A dramatically flat and sketchy tale of dueling scientists.
In Boccaletti’s thriller, an American scientist races to fight the spread of a deadly pathogen, unleashed as part of a Chinese conspiracy to establish global hegemony.
In 2006, a team of explorers on an expedition in Mongolia stumble upon a “mysterious, ancient virus” living inside the corpse of a mammoth, preserved within the icy ecosystem of a glacier. Once released, the virus kills every member of the group within a few days, but instead of seeing it as a tragedy, the Chinese government sees it as an opportunity—a “scalable and usable weapon against modern societies.” Wealthy businessman and chemist Dr. Li supervises an official project with the aim of weaponizing the virus, known as K-666; the ultimate purpose is to bring the Western world—and in particular, the United States—to heel, leaving China as the planet’s sole superpower. In terms that are evocative of a comic-book villain, Li explains his aspirations: “The Chinese Dragon, in the end, will have its own paws on the world, and whoever tries to change things will be squashed by the paws’ own weight.” Research is secretly conducted in the hinterlands of the South Gobi Desert, but when 10 shepherds die of the virus, three Russian scientists are called in to investigate, and they soon disappear without a trace. However, one was able to send the investigative data to Dr. Dario Casa, an American virologist working on cutting-edge research for the United States Army. Over the course of this thriller, Boccaletti offers a topical story that includes scenes in Wuhan, China, and displays an impressive level of scientific sophistication in its descriptions. However, the author’s prose style lacks flair; instead, much of the work reads like a white paper, replete with technical charts and maps. Furthermore, it’s a very short work—one that’s well under 150 pages in length—which leaves the author little time to develop authentic characters—most of them instead feel underdeveloped—or a plausible plot. In the end, the book reads less like a novella than notes toward a longer work to be composed in the future.
A dramatically flat and sketchy tale of dueling scientists.Pub Date: March 27, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-72-866508-3
Page Count: 145
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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