Published By: Manilla
Pages: 320
Released On: 06/08/2026
Shay was no longer in the cult, but still, it made her wedding guests nervous that she was bringing them to an island . . .
On a remote island off the coast of Virginia, family and friends gather to celebrate the wedding of Shay O’Connor and Andrew Pruitt. From the moment the guests arrive, all they can whisper about is the bride, who recently left the headline-making cult Synanon.
Told from the interwoven perspectives of Shay’s brother William, her longtime friend Joel, and Shay herself, Tenderness is a slow-burn mystery that excavates dark family histories and romantic regrets. As the wedding approaches, Joel and William pull at the loose threads of Shay’s story, and it becomes clear there is an even greater threat on the island than the secrets each character is keeping from one another.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Manilla for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I own a copy of Rowan’s book The Divorcees but haven’t read it yet, so she was a new author for me.
There are quite a lot of characters and interweaving stories to keep on top of so you have to have your wits about you.
The synopsis made it sound like a thriller and I suppose it is, in a way. It’s a quiet, mysterious, suspense novel more than an actual thriller. So there’s no real all-guns-blazing thrill, it’s more psychological than that. Which isn’t a negative, I like slow thrillers and fast thrillers. But it did make the overall story a bit slow for the most part, and then everything seemed to happen in the last 20% or so. But the ending worked well.
It focusses more on the characters than the plot – which I generally prefer – but I felt on this occasion there were just too many characters to focus on, which meant I couldn’t invest in any so wasn’t fussed by what happened to them. There was no standout one or two to focus on.
I think the isolated island setting added to the mysterious suspense feeling so that was a big tick. The island itself becomes a character because of the atmosphere Rowan has created.
There is a lot to like about this book and I can see other people really loving it – and I will definitely be reading The Divorcees sooner rather than later. But there were a few issues for me. The slow pacing is one yes, but the main one is the characters. None of them are standout enough to carry a quite minimalist plot, which meant I didn’t have much investment in it. I think it’s got the bones of a great story but it just needs a bit more meat to it to really impress me.
Books By Your Bedside 