Just Fall

January 11, 2016
Ellie, the heroine of screenwriter Sadowsky’s convoluted debut, gets more than one shock on her wedding day in New York City. During a private moment immediately after the ceremony, her new husband, Rob Beauman, makes an admission to her that “was sudden, downright bizarre, and, if true, terrifying.” Later, during the reception at a Manhattan hotel, two armed men manage to kidnap Rob. One of them orders Ellie to go to the resort island of St. Lucia and commit a murder in exchange for sparing Rob’s life. Ellie must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice for a man she only thought she knew. After this intriguing setup, one preposterous twist follows another as the tale lurches back and forth in time and frequently changes narrative points of view. Gratuitous sex and violence abound. Rob and Ellie lack depth and verisimilitude, which saps their relationship of passion and strips the story of its stakes. Agent: Emma Sweeney, Emma Sweeney Agency.

January 15, 2016
In Sadowsky's debut thriller, a young woman must face her own capacity for violence in order to save the man she loves. Beautiful and blonde, Ellie has been looking forward to her wedding with Rob ever since they met. But on that magic day, she finds out that her husband is not the man she thought he was; rather, he's a hired killer living under an assumed name. Instead of enjoying a romantic honeymoon in St. Lucia, the two are soon embroiled in a murderous plot involving at least one psychopath, a drug dealer, several kidnapped children, and the hope that by doing terrible things, they might be able to escape Rob's past together. The novel is structured out of chronology, so the reader sees Ellie having just committed a murder in the first few pages and slowly learns how she came to that point, why she's done what she's done, and, eventually, why it might be justified. Ellie and Rob are supposed to earn the reader's sympathy because they both have shameful secrets but found second chances for love in each other and, we are told, they have really good sex, but they're not very engaging characters. Too much stock is put in Ellie's physical attributes, and Rob, despite his complicated, abusive past, does not seem particularly worthy of redemption. Actually, the most interesting character is the St. Lucian policeman haunted by the missing children. At least he has some depth. The final twist in the story--the "unexpected" betrayal!--happens too fast and is underdeveloped and unearned. The novel concludes with threat of a sequel, but it's hard to stimulate much interest in seeing what Rob and Ellie do next.

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February 1, 2016
This debut novel turns a marriage inside out and upside down. Ellie and Rob are in love when they get married, but that love is not based on reality. When Rob reveals a life-changing secret on their wedding night, Ellie is thrown for a loopbut she has her secrets, too. Can two people who barely know one another make their marriage work? Their story utilizes flashbacks via alternating chapters of now and then, except the flashbacks are not in any kind of order and can be confusing to follow. But despite all that, the tension becomes almost unbearable as Ellie tries to determine if she can save her husband and her marriage. While these characters are not especially likable, the many plot strands are neatly woven together as the story hurtles towards its shocking, if not quite believable, ending. The popularity of thrillers centered on an enigmatic husband and wife continues here, with the inevitable but apt comparisons to The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2015

On her wedding night, Ellie discovers that her husband is a killer, and pretty soon she must decide whether she'd kill to save him. The author of numerous screenplays and once president of Meg Ryan's Prufrock Pictures, Sadowsky offers a first novel with a decidedly noir feel.

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