A compelling literary fever dream with a capricious protagonist at the helm.
In Webb’s novel, a disturbed woman in 1983 tries to reach her New Jersey childhood home while evading the authorities.
Julie Monroe Cromwell lost her best friend, Candice Wentworth, to an accident a few months ago. Police suspect that the incident, which killed hundreds, was engineered; based on “grainy video footage,” they believe the culprit is a woman. Julie, using Candice’s ID, is dragging around a suitcase containing well over a million dollars of her best friend’s money. Getting back to her East Coast hometown necessitates staying ahead of the police and passing through various U.S. states. She finds an unlikely traveling companion in Jamie Owens, a young woman whose mother has recently gone missing. Some others with whom Julie has run-ins wind up dead, occasionally under mysterious circumstances. Throughout the unnerving cross-country trip, Julie has periodic conversations with dead people, from Edgar Allan Poe to notorious murderer Ed Gein. Webb’s follow-up to Last of the Autumn Rain (2025) moves at an impressive pace, with Julie and Jamie never lingering in one place for very long. Although readers know Julie is guilty of certain crimes, the extent of her transgressions is not always clear. Julie isn’t the most reliable narrator, which gives the novel a surreal atmosphere—in one scene, she spots fedora-wearing gnomes who, she’s convinced, have just committed a robbery (an “innocent little pill” may be partially to blame for that visual). Notwithstanding numerous violent acts, the narrative isn’t quite as bleak as readers may anticipate; the violence, including that which results in death, is restrained in the descriptions. (One possible murder, for example, is described in such a way that readers can’t initially be sure who the victim is.) While much of what Julie does makes it hard to sympathize with her, she’s endlessly fascinating, since she’s all but impossible to predict.
A compelling literary fever dream with a capricious protagonist at the helm.Pub Date: July 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798890224606
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Speaking Volumes
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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