Big Time

October 1, 2023

Kidnapped while playing with her baby daughter in the park, Allie awakens in the backseat of a car and manages to escape, landing dazed at a nearby hospital with a portacath in her chest the likes of which no one has seen before. Enter Grace, who works with the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health. Meanwhile, Allie's kidnapper is on a deadline. From the author of the Edgar-winning The Last Policeman. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2024

Allie Zerkofsky, a middle school teacher from New Jersey, doesn't know why she has been kidnapped or where she is being taken. All she knows is that she will do anything to escape and get back to her young daughter. However, the further she gets from her home, the less of her life she can remember, and the more someone else's memories begin to creep in. Grace Berney's job at the Food and Drug Administration is steady and dull, until a photo of a young woman with memory loss and a unique medical device comes across her desk. Certain that Allie is in danger, Grace sets out to rescue her despite her boss's warnings to back off. As the two women search for answers, they discover that the plot goes much deeper than either could have expected. Winters (The Quiet Boy) is an expert at gripping adventures that invite readers to ponder big existential questions. Here he explores the balance between scientific advancement and ethics, a timely theme. VERDICT A fast-paced and thought-provoking speculative thriller with well-drawn and relatable characters. Give this one to fans of Blake Crouch and Mike Chen.--Portia Kapraun

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2024
Winters, author of the stunning Last Policeman trilogy and the mind-bending The Quiet Boy (2021), doles out another heaping serving of metaphysics. At its center are two women, strangers to one another: Allie, a young mother whose abduction opens the book, and Grace, who works for a little-known branch of the Food and Drug Administration. Grace's new assignment involves trying to find the subject of a mysterious photo: a hospital patient who appears to have had an unfamiliar device implanted in her. As Grace begins tracking down the woman and more information about the device, she finds herself in a race with a mercenary who is after the very same information. Winters shifts back and forth between Grace's and Allie's points of view, building connections between them and posing ever new and more difficult questions that will boggle readers' minds. Like Blake Crouch (Recursion, 2019; Upgrade, 2022), Winters asks us to open ourselves to the impossible by following real, relatable characters. Another strong, thought-provoking novel from a writer who gets better with every book.

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Starred review from January 22, 2024
Winters (Stranger) plays with readers’ expectations like a virtuoso in this stellar technological thriller, which opens on a nightmare situation and never takes its foot off the gas. New mom Allie Zerkofsky, a self-described “regular boring middle-school teacher,” and her infant, Rachel, are abducted from a New Jersey playground by two assailants, who separate them. When Allie asks her abductor what will happen to Rachel, however, her abductor says she has no idea what baby Allie is referring to. Allie’s responding howls of grief distract the kidnapper, leading to a car crash and enabling Allie to escape. Winters then introduces Grace Berney, an attorney for the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, whose boss asks her to trace an unusual medical device implanted in an unidentified amnesiac female patient—whose injuries readers will recognize as matching Allie’s. Grace’s digging leads to the defunct Substance Material Group, a business that had been exploring a new theory about time. Winters’s many jaw-dropping plot twists are always grounded in pitch-perfect depictions of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. Blake Crouch fans will be in heaven.