everybody says so. If certain individuals don't know what's best for themselves, maybe it's her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a "Dear Debbie" drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot's myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages. Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
