Story for the Week
I have never been able to tolerate needles. Nope, nuh uh, no way, never.
My phobia of needles started when I was in the hospital at the age of five. I had been there for a few days and was pretty desperate to go home. When the nurse came in to give me a shot in my backside, I refused to turn over. The nurse flipped me over, and I got the shot. But from that point on, and for a very long time, I fought every time I had to get a shot.
My father was 6’1” when I was growing up (he’s closer to 5’10” now)…not a small man. When I was in grade school and middle school, I was a beanpole, a weakling. I reached 5’9” by the time I was 12, but I was less than 100 pounds. Nevertheless, when I went to the doctor and had to get a shot, I would wedge myself between the exam table and the baby exam table with my arms behind my back. It was a battle for my dad to get me out of the corner and back onto the exam table.
When I broke both bones in my forearm in sixth grade, I had a bulky splint from my wrist to my shoulder while I awaited treatment. I couldn’t exactly move around very well. I required anesthesia because one of the bones had a green stem break and had to be broken all the way through before it could be set. When a nurse came with a shot that she said was to relax me, it took several people to hold me still.
I can tolerate needles now—flu shots, blood draws, and most recently Novocain for a dental crown. I wiggle my fingers and toes as a distraction, but I know that they don’t hurt as much as I believed they did when I was a kid. What I can’t do is watch a needle go into the skin in real life or on the screen.
I love a good medical show on television, but I cover my eyes or look away when there’s a needle in the frame. My best friend and I recently watched The Substance, and I think I had my face covered for half of the film. When my dad had to get fluid drained from his knee at the hospital, I literally left the floor and paced in a hallway downstairs until I thought they would be finished. It makes me feel nauseous now just thinking about it.
On the flip side, I’ve been watching Stephen King movies since Carrie, which came out when I was 10. We saw Abigail last year in the theater, and I loved every bloody minute of it. When we saw Thanksgiving in the theater in 2023, I didn’t know going in that it was a slasher film, and Corinne’s friends were horrified. But not me. The blood and the gore don’t phase me in the least.
I watched the Scream movies, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween. And I’ll watch them late at night because I wholeheartedly believe that’s the best time to watch horror. But a person getting a shot in a medical show, let alone in person…I just can’t.
Corinne and I recently watched all the Final Destination films, and we happened to watch the first one while we were eating dinner. Probably not the best choice. I can tolerate the gore, but sometimes even I can get a little turned off when I’m eating and there are blood and guts flying all over the screen.
And the same can be true for books. In the book reviewed below, I was eating a sub sandwich during one chapter where the main character meets her future husband. They both worked in a diner together, and were discussing in great detail how to defile someone’s drink. It wasn’t gory; just gross. But I definitely put the sandwich away for later.
Book Review
⭐⭐
2 Stars for Death Row by Freida McFadden
74 pages
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Publication Date: June 1, 2025
This title was an Amazon First Reads bonus selection.
Publisher’s Description
Talia Kemper is on death row for murdering her husband. She had an alibi and no known motive, yet Talia’s unwavering protestations of innocence have always been ignored. Then one day in the visiting area, she sees a recognizable stranger she’s certain is her husband. It turns out the man she’s been convicted of killing may not be dead after all. But as the days tick away toward Talia’s execution, what will it take for her to be believed?
************
Main Characters:
- Talia Kemper – on death row for the murder of her husband, two weeks out from her execution date
- Noel Kemper – Talia’s late husband, worked for a pharmaceutical company before his death
- Kinsey – Talia’s best friend with whom Talia was eating dinner when Noel was killed
I have seen quite a number of ads for Freida McFadden books. When this particular short story came across my Amazon Prime as a bonus First Reads selection, I thought it was a great opportunity to try her out as an author.
The premise appealed to me. I love a good thriller, and the description reminded me a bit of the movie Double Jeopardy. In that movie, Ashley Judd plays a wife accused of murdering her husband, although she didn’t have an alibi. She also wasn’t on death row. When she discovers that her husband might still be alive, she is determined to find him once she is released so that she can take her son back. Legally, she could also kill him because she has already served her sentence for murdering him.
The difference here is that Talia had an alibi, but the prosecution convinced the jury that she planned her husband’s death, and she was sentenced to be executed. On his last visit two weeks before her execution, Talia’s lawyer tells her that the last appeal failed and she has to know when it’s time to give up.
This is obviously a quick read, and the chapters switch between Present Day and Before. In the Present Day chapters, she meets with her lawyer, she sees a man who looks suspiciously like her husband who was supposed to be dead, and she tries to convince one of the guards to find out who he is.
