by Howard Odentz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 13, 2017
A simmering psychological thriller bolstered by a dynamic narrative voice and a few unexpected twists.
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A group of close friends find themselves embroiled in a sinister plot in novelist and playwright Odentz’s (Wicked Dead, 2016, etc.) latest YA novel.
Four high school seniors wake up deep in the woods on the outskirts of bucolic Meadowfield, Massachusetts. To their horror, each of their bodies has been altered in some fashion, and none of the kids have any memories of the previous night. Odentz has the quick-witted Weston Kahn narrate the story with youthful personality and humor as he observes his friends, including local jock Anders Stephenson, who’s covered in blood; alien-conspiracy theorist Robbie Myers, who’s missing his glass eye; and confidante Marcy, who’s missing her pants. Weston himself has a tiny, triangular symbol burned into his arm. The shell-shocked quartet stumbles home, and each teen attempts to cover for the others. Further mayhem begins almost immediately: Weston thinks that Sandra Berman, a teenage girl who went missing three years ago, may have been the victim of a homicide just across the street from her house—the victim of a serial killer who threatens the sleepy town’s sense of security. Blurry memories start to return to the teen foursome, Anders begins exhibiting strangely violent behavior, and they eventually determine that someone drugged them all. They attempt to solve the mystery themselves even while admitting that going to “a hospital is probably the right thing to do—even the smart thing to do.” As the slightly convoluted puzzle pieces start to fall into place, deep secrets are revealed and guilty parties make their move to silence the group. Overall, this novel is creative, atmospheric, and effectively detailed, and Odentz maintains a firm grasp on the conversational tone and flow of the story, which seems tailor-made for YA suspense fans. He builds out his novel subtly and incrementally with interrelated characterizations of the teenagers and their family members, and he keeps the story moving with fine pacing, realistic dialogue, and a good sense of place. Throughout, he empowers his characters with intriguing histories, melodramatic infighting, and general teenage growing pains that bring them to vibrant life.
A simmering psychological thriller bolstered by a dynamic narrative voice and a few unexpected twists.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-6119483-6-3
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Bell Bridge Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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