Mesmerizing, haunting, hopeful.
In 1926 England, two people—a young woman desperate to avoid her former lover and that former lover, equally desperate to find her—struggle with despair and spiritual doubt.
Marion and Jamie—both known by several names in a book where identity is fluid and characters enjoy sexual role-play—have not seen each other since Marion left England the year before. Now she has returned and begun a temporary job as a governess. Outwardly competent, she carries on a disturbing internal dialogue about her past—a girlhood in Ireland that ended in abusive sex and violence, her escape to a new identity in Oxford, the ecstasy of her love affair with Jamie—along with her current guilt, regret, and fear of mental illness. The reader is uncertain just how damaged Marion is when Jamie’s narrative takes over. He too is clearly competent in his professional life. The boarding school that was central to Cross’ first and second novels, Wilberforce (2015) and Grievous (2019), plays an ancillary role here; while engrossing, Jamie’s efforts to solve the school’s problems take a backseat to his emotional turmoil. Bedeviled by various forms of guilt about his past, especially during the war, he struggles to connect with his ailing Anglican Bishop father, whom Jamie assumes disapproves of him. Above all, he is baffled by why Marion disappeared from his life and is obsessed with finding her. His optimism about their possible future together initially seems in sharp contrast to her resistance. Is he delusional too? Gradually, though, the separate dark stories of their emotional crises evolve into a love story that verges on romantic comedy, complete with miscues, disguises, and the bishop’s manipulations. Along the way, Cross tackles such small issues as faith, the Easter Rebellion, and British classism. The elliptical style isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort. That Cross’ voice—some combination of Edna O’Brien, Muriel Spark, and maybe a pinch of Jane Austen—comes from a contemporary American writer is hard to believe.
Mesmerizing, haunting, hopeful.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661351
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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