A well-crafted disaster novel that packs an emotional wallop.
In Kravchenko’s debut novel, a man seeks to locate his friends in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
Carl Lundmark is a young Swedish man living in London who’s perpetually single and unhappily works hard at his hedge fund job to distract him from the emptiness of his life. Then he hears about an earthquake in the Indian Ocean on the news—a freak event that kicked up a tsunami that’s thought to have killed thousands in Southeast Asia. Carl’s recently married best friends,Kristoffer and Eva Berg, are in Thailand, which was one of the worst-hit areas: “Carl had exchanged texts with Kristoffer three days ago, or maybe four. They had landed in Bangkok, Kristoffer said….It was their honeymoon, for God’s sake. How could anything happen to them?” He manages to find the name of the resort where his friends were staying, only to learn that it was “all but obliterated” by the tsunami, and that Kristoffer and Eva are among the missing. He makes a spontaneous decision to fly to Thailand to try to find them, although he has no idea how he’ll do so. As Carl encounters the post-tsunami chaos on the ground, Kravchenko offers pre-tsunami stories of Kristoffer, Eva, and other tourists as their fates pull them toward the unforeseeable calamity. The prose is taut and vibrant, pulsing with Carl’s tense nervous energy: “Hospital staff…lifted a motionless woman from a stretcher that had been laid on the asphalt, and placed her on a trolley. Her hair and face were covered in dry blood and mud, her eyes closed, grimy arms spread, dangling.” The story manages to successfully balance the specific horrors of the 2004 tsunami with the personal lives of Carl, Kristoffer, and the others, resulting in a consistently surprising tale of friendship that delves into Swedish identity and questions of how best to live. There are a few moments of cultural analysis that feel clunky and didactic, but for the most part, the story is a page-turner with high psychological stakes.
A well-crafted disaster novel that packs an emotional wallop.Pub Date: April 28, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Threesixty Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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