Romance, edginess, and the paranormal come together in a cohesive and engaging tale.
A witch regains her magic and reunites with her vampire mate while both are threatened by external forces in Crescent’s (The Last Marine, 2015, etc.) romantic fantasy.
When Lilith Caldwell receives an unsigned note telling her, “The future lies in the past. Go home. It is time,” she eventually succumbs and returns to the childhood house she inherited. This is the same place where, two decades ago, a young Lilith called for her “mate” to save her from her grandmother’s beatings, and vampire-daemon James answered. Present-day Lilith, at her old home, tries to rid herself of a dark entity that seems to be attached to her—one that she’s dubbed “Aimee.” But there are surprises in the house: James is squatting there, and the magical power that she lost, likely due to Aimee, returns. James, a Guardian for the Watchers (a group of fallen angels), normally has a mission to assassinate any being that would threaten the balance of good and evil, but the Watchers demand he protect Lilith instead. The witch and vampire are drawn to each other, but, with various menaces looming, their newfound romance isn’t the only thing at stake. Julius Crowley of the Vampiric Council is searching for Lilith, certain that she’s a threat to all Guardians. Meanwhile, Rowena, the High Priestess of Lilith’s former coven, may have a way to decimate all daemonkind. Crescent’s novel deftly blends elements of erotica and fantasy. The inevitable sex scenes between the two main characters, though explicit, often thrive on tension, as James’ technique is deliberately slow and diligent, and the two take turns as the dominant partner. Nevertheless, the narrative is even stronger as a thriller, as it’s rife with mystery (with over 100 Guardians having gone missing in a month) and a dense back story that draws on multiple religions. Most readers will be unsurprised by the plot turns in the final act, but the confrontations between formidable characters (including the spellcasting Lilith) are thoroughly satisfying. The book also ends with a rousing setup for a planned second volume in a trilogy.
Romance, edginess, and the paranormal come together in a cohesive and engaging tale.Pub Date: April 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9971872-3-6
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Cara Crescent Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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