A solid tale that effectively showcases its strong women characters.
In Kimelman’s (Flame Road, 2017, etc.) latest series thriller, Sydney Rye and her canine sidekick must protect each other in war-torn Iraq as they aid Kurdish female freedom fighters in their fight against Islamic State group terrorists.
Sydney was the inspiration for Joyful Justice, a worldwide vigilante network. Born Joy Humbolt, she became famous for allegedly killing her brother’s infamous murderer. In reality, someone else killed him, and Sydney just took the rap. Now Declan Doyle of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is threatening to reveal her secret and send her to prison for various crimes, but his superior, Mary Leventhal, has another idea. She wants Sydney to help the FKP, a group of Kurdish female fighters, exterminate members of the Islamic State group who abuse and kidnap women. Specifically, Mary believes that Sydney can inspire more women to join the FKP’s revolution. Once Sydney’s in Iraq, though, bombings separate her and her ever present dog, Blue, from the rest of the team. She later joins up with an FKP fighter named Zerzan Khani, aka “The Tigress,” and the small group braves the Iraqi forest and occasional terrorist attacks as they set about rescuing a captured ally. But even if Sydney succeeds in recruiting women to the rebel cause, she may still be at risk of going to prison—or worse. Kimelman’s characters repeatedly cite an IS belief that men won’t go to heaven if women kill them, and this book, unlike some other thrillers, never treats the notion of battle-ready women as a novelty. Taut action sequences describe Sydney and Zerzan as proficient killers with warriors’ mindsets: “I didn’t have enough bullets to make many mistakes,” Sydney muses. The book also explores some potent and sometimes-gloomy notions, such as Sydney’s assertion that violence is the only way to combat men’s violent ways. That said, the idea of Sydney being an inspiration to large groups of women isn’t entirely convincing. Other characters’ stories, in fact, have more impact; for example, Sydney tells of Tanya, a sex slave who fought back and incited a revolution with a viral video of her retribution. The book’s superb, ambiguous ending, however, is sure to stick with readers.
A solid tale that effectively showcases its strong women characters.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 220
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
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