Ray takes her time establishing her characters, including the bad guys, and with a rousing, indelible payoff, it’s well...
In Ray’s debut thriller, lives converge at a charity ball, where someone has planned a deadly act of vengeance.
Beatrice Karen “BK” Hartshaw and Trevor Mayhew have both endured troubling childhoods. BK’s mother blamed her for her father leaving; BK’s uncaring stepfather sent her and her older sister to live with their aunt, and afterward, to a private school. Trevor was beaten on a regular basis by his father, Lenny; he and his grandmother, Beverly, tried to escape the cruel man, but Lenny came looking for them. Years later, BK, working at a PR firm, has organized a charity ball and auction sponsored by her (recently) ex-boyfriend, Max, CEO of his own company. But BK is worried: Her best friend, Shelby, has been stalked by a young man who happens to be named Trevor, who, having been jailed for harassing Shelby, is currently roaming free. And BK is completely unaware of another looming danger: Lenny, methodically plotting his revenge against the son who long ago escaped his wrath. The first half of the novel is a series of shorter stories, focusing first on Lenny in high school as he manipulates a pregnant schoolmate, Gail, into marrying him, and then providing the perspectives of a young BK and Trevor. In the prologue, however, Ray wisely opens her bookat the charity ball, where BK is staring at an armed Lenny. The prologue adds suspense to the story as it slowly builds, particularly in the latter half, to this scene and even includes a bit of mystery, when BK considers what a psychic, hired for the event, has warned her of regarding both herself and Shelby. Though Trevor eventually seems to be the villain, readers will find it difficult not to sympathize with him; his abuse at the hands of Lenny is vicious, and Trevor’s mother is helpless, the narrative insinuating that Lenny keeps her docile with drugs. Shelby is equally sympathetic—she is being stalked, after all—and though BK’s life is bearable when compared with Trevor’s, she suffers from anorexia, courtesy of her mother’s degrading remarks about her weight. The romance between BK and Max, even if it starts late in the story, is convincing and captivating, because the young lady’s eating disorder may have an impact on the relationship.
Ray takes her time establishing her characters, including the bad guys, and with a rousing, indelible payoff, it’s well worth it.Pub Date: April 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1935460961
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Barking Rain Press
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
