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
Entertaining, though not in the league of J.K. Rowling—or even Anne Rice. But please, people: no more vamps and wizards, OK?
Harry Potter meets Lestat de Lioncourt. Throw in a time machine, and you’ve got just about everything you need for a full-kit fantasy.
The protagonist is a witch. Her beau is a vampire. If you accept the argument that we’ve seen entirely too many of both kinds of characters in contemporary fiction, then you’re not alone. Yet, though Harkness seems to be arriving very late to a party that one hopes will soon break up, her debut novel has its merits; she writes well, for one thing, and, as a historian at the University of Southern California, she has a scholarly bent that plays out effectively here. Indeed, her tale opens in a library—and not just any library, but the Bodleian at Oxford, pride of England and the world. Diana Bishop is both tenured scholar and witch, and when her book-fetcher hauls up a medieval treatise on alchemy with “a faint, iridescent shimmer that seemed to be escaping from between the pages,” she knows what to do with it. Unfortunately, the library is crammed with other witches, some of malevolent intent, and Diana soon finds that books can be dangerous propositions. She’s a bit of a geek, and not shy of bragging, either, as when she trumpets the fact that she has “a prodigious, photographic memory” and could read and write before any of the other children of the coven could. Yet she blossoms, as befits a bodice-ripper no matter how learned, once neckbiter and renowned geneticist Matthew Clairmont enters the scene. He’s a smoothy, that one, “used to being the only active participant in a conversation,” smart and goal-oriented, and a valuable ally in the great mantomachy that follows—and besides, he’s a pretty good kisser, too. “It’s a vampire thing,” he modestly avers.
Entertaining, though not in the league of J.K. Rowling—or even Anne Rice. But please, people: no more vamps and wizards, OK?Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02241-0
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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