A suspenseful and steamy otherworldly tale.
A woman and her therapist try to decode her strange visions of interstellar captivity in Frelick’s romantic SF thriller.
After waking from a mysterious, hourslong blackout in her car at the side of the road in small-town Tennessee, Asia Burdette returns home to find that her children have been killed in a house fire. Guilt-stricken, the young mother suddenly finds herself plagued by dreams of enslavement on another world. Confounding in their realism, the dreams depict an alien civilization in which human adults and children are forced to work as miners, extracting precious crystals amid brutal conditions. Asia remains tormented by restless nights and preoccupied with the circumstances of her blackout; it’s only when her case is assigned to Ethan Roberts, a handsome psychiatrist specializing in people dealing with lost time, that her luck begins to change. The vividness of her experience eventually reveals her to be an alien-abduction survivor, even turning Ethan into a believer. He jeopardizes his career to help unravel the mystery of Asia’s dreams, accompanying her on an increasingly dangerous journey of discovery that reveals that she’s not alone in her experience. Before long, the pair discover that there are some people who will do almost anything to keep Asia’s story a secret. Frelick offers imaginative descriptions and pulse-pounding action (“Dust billowed and choked the life from lungs and air filters. Supports collapsed and tons of mountain crushed screaming workers in pockets of tens or hundreds”). Although it does offer some upsetting content at times, its scenes of violence aren’t graphic. Throughout, the plot keeps readers guessing with a thoroughly well-crafted mystery, but those looking for passionate romance will not be disappointed; there are several love scenes. It all concludes with a hint of more adventures to come that will leave readers wanting more.
A suspenseful and steamy otherworldly tale.Pub Date: May 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73201-904-1
Page Count: 411
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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