Nimbly tackles dual genres in a tale that will appeal to fans of any age.
Realizing her recurrent visions are just one of her supernatural abilities, a teen falls in love with a ghost and finds herself the target of a sinister presence in Kerr’s (Magnetic, 2015, etc.) paranormal romance.
When a neighbor reports that 17-year-old Jane Anderson is often home alone, social services puts the Texan girl on a train to live with distant relatives in Hartford, Connecticut. Escaping an abusive, neglectful mother, Jane is initially wary of Dean and Joanna Rochester. But as she grows to trust her surrogate family, she’s disturbed by the fixer-upper that will soon be the Rochesters’ new home, which she had already seen in her dreams. The teenager’s frequent visions and lucid dreams have likewise predated her running into handsome blond Will in the nearby woods. The same-aged boy, as well as younger Nadine, Ethan, and Emmett, stayed at the house back when it was an orphanage—during the Great Depression. They’re benevolent ghosts with whom Jane, unlike other humans, can make physical contact. That’s good news for Jane and Will, who quickly fall in love and surrender to mutual lust. Unfortunately, there’s another persistent spirit, homicidal rapist Frank Sullivan, who, along with wife Pearl, tortured and murdered the children. Frank possesses humans to assault Jane, until he realizes he need not “borrow a body” to get his grubby hands on her. The novel is an impressive blend of romance and tension. Jane bounces back and forth between affection for Will and anxiety over her inevitable confrontation with Frank. Jane confides in Dean, her honorary stepfather, who suggests Jane hone her gifts. Despite Frank’s reprehensible deeds, Kerr avoids lingering on violence, and though Jane and Will can touch, sex scenes concentrate on emotional “fireworks” and “breathless bliss” over bodies intermingling. Hints of secrets in Jane’s lineage and her untapped potential set the groundwork for another book.
Nimbly tackles dual genres in a tale that will appeal to fans of any age.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5061-5167-0
Page Count: 378
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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