An enchanting mystery that will engage readers’ senses and capture their imaginations.
A young, magic-using baker is falsely accused of murder in Luana’s (The Confectioner’s Exile, 2018, etc.) YA fantasy series entry.
Wren is an incredibly talented confectioner. She’s also capital-G “Gifted,” meaning that she imbues all her tasty treats with a magical component. In the country of Alesia, every Guild uses its own type of magic, although each keeps it a well-guarded secret. Wren, an orphan, was plucked from the streets and eventually whisked away to the Confectioner’s Guildhall to be instructed in its particular enchantments. But before her lessons can start, someone murders the Head of the Confectioner’s Guild, and newcomer Wren becomes the prime suspect. Grandmaster Sable and her artisan, Hale—Wren’s newly found “tribe” within the Guild—assure her that they’ll protect her from harm. Inspector Lucas Imbris also vouches for Wren and swears to find the true killer. However, Wren isn’t sure whom to trust, so she undertakes her own investigation to clear her name and assure herself a permanent place in her new world. Along the way, she must also navigate complicated Guild rivalries and secrets; soon, she finds herself in the middle of political maneuverings involving king and country. She also finds herself falling in love with someone. Author Luana whips up a sweet and savory novel that’s full of delightfully descriptive prose. The Guildhall’s library, for example, cleverly resembles a kitchen that “felt worn and real, like catching a glimpse of the guild waking up in the morning before it had washed and put its face on.” Wren is a sympathetic protagonist who’s vulnerable enough to be relatable but tough enough to be admirable. In this novel, cooking is a form of love, and love is a form of magic all its own, which makes for an excellent fantasy premise. Mix in an excellent murder mystery with well-developed characters, a twisty plot, and unexpected resolution, and it’s a recipe for success.
An enchanting mystery that will engage readers’ senses and capture their imaginations.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9977018-9-0
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Live Edge Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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