A predictable romance involving a British vocalist’s search for love, with a few twists.
Though they’re opposites in many ways, destiny pushes an aloof superstar and a free-spirited psychic together.
Jamie Stratton has spent the last year earning all the money he ever wanted as one-quarter of Bel Homme, a wildly successful pop-opera vocal group. But now the logical, detached, always-in-control British hunk starts to yearn for love. Fortunately, Jamie’s grandmother, who raised him just steps away from the prehistoric monument Stonehenge, predicts that someone special is on the way. In America, Jessica Evans has a vision telling her the same thing. Though a respected psychic medium able to communicate with the dead and foresee the future, Jessie usually encounters trouble prophesying her own fate. When a child goes missing, Jessie identifies the building where the little girl is trapped by a pedophile. Jessie rushes to the rescue, but suffers a sexual assault in the process and discovers that the same man murdered her mother earlier that day. Grieving and wounded—physically and spiritually—Jessie accepts an offer from the girl’s cousin Michael O’Malley Jr., a member of Bel Homme, who whisks her off to England to recuperate. When she meets Jamie there, both know they’ve found the one they’ve been waiting for. But first Jessie needs to heal and Jamie needs to prove that love is more important than riches. At times, this second installment in Irish’s (The Song That Seduced Paris, 2015) series takes on a much more serious tone than the first; scenes unveiled from the pedophile’s point of view are difficult to get through, as are the acts of violence he commits against Jessie. But this story is not about post-traumatic stress disorder (Jessie recovers from her attack remarkably quickly). Rather, it’s one with many elements that readers expect from a romance: a rich and gorgeous yet unfulfilled hero, lovers with killer chemistry, and cheesy lines like “No need to steal my heart. It’s already yours.” Jessie’s clairvoyance makes this romance different from others, as do unexpected details like the admission that she doesn’t have a perfect body (but Jamie likes her the way she is). As the two spend time together, Irish introduces her third book’s couple-to-be. Hint: There’s another wounded woman, another beautiful man.
A predictable romance involving a British vocalist’s search for love, with a few twists.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Enoch Publications
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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