A sometimes-messy real estate tale with a surprising twist that rewards steadfast readers.
A Miami real estate agent deals with personal and professional challenges.
In this debut contemporary novel, Eliah Selig is a successful, high-end real estate professional, selling expensive condos and overseeing construction projects in South Florida. Eli lives with Haile Giles, his longtime best friend, and the two—who have a platonic relationship—introduce themselves as brother and sister. The story alternates among chapters narrated by Eli, Haile, and Janna Cooper, a real estate agent who joins Eli’s company. Janna repeatedly propositions Eli, who has no desire to get involved with a co-worker, and later starts an affair with one of their clients. Meanwhile, Haile’s chapters reveal her mental health issues related to her childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father, which she is still dealing with as she reaches middle age. When the client’s marriage implodes and he ends the affair, Janna sues Eli for sexual harassment in retribution. Matters come to a head at Eli’s elaborate 50th birthday party. The tale largely holds together because of a last-chapter twist that turns what often seems like irrelevant and meandering details into crucial developments in the plot and characterizations. But the clues that make sense in retrospect are easy to dismiss as artifacts of insufficient editing, since the book suffers from unpolished grammar (frequent, unnecessary capitalization and misuse of commas) and minor errors (Haile’s dog is called both heand sheon the same page twice). The story’s sense of place is one of its strengths. Fabian does an excellent job of capturing the details of South Florida’s elite, from Botox and fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer to apology gifts from Tiffany and moccasins worn without socks (“Just as the women wore an array of slinky clothes the men had a signature look too”). As many of the tale’s thought-provoking psychological insights are only evident once the twist is revealed, readers will have to be patient as the characters, all damaged, make self-destructive and often perplexing choices. The story’s resolution is ultimately satisfying, but it would be helped by a more refined prose style.
A sometimes-messy real estate tale with a surprising twist that rewards steadfast readers.Pub Date: March 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66782-106-1
Page Count: 150
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2022
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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