In the Before chapters, we learn how Talia and Noel met and how their relationship progressed, but those chapters are told as Talia’s dreams while she’s in prison. Her dreams become more and more vivid the closer Talia comes to her execution date.
This book is a classic case of why I always say I won’t review a book I didn’t finish. Typically, I say that it’s because even a book that starts a little slow or not that great could have a great ending. Death Row is the exact opposite. Around page 63, the book takes a bit of a turn, which isn’t horrible, but the Epilogue really ruined it for me.
And after reading some reviews of other books where readers complained the author has done this more than once, I probably won’t read another Freida McFadden book…even if it’s a short one.
***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***
I’ll just lay out the story here.
In the lead-up to the last 11 pages or so, we find out that Talia actually did plan her husband’s death. She suspected him of cheating, which is something he knew she wouldn’t tolerate. In fact, he had joked that she would probably kill him if she caught him cheating.
Due to a broken nose as a kid, Noel had no sense of smell, so he never smelled the perfume on his clothes that Talia was able to smell when he came home late from work. That also meant that he couldn’t smell the gas leaking into their kitchen from a faulty stove they hadn’t gotten around to fixing.
When Talia finds a receipt under a couch cushion for an expensive piece of jewelry she never received, she is angry and upset. Her friend Kinsey invites her out to dinner, but she decides to stay home. She puts a pot of water on the stove to boil for spaghetti, and the smell of gas makes her realize the Noel would never know if there were a gas leak. She finishes cooking, leaves the gas on, sends Noel a text that she went out with Kinsey but she left dinner he just had to reheat, and she goes out for the evening.
While Talia and Kinsey are at dinner, an older woman out with her husband comes up to Talia and introduces herself. She works with Noel and wants to tell Talia how much she likes him, that he talks about Talia all the time, and that their research was going so well that she suggested he go home early today. And Talia realizes that the perfume she is wearing is the same perfume she smells on Noel every time he comes home.
She excuses herself from dinner, frantically calls and texts Noel while rushing home, hoping that she’s not too late. When he calls her back, she tells him not to turn on the stove. He laughs and says he actually stopped off for fast food because he didn’t feel like having spaghetti and that he called the fire department to check the gas. He also tells her that he has a surprise for her when she comes home, a necklace he bought recently to show her how much she means to him.
So he’s not cheating. He’s not dead. She’s crying and driving home…and gets hit by a Mack truck.
Here is where a great read turned into a two-star review.
Talia’s time on death row has been her dreaming that she’s in prison, but she’s actually on life support in a hospital ICU. Her “lawyer,” Clarence Bowman, is her doctor. The “correctional officer,” Rhea, is her nurse. All of that could have been fine.
But she hears Noel tell Dr. Bowman that it’s only been a month and she still might wake up. Dr. Bowman tells Noel that the scans show her brain is more blood than brain and there’s no hope of her waking up. Clearly, if she’s having all these dreams and recognizing voices and sounds, there is brain activity.
Then the doctor tells Noel that Talia had an advance directive. She did not want to be kept alive this way and he has to honor her wishes. If she has an advance directive, why was she put on life support to begin with?! And then he turns off the ventilator. Talia narrates: “Noel clings to my hand as the last whoosh of air is pushed into my lungs. And then the sounds around me fade out slowly, like a song that is coming to an end.”
Even this I might have given 3.5 to 4 stars, despite the issue that she’s clearly not brain dead and they ignored the advance directive for a month because it was a great twist. The reader believes she’s on death row but learns she got hit by a truck. She’s on life support thinking she’s on death row, metaphorically imprisoned by her own body. They take her off life support, and she dies.
But then, we get a two-page Epilogue. 🙄 Two pages that completely ruined this short story for me. The truck nearly hits Talia. Now she narrates: “As I continue on my way home, something is tugging at me. Something that feels like a memory or a dream or…I don’t even know what. But I wasn’t asleep, so how could I have been dreaming? It doesn’t make any sense.”
She reaches home, Noel is on the front porch waiting for the gas to clear out of the house. Talia mentions an alarm, but Noel can’t hear it, and then it stops. She feels lighter and happier. Noel kisses her, and she realizes she almost lost everything.
WHAT?!?!
Is she dead and in Purgatory because she tried to kill her husband? If she’s in Purgatory, why is Noel there? Did Noel actually die because of the gas leak, and she imagined him talking in the hospital, so when she comes off life support, they’re together again? Was everything a bad dream?
Literally…what did I just read?
I saw a lot of reviews that indicated this is not the first time McFadden has written a book with an open ending, leaving it to the interpretation of the reader. I have never come across this style before, and I do not like it at all. This short story would easily have been rated so much better without the Epilogue.
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