Three British women have been best friends since their days at Oxford…and then there were two.
Nancy is the beautiful, rich blonde who is cheating on her husband; dumpy Eleanor is married to her career of humanitarian work overseas; Mary is the harried mother of three whose professor husband can barely manage to stop by the house between affairs. As the novel opens, Nancy has turned up dead after a rendezvous with her mystery lover, of whom no one knows a thing. Or just one small, possibly false, thing—she told Eleanor his first name was David. Hall’s fifth novel takes a refreshing approach to the multiple-narrator thriller, eschewing at least two tired gambits: back-and-forth chapters between two points of view and tricking the reader by having a narrator withhold information. So thank you for that, Ms. Hall. The first third of the book, in which the crime is discovered and investigated, belongs to Eleanor, whose grief drives her to some uncharacteristic—and not very nice—behavior. The second part moves back in time and gives us Nancy’s view of things prior to her demise. “I love what every man has always loved about you,” says her lover. “Your perfection.” Struggling most of her life with depression, Nancy certainly doesn’t feel perfect. What’s more, she wants out of this affair. The final section is Mary’s, and it culminates in a satisfying solution to the crime plus an improbably happy ending, given that we’re three corpses in. The murder-mystery aspect of the book is handled well, but the psychological novel is a little on the slow side, with much ruminating on the part of each character, and the Betty Friedan–era feminist themes—career vs. family, the awfulness of housework, the constriction of traditional gender roles—feel oddly dated.
Good bone structure.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-27258-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
Light on suspense but still a solid page-turner.
61
GET IT
When a devoted husband and father disappears, his wife and daughter set out to find him.
Hannah Hall is deeply in love with her husband of one year, Owen Michaels. She’s also determined to win over his 16-year-old daughter, Bailey, who has made it very clear that she’s not thrilled with her new stepmother. Despite the drama, the family is mostly a happy one. They live in a lovely houseboat in Sausalito; Hannah is a woodturner whose handmade furniture brings in high-dollar clientele; and Owen works for The Shop, a successful tech firm. Their lives are shattered, however, when Hannah receives a note saying “Protect her” and can’t reach Owen by phone. Then there’s the bag full of cash Bailey finds in her school locker and the shocking news that The Shop’s CEO has been taken into custody. Hannah learns that the FBI has been investigating the firm for about a year regarding some hot new software they took to market before it was fully functional, falsifying their financial statements. Hannah refuses to believe her husband is involved in the fraud, and a U.S. marshal assigned to the case claims Owen isn’t a suspect. Hannah doesn’t know whom to trust, though, and she and Bailey resolve to root out the clues that might lead to Owen. They must also learn to trust one another. Hannah’s narrative alternates past and present, detailing her early days with Owen alongside her current hunt for him, and author Dave throws in a touch of danger and a few surprises. But what really drives the story is the evolving nature of Hannah and Bailey’s relationship, which is by turns poignant and frustrating but always realistic.
Light on suspense but still a solid page-turner.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7134-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
Categories: SUSPENSE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | SUSPENSE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | GENERAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
SEEN & HEARD
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
40
GET IT
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
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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.
