A cerebral and inventive tale exploring the power of the subconscious.
In this debut gothic novel, a woman attempts to discover the meaning of her dreams.
Lynn is fascinated by her dreams, though her engineer fiance, Mike, is quick to dismiss them: “Dreams are just your brain sorting through irrelevancies, determining what goes in which folder, what gets tossed.” Because of his skepticism, she doesn’t bother to tell him when she dreams of him dying in a flash of splinters and glass. Then, the next day, Mike is killed in a car accident. Despite her training—Lynn is a therapist at a mental health clinic—she can’t get over her sense of grief, even after a year passes. A friend recommends she attend a retreat at the House of Sleep, a Victorian mansion that serves as a center for dream remembrance and interpretation. It is run by a guru known as DM, the Diving Man, a figure with a mysterious past who possesses a secret government drug called the One that serves as the basis for his treatment. There, Lynn becomes one of his Sleepers, as the community of monklike students is known. It is also there that she meets Daniel, a haunted young man in whom Lynn—and DM—quickly takes an interest. Lynn and Daniel have an unexpected connection: He may be just the person she needs to finally put her sorrow to bed. But first they may have to contend with whatever it is that DM has planned for them. Kelly’s prose is wonderfully moody, as here when Daniel comes to after an attempted exorcism by his Christian father: “Daniel did wake up—gradually, out of vaporous, ghostly dreams about dying—and lay awhile collecting evidence that night had come. His face was stiff and swollen with water—the best and failed effort of his father’s god to oust the demon.” The author succeeds in creating a creepy, paranoid atmosphere in which readers will often be left to wonder just what is true, what is false, and what is dangerous. DM is a captivating villain, though at times his monologues border on camp. There are moments when the plot drags, and the book is perhaps 50 pages longer than it should be. Even so, Kelly has created an indisputably original—and mind-bending—story using some classic gothic elements.
A cerebral and inventive tale exploring the power of the subconscious.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-8-59-312863-8
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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