A botanist retreats to a remote island to escape a complicated sex life, only to find himself tangled in a string of suspicious deaths.
When he last spent time on Matinicus, an island off the coast of Maine so isolated its inhabitants refer to the mainland as "America," Gil Hodges (named after the baseball player) developed an intense crush on Rachel Leland, an artist who lives in the old Burgess place, the island's oldest house. Five years later, under the pretense of completing a study of the island's rich plant life, he's staying at Rachel's house again, even though she's away. Of course, the botanical study is only part of the picture. Gil, a chronic libertine, is on the run from an ugly relationship and trying his best to put his old ways behind him. Unfortunately, he arrives on Matinicus during turbulent times, landing smack in the middle of an old dispute between local lobstermen and a former inhabitant of the island suspected of poaching. Without a resident police force, the citizens of Matinicus have to mete out justice on their own, so a string of seemingly random and accidental deaths starts the residents asking questions. Meanwhile, Gil must figure out how to deal with a local teen in the midst of a crisis, a sexy widow bent on making him revert to his former ways and a restless ghost who seems to be trying to tell him something. Scott's prose crackles with energy, and her sense of place is superb. The characters, even the minor ones, are well wrought, as is her detailed evocation of the book's unique setting. Sections set in modern times are interspersed with entries from the diary of an early 19th-century inhabitant of the Burgess house, and both plot lines are well executed and intertwine perfectly. Scott brings the action to a head, then ends with a brilliant twist sure to leave readers' jaws hanging. The kind of book readers will tear through, only to find themselves hungry for more.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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