The Boyfriend

Bestseller McFadden’s jaw-dropping latest (after The Housemaid Is Watching) keeps the author’s trademark twists coming fast and furious. Thirty-four and unhappily single, Sydney Shaw haunts the popular dating app Cynch, where she matches with a string of losers. One night, while Sydney fights off the unwanted advances of her latest date, a handsome stranger comes to her rescue. He turns out to be a doctor named Tom Brewer, and soon he and Sydney strike up a relationship. All goes well until Sydney’s neighbor turns up dead, and her ex-boyfriend, homicide detective Jake Sousa, is assigned to the case. Jake links the murder to a string of killings across New York City—many facilitated by the use of Cynch—and Sydney starts to worry that her new boyfriend is hiding something deadly. McFadden toggles between Sydney’s perspective in the present and Tom’s in the past, while he carries on a relationship with a woman named Daisy. It all comes together with a series of hard-to-predict but fair-play surprises that reward rereading. McFadden extends her hot streak with this canny exploration of love, death, and dating. Agent: Christine Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Oct.)