An often engaging entrepreneurial quest that mixes family turmoil, positive thinking, and a helpful dose of magic.
Zajaczkowski offers a fantasy novel about one man’s dogged pursuit of a woodworking dream—and the angel that helps makes it possible.
It’s 1988, and Ben Davidson lives with his family in Tacoma, Washington. He has a passion for creating objects out of wood; more specifically, he makes custom mailboxes that look like houses as a hobby. Ben would love to do it for a living, but he wonders how he could ever make enough money selling them. However, after he loses his regular job at a plant nursery, it seems like a prime opportunity to try. His wife, Emily, thinks Ben should pursue what drives him, but she also thinks that it might not be the right time now. Soon afterward, Ben encounters an angel. This small being, who can communicate with insects and animals, also has a lot to communicate to Ben—teaching him lessons about, among other things, the power of thought: “The thoughts you plant in the garden of your mind are watered and nourished by your feelings and beliefs.” Ben needs to work on faith, the angel says, and see how consistent actions “always determine the course your life eventually takes.” However, Ben still has an uphill battle to make his business idea work and make sure that his marriage doesn’t disintegrate. Zajaczkowski’s unusual fantasy tale consistently works to keep readers involved in the narrative. The disagreements between Ben and Emily feel very real, for example, and their problems aren’t resolved swiftly or easily. As much as the angel can help, she can’t magically dissolve tensions in a relationship, which is a realistic touch. Other aspects of the angel’s abilities, though, feel heavy handed. Aside from the assistance in dream fulfillment, she informs Ben about such things as the arrival of a new family of foxes in the woods to the declining health of the family dog. Nevertheless, the narrative’s personal interactions and the ways in which Ben tackles his obstacles make for a diverting tale.
An often engaging entrepreneurial quest that mixes family turmoil, positive thinking, and a helpful dose of magic.Pub Date: May 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798991769112
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Starlite Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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