by Erin Kate Ryan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 8, 2022
A puzzler that is both brainy and full of satisfying narrative brawn.
A clairvoyant with a secret past visits a town to assist a missing person investigation and finds herself navigating even more mysteries than she bargained for.
“Every space was haunted by something,” muses Mary, the protagonist of Ryan’s inventive debut. It is Bladen County, North Carolina, in 1961, and Mary, a White New Englander, has arrived clutching a MISSING poster of Polly Starking, a local White girl who has disappeared. Mary is there to work: She has “the Sight,” and her particular psychic ability manifests in visions of missing girls. But her desire to help is only partly based on altruism. Alone, unmarried, and running from her former life, she desperately needs the reward money from cases like Polly’s. The townspeople blow hot and cold about Mary’s presence: They desire her help at the same time they deeply mistrust her. As the sheriff attempts to get Mary to leave, Mary encounters Martha, a Black motel maid who is willing to help Mary navigate her day-to-day needs for food and shelter (as well as the nuances of the Jim Crow South) if Mary will use her abilities to find two other missing girls the town isn’t talking about—two Black girls, Evie and Jack, who are in a romantic relationship. Based on the real-life disappearance of Bennington student Paula Jean Welden in 1946, Ryan’s novel takes up what true-crime aficionados would call the “less dead”: victims of violence or missing people from marginalized communities who fail to garner the same attention as idealized victims—namely, straight young White women. Ryan takes a meta approach here; the novel is as much about the way we mythologize this type of missing and murdered victim as it is a twisty mystery about Mary’s hunt for Polly, Evie, and Jack.
A puzzler that is both brainy and full of satisfying narrative brawn.Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-13343-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Share your opinion of this book
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
238
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
Share your opinion of this book
More by Kristin Hannah
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Awards & Accolades
Likes
17
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2024
New York Times Bestseller
by Liz Moore ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 2, 2024
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
17
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2024
New York Times Bestseller
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
Share your opinion of this book
More by Liz Moore
BOOK REVIEW
by Liz Moore
BOOK REVIEW
by Liz Moore
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.