Title: Death Row
Author(s) Name(s): Freida McFadden
Published in: June, 2025
Why You Might Like This Book: Read this book if you enjoy
- short-length thrillers,
- stories that keep alternating between the past and the present, and
- a bit of romance, humour, and marital problems.
Who Should Avoid This Book: Avoid this book if you are triggered by or dislike
- death, or
- loss, or
- grief, or
- tragic accidents.
Death Row is a thriller short story written by the world-famous YA thriller author Freida McFadden. Her most popular thriller book to this day remains The Housemaid, but there are several other young adult thrillers she has authored, and most of them are well-received. The author also receives mixed reviews sometimes, with thousands of fans loving her work, and many other criticizing her writing to be not up to the mark or too lame or too silly or something of that sort.
Nobody but Freida McFadden can make anything sound funny. In this story, it’s about how hard life is in a prison cell, while the prisoner is on death row. Like most other McFadden books, in this one, too, the lead character Talia Kemper is a self-pitying woman with several character flaws. It’s a short story that runs for nearly seventy four pages, one which switches between the past and the present, all in first person, with just Talia’s voice.
The story begins with Talia introducing herself as a pathetic young woman who is now an inmate in prison because she has been accused of killing her husband Noel Kemper. For a chapter or two, she highlights how hard life in prison can be, that there can’t be anything worse, but in a pretty funny way. Even though these parts of the story are about loneliness and purposelessness, thanks to her writing, you find yourself laughing over “Pat, the rat”.
As she introduces her past self, she was working in a coffee shop and that’s where she met her husband Noel. She was annoyed and upset about her then boyfriend cheating on her with another woman. She has always been highlys ensitive to the idea of betrayal in relationships because her own father had betrayed her mother, and when she least expected it, her ideal boyfriend cheats on her. That’s when her new co-worker Noel at the coffee shop intervened and calmed her down. It was more like love at first sight for her, he asked her out immediately after their first conversation, and they got married eventually. They were pretty happy in theie marriage.
In the present, though, she keeps saying that she did not kills her husband, but the police officer Rhea and others there do not believe her. Even her lawyer Bowman does not believe her. Her last plea also fails, so Bowman gently but assertively tells her that she should stop trying and “let it go”, so she agrees. She does not have many weeks left in this life, but she maintains that she did not kill her husband.
That’s when the first twist in the plot comes in: she sees her husband Noel in the present, talking to someone else, but how could that be the case? Could she be mistaken? Did she see someone else? Was that really her husband? That man looked almost exactly like Noel, so how could it be that he escaped death, while she is here in prison, accused of murdering him?
Several such questions arise, as the author keeps us walking back to the past to tell us about the time they spent together and coming back to the present where she has questions she can’t find answers for. She also starts having many dreams and often, the line between the dream and reality gets blurred. Often, she comes too close to kissing her husband, that is the only thing she pines for, and that never happens, either in dreams or in reality.
After some time, you are able to put together the pieces yourself because this plot twist is not as unbelievable as some of the other Mc Fadden books’ plots are. The story mixes romance, love, a happy marriage, and tragedy, while still maintaining a light tone. The ending could invoke different emotions in different people. I personally found it a bit more positive as it was about love. Maybe McFadden intentionally kept it light because it is not style to go deep into emotional plots except when the thriller plot really calls for it!
The author is known for her fast-paced novels, but given that this is only a short story, maybe it feels even better if you like her works? Or could it be too short to give you the pleasure of a thriller? Add her humour and it’s definitely good enough to distract you for a few hours. I’d give this a 3-star rating.
If you would like to read something on death that is more realistic, a lot more philosophical, and deeper, consider reading Two Women Walk Into A Bar by Cheryl Strayed:
