02/28/2022
Lawyer Leah Dawson and pediatrician McKenna Hawkins, the protagonists of Murphy’s claustrophobic debut, appear to have idyllic lives, but both are trapped in abusive marriages. Nine months earlier, Leah’s husband, Liam, got her fired so she could concentrate on being a perfect wife. McKenna’s husband, Zack, made her quit working after she miscarried so she could focus on starting the family she no longer wants. Leah and McKenna are strangers, but when Leah sees McKenna in the liquor store one afternoon, she senses a kinship and tails McKenna home to an upscale neighborhood near her own. Liam is away, so Leah spends several evenings watching through windows as Zack menaces McKenna. Leah’s anonymous 911 call accomplishes nothing, so when Zack’s threats turn to violence, Leah intervenes, altering both women’s fates. Though the men in Murphy’s story lack dimension, Leah and McKenna are fully realized characters whose anger, fear, and despair are palpable. A kaleidoscopic narrative amplifies tension and imparts nuance by examining the two households from inside and out. Murphy paints a powerful portrait of domestic abuse. Agent: Helen Heller, Helen Heller Agency (Canada). (May)
"This debut novel packs quite a wallop. Many readers will detect a similarity here to what happened to a certain girl on a train, but might that connection be its own kind of red herring in a novel full of dizzying switchbacks? An audacious and completely successful thriller."—Booklist (Starred)
"Leah and McKenna are fully realized characters whose anger, fear, and despair are palpable. A kaleidoscopic narrative amplifies tension and imparts nuance by examining the two households from inside and out. Murphy paints a powerful portrait of domestic abuse."—Publishers Weekly
"... Leah and McKenna are fully realized characters whose anger, fear, and despair are palpable. A kaleidoscopic narrative amplifies tension and imparts nuance by examining the two households from inside and out. Murphy paints a powerful portrait of domestic abuse."—Publishers Weekly
"A thrilling debut—I couldn’t put it down!"—Shari Lapena, #1 internationally bestselling author of Not a Happy Family and The Couple Next Door
"Taut, compelling and deliciously dark, I tore through The Favor."—B.A. Paris, New York Times bestselling author of The Therapist
"A brilliant, gripping, dark and superbly written debut. I was transfixed by Leah and McKenna and the deftly woven plot that connects them. Nora Murphy is one to watch." —Gilly Macmillan, New York Times bestselling author of The Long Weekend
"Nora Murphy's The Favor is a tense and gripping read about the tacit sisterhood between two unlikely vigilantes. At once strangers and soulmates, these women reflect one another—each trapped in a dark and spiraling descent behind the closed door of a seemingly lovely home. With echoes of Big Little Lies and Strangers on a Train, Nora Murphy's The Favor is impossible to put down."—Mary Dixie Carter, author of The Photographer
"I loved following the parallel lives of Leah and McKenna, two strangers whose actions tie them together forever. I felt as if I was there with them, living the horrors they had to endure, although Nora Murphy portrays the women as survivors instead of victims. The Favor is a page-turning debut that will have you questioning the lengths you’d go to save someone else, even though it’s you that needs saving."—Sandie Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Guilt Trip
“Dark and unsettling, The Favor is a gripping story of bravery and compassion which lingers long after the final page.”—Victoria Selman, international bestselling author of Blood for Blood
12/01/2021
Leah and McKenna have never met, though their lives run on parallel tracks; they're both wealthy and successful women. But as Leah drives past McKenna's house one night, she immediately understands that McKenna has the same problem she has—they're both trapped in marriages with husbands who aren't as they seem. Eventually, Leah will intervene in McKenna's life with explosive results. A debut with a 100,000-copy first printing.
★ 2022-03-02
Family attorney Murphy’s first novel is an unnerving feminist retake on Strangers on a Train.
Even though they’ve never met, Leah Dawson and McKenna Hawkins have a lot in common. They’re “roughly the same height, with pretty features, blue eyes, and long blond hair.” They live in the same neighborhood in suburban Clarkstown, Maryland. They’re both childless, well-educated professionals—Leah’s an attorney, McKenna’s a pediatrician—married to even more successful colleagues. And both of their husbands are domestic abusers who seek to control every aspect of their lives. Psychiatrist Zackary Hawkins has pressed McKenna relentlessly to quit her job; divorce attorney Liam Dawson arranged for Leah to get fired from hers. As a result, Leah has withdrawn from most of her friendship groups, spent almost no time with her beloved mother and brother, and spiraled into nonstop drinking. One night, while she’s out walking around the neighborhood in lieu of doing the more strenuous exercise urged by Liam, who blames her illness a few months earlier for her miscarriage, she happens to pass the Hawkins house and sees a disturbing interaction between husband and wife. Fascinated and repelled, she keeps returning to look in on her counterpart until one fateful night when just looking isn’t enough. Leah’s intervention in to McKenna’s domestic crisis irreversibly changes the lives of both women even though the involvement of Detective Jordan Harrison, of the Clarkstown Police, doesn’t intensify the nightmare; it just transposes it into a new key and threatens to prolong it indefinitely.
Strikes an unsettling chord from the beginning and never lets go.
10/01/2022
Debut author Murphy creates a tense thriller about two women who, although strangers, live remarkably similar lives. McKenna Hawkins and Leah Dawson look alike and are both attractive, successful professionals who seem to have married well. Both women are also involved in abusive marriages with partners who control every aspect of their lives, to the point where their husbands have even forced them to leave their jobs. Leah is walking in their shared neighborhood and sees McKenna's husband physically abusing her through the front window. Struck by the similarity in their situations, Leah continues spying on McKenna until, unable to watch any more, she takes action, with fateful consequences for them both. In alternating chapters, three talented narrators—Dylan Moore, Leon Nixon, and Sarah Mollo-Christensen—portray the two women and Detective Jordan Harrison, who becomes entangled in the unsettling events that follow. Moore and Mollo-Christensen are clearly discernable as the different, but similar women, whose desperation and terror is clearly communicated. Nixon is equally effective as the detective who knows he's figured out the crimes but cannot prove it. An author's note gives valuable information about the realities of intimate partner violence. VERDICT This haunting thriller is recommended for most collections.—B. Allison Gray
