A tale bristling with sexual tension but hampered by bleak figures.
An erotic novel focuses on the slow seduction of a teenager.
This story introduces a modern fop named Aarin. His main goal? To have sex with his girlfriend’s 16-year-old daughter, Paige. His girlfriend is a hearty woman of Lithuanian extraction named Granta (or “Grunter,” as she is usually referred to) who tends to attack all sexual matters with a forceful abandon. Aarin, much to his own indifference, is usually on the receiving end of such aggression. He lives with Grunter in her London apartment, though he develops an irresistible desire for Paige. Paige may be a lithe, sassy teen but she is inexperienced in the ways of men. She is also doing poorly in English at school. Aarin first gets time alone with her under the auspices of tutoring. While his quest to sleep with Paige would be technically legal in Britain, that doesn’t mean it will be an easy mission. And it proves to be an intriguing, if morally troubling, pursuit. The tension comes not so much in whether Aarin will be successful, but in expecting him to get his comeuppance at any moment. Sexual encounters are graphic (as when Aarin explains how his lover “rammed her hips down powerfully, as if my cock was part of her”) and always spiked with the possibility of someone getting into trouble. It is an enticing setup yet the problem is with the characters. Whereas Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert may have been a monster, he had a comical, pathetic side. Aarin displays no such humor. In Spaid’s (Tireless, 2013) treatment of a forbidden love triangle, it may be difficult for readers to find anyone to root for. Aarin is just the type of rakish creep that should refrain from being around teens. Paige is often cruel and Grunter is more pitiful than likable. Yet while none of the main players are particularly inviting, they are palpably real. All of the characters tend to have their personal interests in mind, whether they are engaged in plotting copulation or simply trying to ignore poor grades at school. But in the end will anyone learn anything? With this dismal crowd, it seems unlikely.
A tale bristling with sexual tension but hampered by bleak figures.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
