by Cady Elizabeth Arnold ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 25, 2014
A dark fantasy sequel that enriches its predecessor.
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This second volume of Arnold’s (Tapestry, 2012) medieval romance series explores the fate of Lord Tristam’s kidnapped wife and daughter.
When readers left Lord Tristam and Lady Grace of the kingdom of Blinth, they were ready to move beyond their respective, tragic pasts. Tristam had recovered from the loss of his wife and 9-year-old daughter to kidnappers in the aftermath of war with neighboring Polomia, and Grace no longer suffered from the trauma of sexual abuse. Then, Tristam’s daughter, Faith, miraculously returned to Blinth. This installment tells the tale of how she survived being abducted, along with her mother, by six greedy men on horseback. Near the border with Polomia, they were taken up the Boldengarth River into the heathen lands of Lolgothe. Constance bled to death after a beating, and Faith was sold into slavery. She became the property of a cult that worshipped a deity called The Beast and lived in a castle among other young virgins. Faith’s intelligence and sharp temper gained her respect from the Crone, who ran the sisterhood; nevertheless, years passed without any indication that Tristam was searching for her. Eventually, Faith’s stature in the cult grew, until she became known as the She-Beast. It’s to Arnold’s credit that she delivers a page-turner despite the fact that readers know the eventual outcome. The themes of tenderness and loss that Arnold developed in the previous novel are refreshed here; for example, when Faith’s mother is buried at sea, Faith tells readers, “Long after she passed from my sight, I clung to the rail searching the waves, adrift in my sorrow.” The cult’s inner workings, which help cover up the rapes of underage girls, are truly creepy (“The basin represents the womb,” Faith is told, “the birthplace of those who serve The Beast”). At her lowest point, Faith even seems to view her own body from the outside—a survival mechanism that Grace similarly uses in the first book. These and other intricate threads connect the two volumes, and Arnold builds great anticipation for the third.
A dark fantasy sequel that enriches its predecessor.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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SEEN & HEARD
by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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by Lisa Jewell
BOOK REVIEW
by Lisa Jewell
BOOK REVIEW
by Lisa Jewell
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