Two Thrillers for Your Summer Reading

by MK French

If you are looking for something a little on the dark side for your summer reading, check out these two new novels. 

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Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez 

July 2025; Random House; 978-0593731550
audio, ebook, print (240 pages); psychological thriller

Mayra left Hialeah, a Cuban neighborhood just west of Miami, for college in the Northeast, and Ingrid hadn't heard from her since. When Mayra calls her for a weekend getaway at a house in the Everglades, she impulsively accepts. The entire trip there is dangerous, with a swamp outside of cell service looming. Once there, Ingrid sees that Mayra is the same irreverent person she used to be. The two aren't alone together, as Mayra’s new boyfriend Benji arrives. The trio spends their time together exploring the house and grounds, and time itself seems to twist. Ingrid begins to lose a sense of the outside world and herself.

Ingrid tends to get anxious and overanalyze things, relationships, and what people say. In school, she once did what Mayra and other friends wanted to keep their friendship, and that tendency to try to impress others and do what others want persisted into adulthood. The urge to revisit friends years later is a common and innocuous one, though most people wouldn't hide a visit from family or most other friends. Throughout the visit, Ingrid remembers the past, with her walks, naps, and exploring the house, bringing up different memories. 

Teenage Ingrid had been impressed by Mayra once upon a time, since Mayra seemed self-possessed and didn't care about what other kids thought of her. It was like an antidote to Ingrid's anxiety. As adults, both still have similar personalities. Benji is trying to clean up and fix the property, sometimes going overboard. I found him creepy and Mayra a little annoying, to be honest, and Ingrid was passive. There's a reason for that, for the cloying feeling of heat and laziness throughout the book, for memories bleeding out and blending. I'm not sure if this is meant to be a kind of horror story, or showing us that sometimes nostalgia isn't what it's cracked up to be.

Buy Mayra at Amazon

Love You to Death by Christina Dotson 

July 2025; Bantam; 978-0593874974
audio, ebook, print (420 pages); thriller

Kayla and Zorie crash weddings as a quick heist, but they're now the only Black women at an antebellum-themed wedding. Kayla has an arrest history thanks to a teen prank, so she's at a disappointing job. Zorie and the wedding crashes are the bright spots in her life, but the thefts have started getting risky. For this wedding, their getaway turned lethal. They're now the “Wedding Crasher Killers” on the national news. Their escape plan leaves behind a bloody trail from Georgia all the way to the bayou. As past grudges resurface, Kayla realizes that the best friend she thought she knew is more dangerous than she could ever have realized.

Kayla's life is not great to start with, and it gets even worse when she's fired from her job for a mistake she made. It goes downhill from there, given that she and Zorie scrape by from paycheck to paycheck and by selling off stolen wedding goods. Their last score goes wrong very quickly, since neither is a professional thief, so they take off running because Georgia has the death penalty. Any stroke of luck quickly gets turned around into something worse, adding to their (and our) tension and panic. It's like watching a car wreck in slow motion: we know it's going to end badly, that it's going from bad to worse, but we can't help but watch to see how truly terrible it gets.

While Kayla and Zorie were always close, their myriad hurts since early childhood shaped them into people who don't feel like they can rely on anyone but each other. They look for quick scores, and their quick tempers mean they turn on each other as often as they turn on others. It's sad and horrible at turns, with cascading long-term effects for everyone involved. 

Buy Love You to Death at Amazon

Born and raised in New York City, M.K. French started writing stories when very young, dreaming of different worlds and places to visit. She always had an interest in folklore, fairy tales, and the macabre, which has definitely influenced her work. She currently lives in the Midwest with her husband, three young children, and a golden retriever.

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