Plentiful action and a protagonist who unflinchingly braves villains and moral quandaries.
The discovery of two bodies and the possibility of sunken treasure thwart retiree Storm “Ketch” Ketchum’s plans for a relaxing trip in this thriller.
It’s been a tumultuous year for Ketch, having had run-ins with nefarious individuals and perhaps breaking a law or two. So a bit of recreation on uninhabited Portsmouth Island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks seems ideal. Because girlfriend Kari Gellhorn’s busy with her dive shop, Ketch takes along 7-year-old grandson Bean; Ketch’s young friend Henry; and fellow Hatteras Island resident Suzanne and her daughter Sally. Unfortunately, trouble may be brewing when Bean and Sally claim they’ve seen zombies and the mysterious Sea Hag. The zombies turn out to be a couple of drowned divers, but the Sea Hag’s harder to explain: an old woman who warns the children against stealing pirate captain Peter Painter’s treasure. Ketch and Henry find gold coins after the Coast Guard’s retrieved the bodies, and later, shadowy figures on a suddenly appearing barge shoot down Ketch’s drone. Ketch, who links the divers to an abandoned ship the Coast Guard’s recently found, soon sees the likelihood of a treasure waiting to be unearthed. Someone else is looking for booty, too, and may be willing to ensure Ketch, Kari, and pal Len don’t resurface from their gold-scouring dive. Despite references to Ketch’s prior “sleuthing,” the novel’s more adventure than detective story, including a boat chase, a life in peril, and a kidnapping. The unrefined protagonist may lose a few readers’ sympathies, considering how he’s acquired his wealth (further details will spoil a preceding tale). But he balances this with virtue: he’s a loyal boyfriend, turning down at least one offer, and is in the process of adopting Bean, with the boy’s mother dead and his father (Ketch’s son) apathetic. Though the third in Dennis’ (An Olde Christmas Carol, 2015, etc.) series and featuring numerous returning characters, the story remains easy to follow, even with nods to Ketch’s past, and can act as a stand-alone. A person’s surprise appearance near the end, however, will have much more impact for readers familiar with the previous books.
Plentiful action and a protagonist who unflinchingly braves villains and moral quandaries.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2016
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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