by J. P. Sitler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 2013
A thriller with a promising, engaging concept, hampered by awkward execution.
In this mysterious debut thriller with dashes of the supernatural, a computer technician starts to lose track of time and encounters ghosts from his past.
For some undetermined period, Nathan Walker has been losing his memories. As a result, he can’t remember whole chunks of his past, and it’s impacting his current life more and more. He fears he may lose his job, and, at one point, he lands in the hospital after a jellyfish sting that he doesn’t remember getting becomes infected. He starts receiving mysterious emails, apparently from his dead childhood best friend, that reference events in his past—but when Nathan attempts to track the messages, they appear to be coming from his own computer. He soon sees a psychotherapist to work through his grief. The story has a tendency to pick up and drop plotlines in a confusing manner; for example, Nathan has secrets that he wants to keep from his girlfriend, Naunie, whose emotionally abusive parents have made relationships difficult for her. She’s 30 years old but still lives with her mother, Bunny Swan, who’s the very caricature of an aging Scarsdale country club doyenne, right down to her name; readers learn all about Bunny’s legal troubles stemming from a traffic accident. There’s a good story in here and some sharp prose, but Sitler frequently tells instead of shows, and sometimes what she tells can be bewildering; for example, the description of Bunny’s lawyer, Chase Cothren, is amusing and vivid, but lines such as “[l]ike any well-respected metrosexual, he had regular facials and manicures” veer into parody. Still, the text does offer up occasional moments of lyricism (“reality had begun to lose its crispness”).
A thriller with a promising, engaging concept, hampered by awkward execution.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2013
ISBN: 9781478376811
Page Count: 98
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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