She Treads Softly: Dear Debbie

Monday, December 29, 2025

Dear Debbie

Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden
1/27/26; 336 pages
Poisoned Pen Press

Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden is a very highly recommended, insanely entertaining domestic thriller. I was totally immersed in this fun, over-the-top psychological thriller from beginning to end.

Debbie Mullen, an advice columnist, is married to Cooper, an accountant, and they have two teenage daughters. Lately she has decided it is time to follow her own advice, take matters into her own hands, and dispense some consequences for the various actions others have been taking against her and her family. Debbie is going to fix some injustices and problems taken against those she loves. Sometimes, enough is enough and now it's payback time. Debbie's actions might be crazy or perhaps she's crazy like a fox and the most intelligent one in the room.

The writing is fantastic in this clever, humorous, entertaining thriller and I was engrossed throughout. The narrative unfolds through multiple points-of-view, mostly Debbie's, but also Cooper and Harley, a friend of Debbie's, along with various drafts of advice columns Debbie wrote. Expect and prepare for many unpredictable actions, laughs, secrets, lies, and twists until everything is wrapped up perfectly, almost, at the end.

Reading Dear Debbie was a sheer pleasure from start to finish! Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via Edelweiss. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.