by Gregory Lee Renz ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
For readers looking for a book with an uplifting story and breathtaking action, this is a worthy read.
A debut novel chronicles the struggles of a troubled firefighter.
Renz’s story centers on Mitch Garner, a farmer and volunteer firefighter in a town called Milroy in Wisconsin. Mitch starts showing signs of PTSD when he is unable to save a girl in a fire. That is compounded when he accidentally starts a blaze that almost destroys the family farm, which he works with his brother, Chris, and his unforgiving father, Sid. To redeem himself, Mitch applies to become a professional firefighter in nearby Milwaukee. His father kicks him out of the house, and the move drives a wedge between Mitch and his girlfriend, Jennie McAdams. In Milwaukee, Mitch sees how racism affects the fire department and the gang-controlled, rotting neighborhoods around him. He finds an apartment with Miss Bernie, the mother of fellow recruit Jamal Jackson. Driven by his personal tragedies and the recent 9/11 attacks, and guided by the wisdom of Miss Bernie and his crew of veteran firefighters, Mitch becomes a hero while the family farm and his personal relationships suffer. The Mitch-as-savior storyline starts to feel a bit overdone by the novel’s third act. But then the author turns it around and shows how everyone the firefighter assisted, including two girls named Jasmine and Alexus Richardson, returns the favor and helps him find the redemption he has been seeking. Renz draws on his years of experience as a firefighter to bring a hardscrabble authenticity to his novel. He packs the tale with plenty of action and a lot of heart. His firefighting sequences are detailed and thrilling, placing readers right in front of the flames. His prose is clean and, at times, poetic: “The bright moon still owned the sky, but the birds were already chirping in anticipation of another sunrise.” Mitch and Miss Bernie are well-drawn characters, and a lot of the minor players are infused with great personality, aside from Jennie, who seems to exist only as a foil for Mitch’s emotions. She also provides some surprise help in a pivotal scene that comes off as ridiculous and almost spoils the ending.
For readers looking for a book with an uplifting story and breathtaking action, this is a worthy read.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-59598-687-0
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Three Towers Press
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
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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