Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden — When the Advice Columnist Stops Being Reasonable

Debbie Mullen's advice is always sensible. Talk it through. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Be the bigger person. For years she has offered that wisdom to readers of her weekly column, Dear Debbie. Then, in the space of a few days, almost everything in her life goes wrong at once, and she reaches a conclusion that her readers would never have guessed. Some people don't need advice. They need consequences. Dear Debbie, published on 27 January 2026 by Poisoned Pen Press, is one of the latest thrillers from Freida McFadden, the practising doctor who became one of the world's best-selling suspense writers with The Housemaid. Kirkus summed it up in six words: "Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction." That's about right. One bad week Debbie lives in Hingham, a well-off coastal town in Massachusetts, with her husband Cooper and their two daughters. She is clever, very clever, an MIT dropout who doesn't let anyone forget her IQ, and she gave up her own ambitions to run the family. The novel opens by stacking up her grievances, and the details matter, because each one is personal. Her column is taken away. Cooper argues with his boss over a promotion and walks out of his job, and Debbie becomes convinced he is having an affair with a trainer at the gym. Her younger daughter is cut from the soccer team by a coach whose behaviour around the girls makes Debbie deeply uneasy. Her older daughter is seeing a boyfriend Debbie can't stand. And Brett, the neighbour, accuses her of cutting the power to his home office. None of these is a disaster on its own. Together, they convince Debbie that the people around her will never do the right thing unless she makes them. The drafts folder McFadden's best idea is structural. Between chapters we read the replies Debbie writes for her column but never sends. Early ones are merely sarcastic. Later ones are alarming. They work as dark comedy, and they also do a job a straight thriller can't: they let us watch a mind tip over gradually, through a voice we already recognise. Debbie narrates in the first person, quickly and with total confidence, and the book lives on her voice. She is petty, funny and frighteningly organised. Kirkus called her an antihero "for the ages", and part of the fun is that she is so often right about how badly other people behave, even as her solutions become indefensible. Revenge as a genre Most domestic thrillers ask who to trust. Dear Debbie asks a different question. We know from early on that Debbie is dangerous, so the tension comes from how far she'll go and whether she has read the people around her correctly. McFadden still has twists in store, and this review won't reveal them, but the pleasure here is closer to a dark comedy of revenge than a whodunnit. That is also what makes the book more interesting than its premise suggests. Every revenge story makes a deal with its reader: you get to enjoy the payback as long as the targets seem to deserve it. McFadden plays with that deal. Some of Debbie's targets clearly deserve it. Others are simply irritating, and the book quietly asks whether you're still on her side. Ray Palen, reviewing for Bookreporter, noted that it does this without leaning on graphic violence, relying instead on plotting and character. What doesn't work as well Kirkus noted that some of the twists land better than others, and regular McFadden readers may spot a few early. Because we see everyone through Debbie's eyes, the supporting cast is thin. Cooper, the daughters and the neighbours exist mostly to provoke her. The tone won't suit everyone either. The book treats some serious material lightly, including a coach's unsettling behaviour towards teenage girls, and readers who want realistic suspense may find the comic approach jarring. If you're new to McFadden Dear Debbie stands alone, so it's a reasonable first McFadden. If you enjoy it, The Housemaid and its sequels, The Housemaid's Secret and The Housemaid Is Watching, are the obvious next step. Never Lie traps a newly married couple in a snowbound house that once belonged to a missing psychiatrist, and The Teacher is set in a high school full of rumours. They share the same short chapters and unreliable narrators, though few are as openly funny as this one. Our verdict This is McFadden in a lighter, nastier mood, and it suits her. Dear Debbie is quick, mean and very entertaining, held together by a narrator whose every grievance is specific enough to recognise. It isn't a deep book, and it doesn't pretend to be. Read it on a long journey, enjoy the drafts folder, and notice the moment you stop cheering for Debbie, if you do.