Exuberantly irreverent; demonic beings and witches running amok have rarely been so funny.
A small Texas town is thrown into turmoil when an upcoming Halloween party comes complete with infernal beasts and ceremonial sacrifice in this supernatural thriller.
A seemingly abandoned deputy sheriff’s car—and no deputy—is merely the start of strange happenings in Welles, Texas. Police Chief Frank Butler notes tracks leading from the car to Coventry House, home to elderly Harriet, Emma, and May. Of course, May’s not there when Butler questions the ladies, a young, sultry Megan in her stead. Rumor has it that the old women are witches, but the deputy’s disappearance could be due to his part in a federal investigation or the not-so-secret pot field on Coventry House property. Nevertheless, Megan telling Butler that “people are coming” is especially foreboding in light of the women’s forthcoming party—what they call Samhain. Sure enough, someone summons a demon, Leonard, who crawls out from below, followed by scores of Kobolos, tiny, red hat–donning creatures that look not unlike garden gnomes. Soon the chief’s dealing with a person’s head stuffed into a mailbox and rednecks battling gnomes in an all-out war and, eventually, a clash inside the local Wal-Mart. Samhain night reveals Borderland, a gate between realities where sacrifices take place. That, plus an inevitable confrontation between Leonard and the witches, is bound to result in plenty of death. The novel, despite an unmistakably cheeky approach, is decidedly adult. There’s blood, viscera, and severed heads, while Wal-Mart, as expected, stocks weapons like shotguns and saw blades. Shawn (Pantheon, 2014, etc.) delivers this in a frenzied style filled with action and zany characters while taking jabs at teen paranormal romance novels: 17-year-old Bitsy Johnson mistakes initially unseen Kobolos for abnormally speedy vampire Edward. The story’s hampered by occasionally vague descriptions (twins with a “Japanese anime schoolgirl Yakuza fashion sense”) and somewhat obscure references (someone resembling “the dead girl from the Asian horror movie, The Eye”). The final act, however, is a bevy of treats, from surprises, including the identity of acolytes who summoned Leonard, to the introduction of black magic’s counterpart in the form of Celestial, or white, magic.
Exuberantly irreverent; demonic beings and witches running amok have rarely been so funny.Pub Date: April 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5076-1806-6
Page Count: 354
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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