Fun—if overly familiar—vampire fiction made palatable by memorable characters.
In Wilson’s supernatural thriller, a young woman discovers she has a rare, supernatural gift after surviving a tragic accident.
All things considered, Sarah Woodward ought not to be alive. When the bus she was on swerved off the road and plunged into Elliott Bay, Sarah was the sole survivor among the 15 victims. Not only did she survive, she had the presence of mind and absence of injury to swim to shore, where she found herself physically (if not emotionally) unscathed. Soon after, though, strange things begin happening to Sarah; she feels, somehow, both alive and dead, as though trapped in a sort of purgatory. Small injuries to her skin heal almost instantaneously, and she keeps having the same dream of a mysterious cave that feels inherently familiar to her but that she cannot place in memory or the real world. While at an art gallery, seeking out some normalcy in the aftermath of these upheavals to her reality, she meets a young-looking man with a keen, almost stalker-like interest in her, and, despite her best instincts, she goes to a second location with him. She discovers, quickly, that this man, Alex Smith, is not young at all; in fact, he’s a vampire, and more than three centuries old. He has been looking for Sarah ever since the bus crash she survived—he witnessed the whole thing, his vampiric senses able to trace her far-off heartbeat as he heard all the others go silent. Around the time she meets Alex, Sarah is also questioned in the bookstore where she works by a mysterious stranger, Lucy Goodspeed, who claims to work for a shadowy organization known as the “Society of Keepers.” Before Sarah has a chance to talk with Lucy, she and Alex discover something troubling: Sarah’s blood has the capacity to make Alex “alive” again, at least somewhat—after tasting a mere dribble, he’s breathing again, temporarily, for the first time in centuries. When this experiment nearly kills him, Sarah decides it’s time to talk to the Society of Keepers, hoping to get some answers—but the mystery only deepens when, unprompted, Lucy shows Sarah a photograph of that very cave she’s been dreaming of for weeks…
In her first novel, Wilson has managed to find an interesting wrinkle in the classic vampire narrative in the character of Sarah, a sort of supernatural foil who is not the typical werewolf or vaguely Christian ideological crusader, which helps to make this vampire yarn feel at least a bit fresh. That being said, readers’ appetites for sentences like “I can’t tell her I’ve started falling insanely too fast for someone who happens to be a vampire” have been eroded by decades of teen-lit plumbing the exact same dynamics. The plotting sometimes feels too convenient—one wonders about that chance meeting at the art museum—but there is real pathos to Sarah’s character, who feels like a friend from college you’ve mostly forgotten about but who now finds herself in extraordinary circumstances. Fans of vampire fiction won’t find much new here, but those open to an undead thread running through an engaging narrator’s strange experience will enjoy the ride.
Fun—if overly familiar—vampire fiction made palatable by memorable characters.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9798989867516
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.
A widowed and disgraced plastic surgeon is drawn into a Russian oligarch’s evil schemes.
Witherspoon’s adult fiction debut, co-authored with thrillermeister Coben, opens as heart surgery performed by Dr. Marc Adams in a North African refugee camp is interrupted by the explosive invasion of armed militants. It's the last we will see of Marc in this dimension. The next chapter jumps ahead one year to a ceremony at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where his widow, Maggie McCabe, is supposed to be presenting an award in honor of her mother. Miserable and anxious about appearing in public after having lost her medical license, she consults with her late husband on her phone—not via supernatural means, but using a "griefbot," an amazingly lifelike and functional AI app created by her genius sister, Sharon. Once the griefbot coaxes her to brave the sneering masses, she learns she’s been replaced on the podium anyway. But she runs into a former professor, a celebrity plastic surgeon, who requests a meeting with her at his office in New York and won’t take no for an answer. Next thing she knows, there’s $10 million in her bank account and she’s on a private plane heading to a palace outside Moscow where she’s been engaged to perform off-the-record surgery on billionaire Oleg Ragoravich (new face) and his girlfriend, Nadia (new boobs). And…we’re off. A whirl of surgeries, chases, and escapes ensues as Maggie gradually comes to understand who these people are and what they have in mind for her, and how it connects to Marc and their missing friend and business partner, Trace Packer. She is aided by her delightful father-in-law, Porkchop, owner of a biker bar in New York City and a very handy guy to have on your team if you've run afoul of an international criminal organization. From the palace in Rublevka the action moves to Dubai and then Bordeaux, climaxing in a high-stakes illegal heart transplant. But wait—is Marc really dead? What happened to Trace? Who is Nadia really? Though these smoldering questions don’t quite catch fire, it's a good first try for Witherspoon.
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538774700
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.
Robots may be the future of warfare in this final father-son DeMille collaboration.
In Camp Hayden, Army Maj. Roger Ames is found dead, his skull crushed. Chief Warrant Officers Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor, special agents of the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division, are sent to the Mojave Desert, “a.k.a. in the middle of nowhere,” to investigate. In this fictional military installation, Army Rangers conduct field training exercises with lethal autonomous weapons. These “dangerous new toys,” nicknamed “tin men,” may become the future of warfare if they can be programmed to distinguish between friend and foe. Anyway, the Rangers’ job is to train the tin men, not the other way around. They are AI-driven robotic prototypes called D-17s, but even prototypes can kill. Did a bot kill the major? And was there criminal liability or intent, or was it a tragic accident? Brodie and Taylor discover that not everyone loves these beasts, and they must find out if humans are programming them for mischief or even trying to set up the program for failure. Meanwhile, the bots have nicknames. Bot number 20 is Bucky, seen on a video as a “seven-foot-tall titanium machine with hands covered in blood and brain matter” that has “a face but no eyes, with hands but no skin, with a body but no soul.” As scary as these beasties are, Brodie and Taylor must also look at the humans at Camp Hayden, because they learn that the “machines don’t have motives….They have inputs and outputs,” which naturally come from human programmers. They have neither brains nor courage nor honor; they do have brute force, speed, and agility. Obviously, plenty goes haywire in this enjoyable yarn. It feels a bit too believable for comfort, and that’s to the DeMilles’ credit as storytellers. Nelson DeMille had begun this project with his son Alex, who had to finish it alone after his father’s death.
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781501101878
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
