A cautionary tale for men who wrong women.
When village men start getting attacked, one young woman finds herself caught in the middle.
Amara is an 18-year-old who lives in a Sri Lankan village with her mother, a talented seamstress whom she calls Amma, and her father, a spiritual leader and demon exorciser whom she calls Thaththa. Despite the influence of British colonialism and Christianity, Amara’s father holds fast to his traditional ways, causing him to be looked down upon by the community, which is rapidly Westernizing in order to gain access to power and wealth. Therefore, when local men start getting mysteriously and brutally attacked, villagers cast a skeptical eye toward Thaththa, whom they believe may be summoning demons to ambush innocent men. When the situation becomes more dire, Amara—herself something of an outcast, teased by her former schoolmates and called a witch—decides it’s her duty to figure out what the attacked men have in common so she can find out who (or what) is responsible. Along with Bhagya, an enigmatic new friend she met in the jungle, Amara sneaks around the village gathering insight into the men’s lives. But Amara has a nagging secret. Many nights in her sleep she finds herself the one vividly attacking, only to startle awake with the taste of blood on her tongue and the voice of a demon saying “You’re mine now” ringing in her ears. Jayatissa’s novel is slow to get going, and her characters feel a little flat. But the twists and turns to this fantastical mystery, as well as the author’s commentary on colorism, colonialism, and feminine outrage, shine through: “He would suffer as I once did. Suffer for everything he had done. Suffer for the wrongs that were committed before him and those that would no doubt come after him. That was all I wanted. For them to all suffer as I have.”
A cautionary tale for men who wrong women.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593549261
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
This mystery’s promising premise bogs down in an overloaded cast.
When one woman takes on another’s identity to uncover a crime, they both become suspects in a murder.
Aubrey Price and Camille Bayliss come from different worlds, only crossing paths because of the discovery that Camille’s husband, powerful lawyer Ben Bayliss, is hiding something terrible that affects them both. As the novel opens, Aubrey is driving Camille’s Range Rover, then teetering into a bar on Camille’s high heels, with Camille’s dress and credit cards and a wig that mimics Camille’s hair, pretending to be her because Ben tracks his wife’s every move and expenditure, and Camille wants to create a smokescreen while she sneaks into his office in search of evidence of that unnamed secret. But the scheme goes awry, and the women become each other’s alibis after Camille finds Ben murdered in their home. The first part of the book builds suspense and misdirection well, with Aubrey and Ben’s straight-arrow partner, Hank Landry, serving as first-person observers in some chapters while others track Camille. She’s a wealthy and privileged woman but not a happy one, stuck under the thumbs of her husband and her tyrannical father, Randall Everett, who pretty much runs their small Louisiana town. Aubrey was orphaned as a teen when her parents died in a car crash and has proudly fended for herself ever since, coming to depend on her four roommates, who have become friends. But as the cast of characters grows, it seems as if almost everyone in town has a motive for killing Ben, and the piling up of suspects and movements among different timelines can sometimes be confusing. And it all comes to a frustrating end when, after a whole school of red herrings, the solution to Ben’s murder arrives out of far left field.
This mystery’s promising premise bogs down in an overloaded cast.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780593834459
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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