More curious than spooky, but featuring a riveting protagonist haunted by his own guilt.
A tormented father must decide whether he’s seeing the ghost of his dead son or visions brought on by psychosis in this thriller.
It’s been six months since his 5-year-son, Alex, died, and Ian Colmes is, suffice to say, not coping well. Estranged from his wife and Alex’s mom, Alina, Ian is frequently late for his tech-support job. He’s rife with self-reproach, because he wasn’t able to protect his son from Leroy Eston, who allegedly kidnapped Alex. Cops found Eston dead from a gunshot wound, theorizing that his gun went off during a struggle with the boy, and he killed Alex before bleeding out himself. When Ian first hears sounds of his departed child playing, he attributes it to an overactive imagination but fears it could indicate schizophrenia. His son subsequently materializes and talks to Ian, often repeatedly saying things like he can’t find one of his stuffed animals. As Alex gets harder to ignore, even screaming for his father when Ian keeps the boy’s bedroom door shut, Ian debates whether he’s going crazy or experiencing ghostly encounters. When his visions start including Eston (or Eston’s apparition), Ian witnesses what seem to be scenes from Alex’s time in captivity. He’s sure Alex is trying to tell him something, namely that there’s more to the abduction than Ian knows. The novel gets a big dose of mystery, with phantoms a mere possibility for the bulk of the story. It’s never outright terrifying but certainly unsettling, especially once Eston makes appearances. Nevertheless, it wholeheartedly succeeds as a tale examining a distressed father. Ian, for example, grapples with the possibility of boss Justin Keplin firing him and hopes to make amends with Alina by, for starters, attending group counseling sessions. The narrative, too, from Ian’s perspective, is generally depressing, with a pajama-clad Alex asking Ian for a hug but vanishing before his father can embrace him. Nicolai (Todd, 2015, etc.) amps up the suspense in the final act, when a proactive Ian delves into Eston’s life. There’s a twist or two, as well as a gratifying wrap-up that leaves just a bit open for interpretation.
More curious than spooky, but featuring a riveting protagonist haunted by his own guilt.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4680-9735-1
Page Count: 300
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
