A propulsive, blood-soaked yarn.
A blood oath binds five estranged witches to their late mentor’s dark research in Wenstrom’s supernatural thriller.
Eighteen years after leaving Millinocket Preparatory School for Witches and Witching Craft, corporate lawyer Alicia returns for the funeral of her old mentor, Professor Berriman. She’s reunited with her estranged “pentam”—which includes ex-girlfriend Everyn, now a celebrated painter; Isa, an operative in the Lilith’s (the ruling witch’s) inner circle; the loyal academic, Rachel; and the last to arrive, Sybil—only to learn Berriman’s will has bound the five by blood to resume her research, a covenant that can only be broken by one of their deaths. Wary of that loophole, the group agrees to search for a legal workaround rather than get to work. Chapters set 18 years earlier flash back to the five bonding as first-years, drawn to a shy, friendless classmate named Bea amid the chaos of a Harvest Moon ritual that leaves each of them reeling from their first true taste of power. A cruel prank turned deadly the following winter leaves Bea dead and the group bound by a secret they scramble to bury alongside her. That reckless night ripples forward into the present, shading every interaction of the reunited pentam with guilt and suspicion. As the dual timelines converge, old resentments resurface alongside a mounting sense that someone, or something, in their circle wants the pentam gone for good. “Any one of them from the pentam could have done it. But which of them would?” Alicia finds herself digging into a past the others would rather leave buried in the Millinocket woods. The campus-set flashbacks are effectively balanced against the present-day narrative with brisk, propulsive pacing. The shifting points of view (the perspective rotates among all five witches) keep the central mystery satisfyingly opaque for much of the novel. The profanity-heavy banter can grow repetitive across five distinct narrators, who often sound interchangeable; still, readers drawn to witchy fantasy worlds and messy sisterhood narratives will find plenty to enjoy.
A propulsive, blood-soaked yarn.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2026
ISBN: 9798995017028
Page Count: 446
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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