Worried that someone may be using an army of the undead to take over the world? Coates has your number.
In the third installment of her Gravekeeper series, Australian Coates raises the stakes for franchise heroine Keira beyond the management of pesky spirits.
Keira sees dead people, and she can talk to them. In fact, she prefers their company to that of Dane Crispin, the sole heir of the Crispin estate, who she’s convinced has invited her and her friends Zoe and Mason, a doctor-in-training, for dinner at his ancestral home in the town of Blighty, which his ancestor Mortimer Crispin founded, so that he can kill them all. To her surprise, Dane has quite a different agenda in mind: He needs her help. Driven to the point of madness by the vibes he picks up every day, he asks plaintively, “Are there restless spirits in my home?” There’s no one better equipped to take on the job of rousting the ghosts from his house than Keira, but she soon realizes that the spirits are tethered not to Dane’s home but to him personally. How is their attachment to him connected to the murder of Mason’s fellow medical student Evan Radecki, stabbed 18 times last year by someone who thought he was just too successful? Keira, who’d hoped to solve Dane’s problems by “fishing him out of a pot of ghost soup and letting him drain,” is alarmed to discover that she “can’t see a single normal ghost. Only shades,” as the evidence mounts that she’s dealing with something a lot more sinister, or at least more large-scale, than the haunting of a single unhappy heir.
Worried that someone may be using an army of the undead to take over the world? Coates has your number.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781728239231
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
Hilarious, grotesque, and standing slightly in the shadow of its sibling.
Awad returns to the world of Bunny (2019), armed with her signature satirical and surrealist flair.
Samantha Heather Mackey has written a novel, and when she arrives on the dreamy and violent campus of Warren University, where she got her MFA, for her book tour, her fellow former students known as the Bunnies kidnap her and confront her about her thinly veiled autobiographical debut. Now the Bunnies are finally getting their say—and, boy, are they talkative. Offering a kaleidoscopic view of what went down before, during, and after the events chronicled in Bunny, the girls can’t contain their rage, disgust, jealousy, boredom, and hurt over Samantha and her novel. Eventually, Aerius, the Bunnies’ “First Boy. First Draft. First Darling.…First humiliation,” cuts in to offer his side of the story: How he came to be; his understanding (and misunderstanding) of the world; and how he causes, circumvents, and fits into the events of and beyond the first novel. Though he avoids the Bunnies (his “Keepers”) at all costs, they yearn and search for him, their finest work—even if you account for his bloody, violent streak. Considering whether Aerius was the town’s deranged murderer, they slyly say, “But ultimately, we simply did not think so, no. Because he’d come from us and we were lovely. As has already been stated.” This novel is at its best when musing about creativity, writing, and “the work”; skewering academia and elitism; and straddling the slippery border between reality and fantasy. Billed as a standalone, it is most successful as a companion to its predecessor, though at times it reveals too much about the mysterious lore and elusive dynamics of the first novel. Awad’s pacing is uneven, but she sticks the landing with a delightfully unexpected and unhinged ending. Her wit, humor, and metafictional prowess are on full display in this prequel, sequel, expanded upside-down revision, or whatever you want to call it.
Hilarious, grotesque, and standing slightly in the shadow of its sibling.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668059869
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
This fresh reworking of a Greek myth will resonate.
An otherworldly Latinx retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in the South Bronx.
Pheus visits his father in the Bronx every summer. The Afro-Dominican teen is known for his mesmerizing bachata music, love of history, and smooth way with the ladies. Eury, a young Puerto Rican woman and Hurricane Maria survivor, is staying with her cousin for the summer because of a recent, unspecified traumatic event. Her family doesn’t know that she’s been plagued since childhood by the demonlike Ato. Pheus and Eury bond over music and quickly fall in love. Attacked at a dance club by Sileno, its salacious and satyrlike owner, Eury falls into a coma and is taken to el Inframundo by Ato. Pheus, despite his atheism, follows the advice of his father and a local bruja to journey to find his love in the Underworld. Rivera skillfully captures the sounds and feels of the Bronx—its unique, diverse culture and the creeping gentrification of its neighborhoods. Through an amalgamation of Greek, Roman, and Taíno mythology and religious beliefs, gaslighting, the colonization of Puerto Rico, Afro-Latinidad identity, and female empowerment are woven into the narrative. While the pacing lags in the middle, secondary characters aren’t fully developed, and the couple’s relationship borders on instalove, the rush of a summertime romance feels realistic. Rivera’s complex world is well realized, and the dialogue rings true. All protagonists are Latinx.
This fresh reworking of a Greek myth will resonate. (Fabulism. 14-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0373-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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