Despite several interesting characters, the suspense plot lacks an engaging emotional core.
A copycat killing of a teenager 25 years after the original murder reopens old wounds in a small British town.
You hear a lot about mean girls, but in North’s follow-up to The Whisper Man (2019), it’s the boys who are a bunch of creeps. Back in his school days, 14-year-old Paul Adams and his best friend, James—a couple of losers—fell in with a small, nasty crowd led by a charismatic, seemingly psychic, and possibly homicidal weirdo named Charlie Crabtree. Charlie trained his group in the keeping of dream diaries and the techniques of lucid dreaming, and ultimately one of the friends ended up dead. The local scary woods, known as The Shadows, and a wild pattern of bloody handprints, known as Red Hands, were involved. As soon as he possibly could, Paul packed up for college and never went back, not even once. When he is forced by his elderly mother’s fall to return to Gritten Park 25 year later, there is only one consolation—he reconnects with Jenny, the bookish girl with whom he bonded over a shared love of Stephen King. (Their conversation about the King oeuvre is one of the most charming parts of the book.) Meanwhile, on a parallel track, Detective Amanda Beck is investigating the recent murder of a teenage boy in the town of Featherbank. On message boards used by those close to the incident, someone with the handle CC666 claims to have been present at the original Red Hands murder so long ago. No one has seen Charlie Crabtree in 25 years…could this be him? The complicated backstory and new characters introduced late in the game to explain the increasingly confusing facts are not great. But the recourse to the ol’ “and then I woke up” tactic to pull one over on the reader is worse.
Despite several interesting characters, the suspense plot lacks an engaging emotional core.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-31803-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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