An engrossing tale of a dangerous teen romance.
A debut novel shows that abusive relationships can occur in upper-middle-class suburban towns involving victims smart enough to know better.
Conducting an interview for her summer internship, 17-year-old Indian Valley resident Chloe Quinn encounters Kieran Dubrowski for the first time—and thinks he is annoying and intrusive. But Kieran is obviously interested in her. And with her brother and best friend both at camps, her father living with his girlfriend in New York City, and her mother escaping her marital difficulties with prescription medication and alcohol, Chloe not only agrees to go out with Kiernan, but finds his attention flattering. She overlooks his possessiveness—gratified that he is that involved with her—and dismisses his violent temper as an unfortunate result of his broken home. If her other friends seem resentful, she reasons that they are probably just jealous that she has a boyfriend. As Kieran’s behavior grows increasingly erratic, Chloe finally realizes that she needs to end the relationship, but her attempts to distance herself only lead to greater peril. Kieran proves himself to be not just abusive and emotionally disturbed, but also incredibly devious and canny, as he tries to turn the tables on her. Will Chloe break free, restore her battered relationships with friends and family, and regain her self-confidence? Hoag (co-author of Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence, 2014, etc.) creates teenage characters that are realistic, contemporary adolescents, not the typically idealized innocents. While there are hints of Kieran’s true nature, he is at first a likable character, if a bit narcissistic. Chloe’s vulnerability, due to her father’s physical and mother’s emotional desertions, enhance the reader’s ability to sympathize with her. Although largely a cautionary tale, the novel also contains enough suspense to keep it from becoming preachy. Teens may read it for the story, belatedly realizing that they’ve learned a lesson.
An engrossing tale of a dangerous teen romance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Melange Books - Fire and Ice
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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