Don't turn around : a novel / Jessica Barry.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A New York Times Best Crime Novel of the Year

"Barry's adrenaline-fueled adventure explores the Me Too movement, cancel culture, reproductive rights and white male extremism. Buckle up for a heart-stopping ride."--People Magazine

The riveting follow up to Jessica Barry's debut Freefall--a controversial, of-the-moment thriller about two women fighting for their right to live.



322 miles of road. 6 hours. 2 strangers. 1 killer. Too many secrets.

Midnight. Cait Monaghan and Rebecca McRae are on a desolate road that slices through the New Mexican desert. They've never met before tonight. Both have secrets to protect. Both of their lives are in danger.

When a truck pulls up fast behind them, they assume it's punk teenagers or run-of-the-mill road rage, but it soon becomes clear that whoever is driving the truck is hunting them for sport--and they are out to draw blood.

As the miles unspool and the dangers mount, the pasts they've worked so hard to keep buried have come back to haunt them. Someone wants one of them dead. But which one? And given the lives the two women have been leading, that someone could be almost anyone.

If Cait and Rebecca are going to survive, they'll have to learn to trust one another--and themselves. But trust is a costly business, and they've both paid the price before. . . .

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Barry follows up her attention-grabbing debut, Freefall, with two women, heretofore strangers, pursued on the bleak New Mexican back roads by a truck whose driver clearly means to deliver death. Both women have secrets, so which one is being targeted? With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Publishers Weekly Review

The pseudonymous Barry follows her debut, 2019's Freefall, with a gripping novel about two women, seemingly strangers to each other, who set out on a mysterious nighttime drive from Lubbock, Tex., to Albuquerque, N.Mex. At the wheel is Cait Monaghan, a directionless 20-something bartender from Austin. Rebecca McCrae, Cait's prim 30-something passenger, is trying to escape her husband. Their journey quickly turns from an easy 300-mile trip to a fight for survival as an unknown driver tries to run them off the road on a desolate stretch of highway. Neither woman turns out to be what she seems at first as they face threats that lurk anywhere and everywhere--particularly in the men they encounter and occasionally have to rely on. Along the way, Barry addresses various issues dominating today's headlines and affecting women's lives, including cancel culture, online bullying, and reproductive rights, while maintaining the tension. This action-packed story will keep readers riveted. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM. (June)

Booklist Review

Barry follows Freefall (2019) with a second propulsive psychological thriller, this time featuring two female characters who find themselves fighting for survival on a terrifying drive through the New Mexican desert. Cait Monaghan and Rebecca McRae are strangers brought together by necessity. Cait made the mistake of posting a story online about her sexual assault by a prominent country-and-western star and has been hiding from the social-media fallout. Rebecca made the mistake of marrying a politically ambitious man and has been compromising herself to be the model wife his campaign demands. She is carrying a baby with a devastating diagnosis. Cait is driving Rebecca to Albuquerque, where she plans to terminate her pregnancy, against her husband's wishes. A truck comes out of the darkness and menaces them for hours. Is it random harassment, or is the truck's diver targeting one of the women. But which one? In describing how they deal with the threat and the violence that ensues, Barry delivers hold-your-breath tension, while also addressing highly controversial and relevant women's issues.

Kirkus Book Review

Two very different women find themselves in a fight for their lives in Barry's adrenaline-spiked sophomore thriller. Austin bartender and aspiring journalist Cait Monaghan couldn't have known a disastrous one-night stand with an up-and-coming country musician would change her life. Cait is shocked when the guy wraps his hands around her throat during sex and chokes her until she nearly passes out. When Cait posts an anonymous piece about the experience online, it's a hit, but she's eventually outed as the author. Sympathy inevitably falls on the guy's side, and her life and livelihood are threatened. The vitriol of it all inspires her to seek out something different, and she volunteers with the Sisters of Service, who help women in crisis. Cait is to drive her new client, the imminently poised Rebecca McRae, from Lubbock to an Albuquerque clinic, but once they hit the road in Cait's ancient Jeep, they realize that someone seems determined to make sure they don't make it in one piece. Both women are hiding secrets, and Cait is convinced that the man menacing them with his pickup truck is after her, but Rebecca is equally convinced that she's his target. As the attacks escalate, Cait and Rebecca must work together to survive their hellish road trip, and Barry builds a believable bond between the two women, born of both necessity and something deeper. The present-day narrative is cut with tidbits from each woman's life, and Barry gets inside the heads of men both intimately and peripherally connected to them, offering a disturbing glimpse at what drives men to horrible extremes as well as the constant sacrifices, big and small, that women are expected to make for them. Barry's electric, perfectly paced tale reads like the gritty lovechild of Thelma and Louise and Spielberg's Duel, and readers will cheer for Cait and Rebecca all the way to the end of the road. An action-packed and fiercely feminist big-screen--ready chiller. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.