Absorbing and electric.
Two women escape the mundanity of their New York City college lives to reinvent themselves in Berlin, leading to unexpectedly dark consequences.
At the end of their sophomore year, Zoe Beech and Hailey Mader are both ready to escape New York and the hypercompetitive culture of their art college, where the irreverent “sculpture bros” are universally worshiped and “the easiest way to dismiss a female’s work [is] by calling it domestic.” Zoe, though, is also spurred by a darker reason: the recent murder of her best friend, Ivy Noble, who’d been a dancer at Juilliard. Once at a study abroad program in Berlin, Zoe quickly grows close with her classmate Hailey, the magnetic, brazen daughter of a Midwestern supermarket-chain mogul. The two navigate their way through dark and isolating Berlin, waiting in hundred-person lines for exclusive clubs, attending insular gallery shows and art classes with fossilized professors, always slightly removed from the heart of the city’s social scene. Things shift, though, when they begin subletting an apartment from a creepy, enigmatic duo: Beatrice Becks, a helmet-haired mystery novelist, and her mother, Janet. In the perpetually dark apartment, the two become fixated with Beatrice; the more they sift through her “tax filings, photo albums and letters,” the more unsettlingly present she feels. As Zoe and Hailey compete socially and stumble their way through drug-filled parties wearing elaborate vintage costumes, they aim to live out the increasingly risky, brightly colored nights of their dreams, fueled by Hailey’s dictum that “art is what you can get away with,” no matter the cost. Henkel masterfully brings every inch of Hailey and Zoe’s world to life with her live-wire prose: German, for instance, sounds as violent as “a car being compressed into a cube.” But what truly pushes the plot forward is the obsessive, psychologically damaging friendship between Zoe and Hailey, which slowly leads them from a cocoon of insulated partying to a state of real danger: a finely negotiated shift. Though the book’s middle grows a little long and unwieldy, its specter of mystery is tantalizing and will keep readers captive till the final page.
Absorbing and electric.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54735-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
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
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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