Hot Springs Drive

July 1, 2023

An emotional eater with a newly slimmed body, Jackie has shared the trials of marriage and motherhood with best friend Theresa. That doesn't stop her from wanting more of Theresa's picture-perfect life, including her husband. Now Theresa is dead, and what happened is at the corrosive core of this story of women's desires and the false fronts of suburban life. Third in Roxane Gay's inaugural list for Grove Atlantic. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 11, 2023
Hunter (Eat Only When You’re Hungry) spins a thrilling and addictive story of a murderer, his troubled mother, and his next-door victim. Theresa Linden, a 40-something suburban mother, is bludgeoned to death in her garage. The culprit is identified quickly as her 14-year-old neighbor Douglas Stinson. As the fractured and nonlinear novel unfolds, Hunter reveals how Douglas was egged on by his mother, Jackie Newsome, who was Theresa’s best friend. The women met on the maternity ward after they gave birth, and their bond grew over the years as they coped with the difficulties of motherhood. Jackie’s family life is one of “pure survival”; assisted only by her benevolent but unsophisticated husband, she struggles to manage four rambunctious sons, including malevolent Douglas, her oldest and her “protector.” Life at the Linden house is scarcely more inspiring, as Theresa’s sex life with her husband, Adam, has evaporated. A few years before the murder, Jackie joins a weight loss program, where the leader encourages her to “give a new name.” She picks “desire” and winds up seducing Adam. Hunter gradually doles out the circumstances behind Theresa’s murder, showing how the affair sets in motion a series of events that prompt Jackie to make Douglas feel like he must protect their family. In chapters told from various characters’ points of view, Hunter expertly explores the psychology behind their actions, showing for instance how Jackie’s desire and need for its reciprocation becomes destructive. It’s a remarkable character portrayal, earning the reader’s sympathy even while establishing Jackie’s culpability for Theresa’s murder. Hunter’s masterwork hits all the right notes. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic.

September 15, 2023
Two young mothers meet in the hospital and a collision course is set. Their friendship is pure, uncomplicated; in the swirling chaos of motherhood, it offers them each an anchor. Jackie Stinson's family even moves in next door to Theresa Linden's. But there is a darkness in Jackie; overwhelmed by the constant needs of her four sons and her car-salesman husband, her secret solace becomes eating. It's Theresa who suggests they join a weight-loss group, and soon the measuring of calories, of meals, of single bites replaces Jackie's previous addiction to food. People begin to notice her, especially men, and this newfound power leads Jackie to make a choice that destroys a friendship, leads to a brutal murder, and tragically alters forever the lives of her sons and Theresa's daughter as they struggle into adulthood themselves. While Jackie is the only narrator who speaks in the first person, there are chapters from almost every character's point of view, and the novel spans several decades. The murder is revealed almost at once, the identity of the killer much later, but this isn't really a crime novel. It's a novel about a woman who doesn't know who she is and how her emptiness devastates not only her own life, but the lives of all those she loves. It's about how her love is complicated because there is, at the heart of it, a fist of resentment, and how this love becomes a trap. Hunter's lyrical writing performs the miracles here; while Jackie herself is hard to sympathize with, Hunter captures her complex humanity in stirring and gorgeous prose: "There once was a woman named Jackie, and sometimes she let life happen to her, and sometimes she didn't. At the end she stood around and thought, What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?" Tragic to the core--and yet, there is beauty in the telling.

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Starred review from September 1, 2023

From her first story collection to her most recent novel, Eat Only When You're Hungry, Hunter has always written with a sort of ruthless courage that takes us to the bitter edge. And she's done it again in her latest, featuring best friends Theresa and Jackie, who met while giving birth and now live next door to each other, their families deeply entwined, with Jayson, one of Jackie's four rowdy sons, and Theresa's daughter Cece attracted to each other. And then Theresa is discovered gruesomely bludgeoned to death, the culprit caught immediately, the deed enacted only a day after the raucous affair between Jackie and Theresa's husband was discovered. What results is a devastating portrait of two damaged families and one monstrous woman you won't soon forget. Jackie had lost herself in marriage and motherhood and had gained considerable weight, then honed herself razor-sharp, so that one son said, "She made herself into this new person, a thin stranger"--one often indifferent to the needs of others. Questions bubble up throughout. Can we change? What's the cost? What are our responsibilities to ourselves and to others? What is the nature of desire? VERDICT And by the way, who was the killer? Hunter keeps readers guessing in a book that's both thriller-taut and an immersive study of human behavior.--Barbara Hoffert

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2023
When Theresa, a suburban wife and mom, is murdered, the case is quickly solved. It has to do with her neighbor and best friend, Jackie, and Jackie's affair with Theresa's husband. Rather than unraveling a spool, Hunter (Eat Only When You're Hungry, 2017) presents a pile of threads of various lengths, colors, and textures and holds each up for readers to see: the women's marriages, their lives as moms to one girl (Theresa) and four boys (Jackie), and their friendship. Theresa's suggestion that the women do a weight-loss program together marks a crucial turning point for Jackie, who transcends her need to eat, placing that compulsion elsewhere. There are strands about the women's children, including Cece and Jayson, whose births in the same hospital a day apart brought their families together in the first place, and Douglas, Jackie's fiercely and consequentially loyal eldest. In this darkly truthful novel of the dangerous power of desire, both one's own and that of others, Hunter's writing burns like a candle in the wind and readers will race to collect each cascading drip.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.