Unger knows how to write a taut thriller, but one improbable character keeps this book from being extraordinary.
Unger’s latest offers a triumvirate of strong women pitted against a shared past and dangerous future.
Birdie Heart loves Heart Island more than anything else, and that includes her family. She’s tied to the island in a way that is nearly visceral; so much so that she fought her siblings to the point of estrangement to gain ownership of it when her parents died. Now, she and her husband, Joe Burke, host an annual gathering of family on the small island that is barely touched by modern conveniences. Only this year, no one really wants to go other than her grandchildren, the son and daughter of Birdie’s daughter, Kate. With her brother, Theo, bowing out, dutiful daughter Kate proceeds with plans to take the kids to the island, but last-minute complications end up with her leaving her son and husband behind and taking only daughter Chelsea and her friend, Lulu. Independent of their preparations, Emily, a waitress at the Blue Hen, waits tables and returns home to worthless boyfriend, Dean, a druggie and thief who struggles to control Emily and work as little as possible. After causing a rift between Emily and her mother, Martha, Dean and a very dangerous associate of his hatch plans to rob the Blue Hen and take Emily along for the ride. Emily, seemingly incapable of telling Dean “no,” goes along with his plans and the two are caught up in a terrible sequence of events that lead them on a collision course with Birdie and the girls. Unger is a master at building characters that crackle with personality and purpose, and the women in this novel are no exception. Birdie, unhappy with everything in her life, is particularly well-drawn, but the character of Emily remains a puzzle. Unger undoubtedly meant for Emily to come across as sympathetic. Everyone who encounters her feels inexplicably sorry for her, but in the long run, she’s an unlikable young woman who makes terrible life-altering choices.
Unger knows how to write a taut thriller, but one improbable character keeps this book from being extraordinary.Pub Date: June 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-46520-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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