A submissive young woman trades family pressure for friendship with a wannabe New Age influencer involved with murder in a Southwestern mecca.
Ronnie Khan can’t believe she’s out from under her Aunt Shameem’s thumb after all these years. Sure, Pakistani culture emphasizes honoring her elders, but did that really mean shrinking in the shadows as Shameem abused her for so many years after her parents’ deaths? Now she’s moved with her best friend, empowerment coach Marley Dewhurst, from New York City to Sedona to embrace the New Age lifestyle Marley’s promised. Instead of bringing Shameem her chai, Ronnie takes desert hikes with Marley. Not yet self-aware enough to know that neither of these brings her the happiness she seeks, she’s confident that yoga, caftans, and crystals will make her feel centered. In fact, crystals are something Ronnie genuinely connects to, along with Brit and Star, the twin owners of BritStar Crystals, who offer her a job and their friendship. And not a moment too soon, because Marley, whom Ronnie’s considered her savior, has taken on shades of Shameem, taking Ronnie for granted and ordering her around. Ronnie’s convinced it’s the influence of Caroline, a social climber with a bad aura who’s attached herself to Marley and plans to brand Marley as Sedona’s biggest influencer. After Ronnie and Marley find human remains on a desert hike, Caroline pushes Marley to create Marley’s Eyes, a vigilante group designed to keep Sedona safe. The effect may be the opposite, and Ronnie wonders if she should trust in her friend or her instincts.
An amusing takedown of influencer culture.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-3426-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Categories: PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
80
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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK TO SCREEN
The Wyoming winter brings maverick game warden Joe Pickett poachers, murderers, spies, and some ferocious bad weather.
Seeking a wounded elk and a marauding wolf during a brutal snowstorm, Joe is amazed to discover a human corpse sticking halfway out of a metal outbuilding on the Double Diamond ranch. While he’s conscientiously photographing the crime scene, somebody starts shooting at him. Ranch foreman Clay Hutmacher refuses to say anything about the building’s purpose until he checks with billionaire ranch owner Michael Thompson; Gov. Colter Allen abruptly orders Joe off the case; and departing Twelve Sleep County Sheriff Scott Tibbs, the boss who’d do anything to avoid having Joe make waves, reports that there’s no body at the place he described. Meanwhile, Joe’s old friend Nate Romanowski, an outlaw falconer, is approached by ex–Army Ranger Jason Demo, who’s trying to attract anti-government malcontents to join the secessionist Sovereign Nation, and Joe realizes that his predatory mother-in-law, Missy, is neglecting her fifth or sixth husband, attorney Marcus Hand, who’s dying of pancreatic cancer, to cozy up to Allen, who plans to launch his campaign for reelection at the public library headed by Joe’s wife, Marybeth. What does the death of University of Wyoming engineering professor Zhang Wei, if that’s really who the dead man was, have to do with all of this malfeasance? Like a patient spider, Box plays out plotline after plotline, balancing his sympathies adroitly between anti-establishment libertarians who’ve had enough of the coastal elites and officers sworn to serve and protect their communities, before knotting them all together with a climactic revelation that for better or worse will leave you gasping.
One of the most successful of Box’s increasingly ambitious have-it-all thrillers.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780593331309
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
Categories: SUSPENSE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | GENERAL FICTION
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