A deliciously convoluted tale of layered deceptions.
Lowkis’ twisty debut plays with the conventions of the gothic novel in a tale that pits two ambitious sisters against each other.
In mid-19th century Paris, Sylvie and Charlotte Mothe have grown up practicing the art of fleecing their wealthy neighbors by pretending to be mediums. But when their compassionate mother dies, leaving them in the care of their alcoholic father, Sylvie, the elder sister, sets her sights on landing a rich husband, abandoning Charlotte in the process. When Charlotte approaches Sylvie with a proposal for a final con, this one involving a ghost supposedly haunting the dissolute de Jacquinot family, Sylvie resists at first but ultimately can’t resist using the skills she has developed, only to begin to wonder whether the ghost they are facing is more real than she suspected. Midway through the novel, Lowkis switches from Sylvie’s point of view to Charlotte’s and backtracks in time, bringing a surprising new perspective to the events that have transpired. A romantic attraction between Charlotte and the youngest member of the de Jacquinot family, the determined Florence, adds a spicy complication to the seances, which focus on the alleged appearance and ghostly actions of Florence’s departed great-aunt Sabine, who died during the Revolution. While the story drags a bit as it approaches the finish line, and a lurid ending changes its darkly comic tone, readers should enjoy the juicy details of post-Revolution Paris, the insider information on how to conduct a haunting, the echoes of Perrault’s fairy tales—including the one about a good sister and a bad one that gives the novel its title—and the complicated relationship between the two sisters, the details of whose history emerges along with that of their wealthier targets.
A deliciously convoluted tale of layered deceptions.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781668024959
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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