A triumphant series launch with an appealing couple that’s sure to garner return readers.
A college student becomes drawn to an enigmatic man whose startling secret may be putting her in mortal danger in this supernatural-infused debut romance.
Twenty-something Gwen Adams hasn’t had a serious romantic relationship in several years. This may change when she meets Alexander Prescott, with whom she feels a connection. Alexander notices it, too, but he has his eye on Hannah Kinsley, a senator’s daughter and Gwen’s chum at Verona Beach Community College in Florida. He believes it’s his fate to be with Hannah, as she’s a dead ringer for his former love, Eva. But he can’t ignore his fondness for Gwen, who soon begins dating her close friend Kyle “Ky” Harper. When Alexander signs up for college courses to be near Hannah, he winds up in her acting class, which Gwen is likewise taking. Unexpectedly, he and Gwen earn romantically linked roles in a play, sparking steamy rehearsals and unmasked envy from Ky. But Alexander has a secluded past and is covertly working on a “mission” (details initially unknown). He suspects someone of stalking his family, including his billionaire entrepreneur father, Eli. Unfortunately, he also fears his association with Gwen could make her the culprit’s eventual target. Though it’s apparent the Prescotts are supernatural (Alexander refers to humans as distinct from his family), Westbay’s series opener centers on the couple’s romance. This involves mutual ogling, but the story gradually explores the engaging characters’ rich backgrounds. Hannah, for one, has a reason for “stealing” Gwen’s potential dates while Gwen endured a tragedy in high school. Intimate moments between Alexander and Gwen are tantalizing and, most impressively, offer little physical interaction. For example, the two, during a scene dramatization, get very close—Alexander staring “ravenously at her lips”—before the director/playwright interrupts. Readers learn early what Alexander is, but his specific origin and the “resources” he wants remain a mystery until later. The final act accommodates plot reveals and the bulk of the action, ending on a blistering cliffhanger.
A triumphant series launch with an appealing couple that’s sure to garner return readers.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9996065-0-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Quadratic Pie Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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