Death Row - Freida McFadden - ★★★★

AUTHOR: Freida McFadden

SERIES: Alibis Collection, #1

GENRE: Psychological thriller, Short story.

PUBLICATION DATE: June 1, 2025.

RATING: 4 stars.

In a Nutshell: A short psychological drama about a woman on death row. Unreliable narrator, but not in the way you would expect. A fast read, but shouldn’t be read too fast lest you miss the clues. A clever story with a slightly confusing ending that makes brilliant sense once you ponder over it. A great start to the Alibis collection.

Plot Preview: (This preview doesn’t do justice to the plot. But I am keeping this vague as this story is best discovered by going in blind. The GR blurb reveals too much as usual.)

Talia Kemper is on death row for murdering her husband Noel. Despite proclaiming her innocence vehemently (she has a rock-solid alibi after all!), no one believes her. Her last hope is her final appeal for clemency, because if that is rejected, she has just two weeks for her execution by lethal injection. As she waits for him, she goes into flashback, telling us about her time with Noel. Can we really trust Talia’s narration? We all know not to trust thriller leads, right?

The story comes to us in Talia’s first-person perspective coming from the two timelines of ‘Before’ and ‘Now’.

This is the first standalone story in the 'Alibis’ series, described on Amazon as “stories about lies, truth, and deception. It’s just a matter of what you can get away with.”

‘Death Row’ is a clever tale, probably too clever for its own good because readers are definitely going to be divided over the ending.

Woohoos:

💉 Talia and Noel – such interesting grey characters that you never know whose side to take.

💉 The use of the first-person POV for Talia. Very smart, as we don’t know if she is unreliable or genuine, all the more as she gives both positive and negative vibes.

💉 The reveals. I constantly swerved in my opinion about Talia’s guilt or lack thereof. And whatever little guesses I could make were all proven incorrect by the end.

💉 The clever storytelling that leaves so much to our imagination! There are many clues about what’s happening, but these make sense only after the final reveal. Quite a surprise to the otherwise typical-thriller narrative.

💉 The smart use of the Before and After timeline for such a short story. Works excellently to give us the complete picture.

💉 The pacing – quick and steady from start to end. No dragging.

💉 The ending. I took a long time to make up my mind on how I felt about this, but I finally decided that I liked it.

IDKs:

I can't think of any major negatives that affected my enjoyment. As this is not a full-length thriller, character depth is sacrificed. But for a short story, it does one heck of a job.

However, I have to dock off some points for the ending. I still think it is brilliant, but it is also a bit confusing. I mulled over it for at least 30 minutes after I was done with the story. (Considering that the story itself took me 30-35 minutes to read, this was quite a long time for reflection.) Once I cracked the code (I hope I got it right!), the interim clues made a whole lot of sense and I was gobsmacked at how I had been hoodwinked by the author. Nicely done!

Though the story is fast-paced (probably too much so), I recommend going slightly slower and paying attention to everything that’s happening, whether in the foreground or background. There are some hints here and there that make sense only in retrospect. Plus, there's a lot of reading between the lines. Better if you focus from the start. (Or be willing to do a quick reread to see what clues you missed.)

Definitely recommended, but caveat lector: If you prefer everything to be spelt out clearly in the fiction you read, this story might not work for you. It relies a lot on the unsaid, and this factor can go either way.

This standalone story is a part of the ‘Alibis’ collection, and is currently available free to Amazon Prime subscribers.