The Crash

Freida McFadden (a pseudonym whose real name is undisclosed) is one of the most prolific thriller writers working today. A practicing physician by trade, she’s built a second career cranking out short, high-concept psychological suspense novels at a pace that would make most writers collapse from exhaustion. Her books live at the intersection of airport paperbacks and late-night Kindle binges with short chapters, unreliable narrators, and twists engineered to hit like a slap across the face. 2025’s The Crash is squarely in that wheelhouse.

The setup is deceptively simple. Pregnant 23 year-old Tegan’s life veers violently off course after a snowy car crash leaves her injured, vulnerable, and dependent on the kindness of an odd couple who brings her home to care for her shattered ankle until the blizzard blows over. Tegan quickly comes to the creeping realization that something isn’t right with the strange couple.

If the premise feels familiar, that’s because The Crash openly invites comparison to Stephen King’s Misery. Like King’s classic, this novel weaponizes confinement and dependency. The horror doesn’t come from monsters or gore but rather a power imbalance. McFadden mirrors King’s slow tightening of the screws, where every small kindness feels suspect and every gesture might carry a hidden cost. The Crash is more streamlined and modern as if it were filtered through TikTok-era pacing.

Where McFadden truly shines is momentum. The book is hard to put down. Its the kind of thriller that tricks you into saying “one more chapter” until you realize it’s 2 a.m. The psychological manipulation is effective, the clues are planted just subtly enough, and the central situation is genuinely unsettling. You feel Tegan’s helplessness, which is exactly the point.

The ending is likely to divide audiences. Without spoiling anything, the final act leans heavily into revealing mandatory plot twists that not every reader will find it fully satisfying creating a conclusion that felt more engineered than inevitable. The landing doesn’t quite match the elegance of the buildup.

Still, The Crash is a solid entry in McFadden’s catalog and a strong recommendation for fans of fast, claustrophobic psychological thrillers. If you like your suspense sharp, efficient, and designed to be devoured in a single sitting, this one absolutely delivers even if the final note doesn’t resonate as cleanly as the outstanding set-up.

Get the book HERE