A taut and often compelling novel of the Spanish American War.
Darling offers a family and political drama set in turn-of-the-20th-century Puerto Rico.
This historical novel subjects teenager Maria Josefina, nicknamed Fina, to constant political and personal turmoil over the five years the story covers, from 1895 to 1900. Puerto Rico is a colony of Spain, and the sons of participants in a failed 1868 revolt are agitating for a chance to finish what their fathers started. While they plan, Spanish loyalists are carrying out vigilante attacks against the revolutionaries’ families. When American soldiers arrive in 1898, they defeat the Spanish army but fail to bring peace to the beautiful but turbulent island. Fina experiences a personal tragedy due to the actions of marauding bands, and her father loses his coffee farm due to his drinking and gambling problems. Much older neighbor Dino Cesari negotiates a deal to marry Fina’s eldest sister, Martina, and the two remaining daughters move into her well-guarded new home. There, Fina falls in love with revolutionary Jorge Cesari; her newfound stability crumbles after his revolutionary group unsuccessfully attacks a nearby Spanish garrison and her lover is forced to flee the island. After a tragedy, Fina’s sister faces the wrath of her in-laws. The siblings’ circumstances don’t improve with the arrival of the Americans and worsen further after a hurricane. Over the course of this novel, Darling effectively weaves together tales of political and personal turmoil. She also uses Fina’s rather innocent perspective to allow readers to experience raw emotions: fear, bewilderment, and loss but also love and hope. (Most of the text is narrated by Fina, but occasional chapters are told from an omniscient third-person perspective, which can be jarring.) Darling effectively demonstrates the complexity of the history underpinning the story as Taino, Spanish, and Corsican characters fight over the future of the island. Rich descriptions of the environment and culture soften the effect of some of the more violent moments.
A taut and often compelling novel of the Spanish American War.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2022
ISBN: 9798849889726
Page Count: 359
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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