Product Description

After spending a year in prison, Ralph Fisher has explicit plans for his first night of freedom: tonight, someone will be held accountable. He goes to murderous lengths to obtain the address of his former wife - the woman he blames for his fate and against whom he has sworn vengeance. Determined to bring her to his idea of justice, Ralph’s next step is to travel from Florida’s sandy beaches to Dayton, Ohio, where his ex-wife is struggling to make ends meet on Mad River Road.

Also in Florida, Jamie Kellogg wakes from an agonizing nightmare of her mother’s funeral, and assesses her life: a pretty but unaccomplished twenty-nine-year-old woman in a dead-end job, with an ex-husband in Atlanta, a married lover in the hospital, and a virtual stranger in her bed. But this stranger is everything the previous men in her life weren’t: tender, attentive, and adventurous. After convincing Jamie to quit her miserable job and ditch her judgmental, perfectionist sister, he proposes a romantic getaway. While Jamie wonders if this thrilling man might finally be her Prince Charming, they plan a road trip to visit his son, who lives with his mother on a street called Mad River Road…

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3363006 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-03
• Released on: 2006-01-03
• Formats: Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: MP3 CD

From Publishers Weekly
In the nail-biting 18th suspense novel from Fielding (Puppet), a trio of women trapped in a web of lies, danger and self-revelation must confront their deepest fears. Lily and Emma, each a young mother with an adorable young son, are carving out new lives in a depressing Dayton, Ohio, neighborhood that caters to single mothers, while Jamie, in Florida, is a 29-year-old single dealing with the recent death of her mother and an affair with a married man who's been hospitalized. Both Lily, an aspiring writer, and Emma, a compulsive liar and shoplifter, struggle to recover from tragedies that led both to assume new names. When a sexy but dangerous man Jamie meets in a bar persuades her to quit her job and escape her perfectionist sister, the pretty but insecure blonde winds up on a wild road trip to Ohio that will inextricably link her fate with that of Lily and Emma. Packed with breathless twists and turns, Fielding's latest set of women in jeopardy excite and delight. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
With Whispers and Lies (2002), veteran best-selling author Fielding delivered a novel with Hitchcock-level suspense, and she has been trying, somewhat desperately, to match that level of excellence ever since. Better than her previous effort, Lost (2003), but not as good as Whispers Fielding's new novel tracks the movements of a man recently released after spending a year in jail on domestic-abuse charges. Ralph, who blames his jail time on a nosy neighbor, breaks into her apartment and forces her to give up his ex-wife's new address. Meanwhile, flighty Jamie Kellogg, constantly berated by her mother and her sister for her lack of a career and a steady boyfriend, meets a handsome stranger in a bar who talks her into quitting her job and traveling across the country to Mad River Road. Fielding uses a number of inventive techniques to keep readers involved in her story, including clueing us in to the identity of Jamie's new boyfriend from the get-go and showing her downward spiral from infatuation to disillusionment to sheer terror. She also throws in a delicious plot twist. Unfortunately, uninspired dialogue and a one-dimensional villain detract from her pointed commentary on relationships and her imaginative plotting. Still, Fielding's fans will want to check out her latest offering. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Praise for Joy Fielding:

“It’s hard to sit down and read a few pages of one of [Joy Fielding’s] novels and not want to read the rest. Right now.”
–The Knoxville News-Sentinel

“Fielding understands what many female readers want. She gives us an independent, assertive heroine who gets to do the things most us would tsk about.”
–The Gazette (Montreal)

“Fielding is as artful as Margaret Atwood when it comes to exploring female anger and the relationships between victim and victimizer. . . . It is Fielding’s talent for entwining the banal with the inconceivably evil that makes her stories so real.”
–The Globe and Mail

“Fielding masterfully manipulates our expectations.”
–The Washington Post

Customer Reviews

Take a breath when you're done reading the last page
Lilly Rodgers and Emma Frost are single mothers and neighbors on Mad River Road. Both live in fear that their secrets will be discovered one day. The prologue captures the reader's attention and does not let go. Jamie Kellogg hits a low point in her life when she discovers a secret about her lover. She hates her job and decides to leave Florida with her new and exciting lover Brad Fisher. Jamie has never meant anyone like Brad. As Jamie slowly questions and discovers the details of his life he has told her are false; his behavior becomes more erratic. All three stories are on a collision course as Brad and Jamie reach Ohio. Not to the very end will you know all the answers. Mad River Road is a thrilling work of fiction!

Fielding working her way back
Though not as good as her best work (which, in my opinion are See Jane Run, Grand Avenue and Whispers and Lies) it is a VAST improvement over the debacle that was Lost (which kept me away from Puppet.)

Mad River Road has some nice twists and turns which kept me guessing and I was appropriately creeped out by the menacing Brad. Overall, a solid thriller.

What a come back
I have been a fan of Joy Fielding since Grand Avenue but her last two books have been a let down to me. Since I was able to get Mad River Road from the library, I figured I would give her another chance to redeem herself and all I can say is Wow. I read this one in a day.

Mad River Road opens with a man in Florida breaking into a womans house for two reasons. One to get even with her for being an intrical part of him being sent to jail, and two, to find out where is wife is hiding with his son.

We then meet Jamie. A 29 year old woman who hates her job and has always been put down by her mother and sister. She has an ex husband in GA and a married lover. When she meets a handsom stranger at a bar and falls into bed with him she thinks her life is about to change. On an impulse, this new man invites her to take a road trip to Ohio so he can see his son. They pack up the car and head to Mad River Road.

Finally we have two single mothers, Emma and Lily, living on Mad River Road. A haven for woman who had a past and whos futures were unclear.

As the story unfolds, Jamie and the man of her dreams begin to head to Ohio and we slowly begin to learn what the connections are between these 4 people and the secrets that they are hiding.

Mad River Road is a page turner with an ending that you wont want to miss.