Lively fiction from a fine Maine novelist, one who deserves more attention.
A stolen triptych of paintings and a draconian boarding school are the gravitational poles of a story about love and lies, art and trauma, and the mysteries of fate.
Spark’s fifth novel opens on a Maine island in 2018 as an art appraiser named Gracie Thomas steps off the ferry, ready to be picked up for the last leg of her journey to the home of a collector who’s hired her to set the value of an important trio of paintings by the painter J. Morrison known as the Triplets. The ferry terminal clears out, her ride does not materialize, there’s no cell service, and suddenly the wintry weather is life-threatening. Chapter 2 leaves Gracie by the side of the road and moves to a suburban high school in 1978 Connecticut where Reggie Rupo, who’s been bouncing through the foster care system for most of his life, is pulled out of Spanish class and shipped off to a carceral boarding school called Adalie Lake (whose searing details are based on the author’s interviews with alumni of a real facility closed only in 2011). Chapter 3 turns the clock back to the 1930s with a series of letters between J. Morrison and his wife, Victoria, in which we learn a secret about the Triplets that has been buried ever since. Meanwhile, returning to 2018, Gracie will survive her ordeal only to discover the paintings have gone missing, likely stolen. But what does 1970s Reggie have to do with it? The plot threads come together in a style reminiscent of the linked story collections of Joan Silber—while there is a substantial throughline connecting the key players, there are also characters and settings important in one or two stories, then not seen again. The overall effect is vibrant and suspenseful, if lapsing occasionally into cliche or hasty resolutions of carefully developed situations. After waiting a long time to see whether and how that secret about the paintings will come to light, we expect more outcome than we get. On the other hand, it’s a great little ending.
Lively fiction from a fine Maine novelist, one who deserves more attention.Pub Date: March 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781954245983
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Four Way
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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