Jenny Cooper Has a Secret: A Novel by Joy FieldingPublication Date: August 5, 2025
Pages: 352
Add on: Goodreads
Buy the Book: Amazon
Rating: ★★★½
Source: From the Publisher
Genre: Fiction / Thrillers / Domestic
Publisher: Ballantine Books / Penguin Random House
In this riveting psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of All the Wrong Places, a dementia patient reveals a deadly secret—and one woman must decide whether to believe her.
Reeling from her husband’s death and best friend’s dementia diagnosis, seventy-six-year-old Linda Davidson feels lost and alone. Her beloved daughter Kleo and son-in-law Mick have moved into her house to keep her company, but the constant bickering quickly turns their presence into yet another worry on Linda’s long list.
Eager to escape the tension at home, Linda goes to visit her friend at Legacy Place, a memory care facility for the elderly where she meets Jenny Cooper, a ninety-two-year-old dementia patient who makes a shocking confession: she kills people.
Linda dismisses the so-called “secret” as the confusion of an ailing mind, but Jenny seems strangely lucid during their visits as she recounts stories of her many victims—mostly men who hurt her. Then a fellow patient at Legacy Place dies. Everyone else sees it as the natural death of a sick old man, but Linda can’t help but wonder: is there any chance Jenny’s telling the truth?
Story Locale: Florida
REVIEW
Joy Fielding’s Jenny Cooper Has a Secret is the kind of thriller that sneaks up on you. The story follows Linda Davidson, a seventy-six-year-old widow who’s trying to keep her head above water after losing her husband and watching her best friend slip away to dementia. When Linda’s daughter and son-in-law move in, their constant bickering only sharpens her loneliness, but things really get interesting when she befriends Jenny Cooper, a sharp-tongued fellow patient at her friend’s memory care facility.
Jenny, even as dementia chips away at her memory, claims she’s killed men. Are these the ramblings of a confused mind or the confessions of a killer? Linda, desperate for connection and a sense of purpose, is pulled into Jenny’s orbit. The more she listens, the more she has to decide how far she’ll go to uncover the truth, and what she’s willing to risk along the way.
Fielding’s writing is brisk and witty, with just enough bite to keep things from getting saccharine. The novel’s real strength is its characters: Linda is layered and relatable, wrestling with grief, fear, and the messiness of family, while Jenny remains an enigma; darkly funny one moment, heartbreakingly lost the next. Even the domestic drama at home adds a tense, claustrophobic backdrop to Linda’s search for answers.
Themes of trust, memory, and the slippery nature of truth run through the story, making it more than just a standard whodunit. The pacing leans introspective at times, which may frustrate those after a breakneck thriller, and the plausibility of Jenny’s confessions might stretch belief for some. Still, Fielding never loses her grip on suspense or emotional authenticity.
Jenny Cooper Has a Secret is a smart, bittersweet page-turner, part mystery, part meditation on aging, friendship, and the secrets we keep. It’s a standout in Fielding’s catalogue and a must-read for fans of domestic suspense.
