While slow to get moving, this vampire tale unleashes plenty of paranomal suspense.
A suspicious murder in New Orleans ignites a supernatural, romantic thriller.
Viveca Moreau lived in a church-run orphanage after her parents died in a car accident. It wasn’t easy to grow up in New Orleans without a family to look after her: Once she was grabbed and nearly hurt in an alley by a man with a sinister air who “looked like a zombie.” Yet she was saved from harm by an even stranger man named Richard Ambrose. Viveca learned that Richard hailed from England, and she thought he “was as handsome as the princes in her fairy-tale books,” with dark hair that fell to his shoulders and eyes “of a color only God could have made.” But he disappears from her life (if not from her dreams) until, after years of hard work and a celibate existence, she becomes a homicide detective. Viveca is tough, but few things prepare her for investigating the murder of a college friend. The dead woman’s body has been drained of blood, and she has two bite wounds on her neck. All signs would point to murder by a vampire. But vampires aren’t real, are they? Viveca’s search for answers endangers her life, and as Richard again comes to her aid, she learns more about his past and realizes that she may have to save not just her life, but his. The story takes a slow path to its main events, first giving a glimpse of Richard’s past (a device perhaps influenced by Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire) and then of Viveca’s backstory, including her decision to study psychology in college and the stresses of her college job working in a print shop. Although these less-than-enticing details might have been explained more economically, once the blood starts spilling, the reader has a lot to consider. Will Viveca figure out what is going on in her beloved New Orleans? What will become of her developing relationship with Richard? Twists in the story are well placed, and even Viveca becomes surprised at where she might end up.
While slow to get moving, this vampire tale unleashes plenty of paranomal suspense.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79606-109-3
Page Count: 274
Publisher: XlibrisUS
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of smart horror will sink their teeth into this one.
Things are about to get bloody for a group of Charleston housewives.
In 1988, the scariest thing in former nurse Patricia Campbell’s life is showing up to book club, since she hasn’t read the book. It’s hard to get any reading done between raising two kids, Blue and Korey, picking up after her husband, Carter, a psychiatrist, and taking care of her live-in mother-in-law, Miss Mary, who seems to have dementia. It doesn’t help that the books chosen by the Literary Guild of Mt. Pleasant are just plain boring. But when fellow book-club member Kitty gives Patricia a gloriously trashy true-crime novel, Patricia is instantly hooked, and soon she’s attending a very different kind of book club with Kitty and her friends Grace, Slick, and Maryellen. She has a full plate at home, but Patricia values her new friendships and still longs for a bit of excitement. When James Harris moves in down the street, the women are intrigued. Who is this handsome night owl, and why does Miss Mary insist that she knows him? A series of horrific events stretches Patricia’s nerves and her Southern civility to the breaking point. (A skin-crawling scene involving a horde of rats is a standout.) She just knows James is up to no good, but getting anyone to believe her is a Sisyphean feat. After all, she’s just a housewife. Hendrix juxtaposes the hypnotic mundanity of suburbia (which has a few dark underpinnings of its own) against an insidious evil that has taken root in Patricia’s insular neighborhood. It’s gratifying to see her grow from someone who apologizes for apologizing to a fiercely brave woman determined to do the right thing—hopefully with the help of her friends. Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, 2018, etc.) cleverly sprinkles in nods to well-established vampire lore, and the fact that he’s a master at conjuring heady 1990s nostalgia is just the icing on what is his best book yet.
Fans of smart horror will sink their teeth into this one.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68369-143-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
A fever dream about despair and regret that will stay with you long after the credits have rolled.
When an unreleased cult movie is rebooted, the surviving member of the original film’s crew grapples with psychic whiplash.
Even though it’s not steeped in horror lore like the bangers being cranked out by Stephen Graham Jones or Grady Hendrix, this captivating take is tailor-made for fans of Stephen King and Jordan Peele alike. A cautionary tale with elements of indie movie darlings The Blair Witch Project, Blue Velvet, and River’s Edge, this chronicle of hometown kids trying to make a cheap slasher flick is shockingly memorable and deeply disturbing. Our unnamed narrator is the last survivor of the eponymous movie, filmed in the summer of 1993. Their Horror Movie concerns teens who torture one of their own—the narrator’s role is that of the Thin Kid, akin to the Slender Man of urban legend—and suffer the consequences. In the mix are the film’s obsessive director, Valentina; a handful of cast and crew; and the film’s ethereal screenwriter, Cleo, whose presence is most fully felt within the pages of her unusually personal screenplay. After a bewildering tragedy, the film was never released. Decades later, Valentina uploads a few scenes, some stills, and the screenplay to the internet, inspiring the modern-day reinvention. With his crewmates long dead by mostly natural causes, the narrator reluctantly agrees to capitalize on his infamy, eventually agreeing to participate in a hot horror reboot. Revolving between the original production and the big-budget reimagining, Tremblay deftly sidesteps genre tropes and easy laughs for a truly disturbing experience inside some very troubled heads. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s going to be a great movie,” cautions our Thin Kid. “You’re all going to see it. Most of you are really going to like it.…Will the movie be something you take with you, that stays with you, burrows into and lives in a corner inside you? That, I don’t know.”
A fever dream about despair and regret that will stay with you long after the credits have rolled.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780063070011
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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