A conflict-rich story that demands a safer world for women.
In a near-future United Kingdom, a dysfunctional family is further fractured by "Curfew Laws" that require men to remain off the streets from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Sarah Wallace is employed as a "tagger" at a center that locks trackable ankle monitors on all men over the age of 10. Sarah's ex-husband, Greg Johnson, is soon to be released from prison, where he was sent for a Curfew violation, triggered by an offense committed against Sarah herself. The couple's daughter, Cass Johnson, is a resentful, bitter teenager who's furious at her mother, idealizes her father, and has a possessive, hormone-fueled crush on Bertie, a barista. As the book opens, a murdered woman's body is discovered half buried in the bushes in a park; this discovery will reveal fault lines in the politically controversial tag system. The book then backs up four weeks before returning to the day the body was found: Sarah tases Paul Townsend, a man who complains about his tag. Cass steals a key from her mother's office and unlocks her school friend Billy's tag. Cass' teacher Helen Taylor stops taking birth-control pills without telling her Cohab partner, Tom Roberts. Three female police investigators quarrel over whether a man could have violated the Curfew Laws to commit the murder and how much of the uncomfortable truth about the tag system should be revealed to a social media–obsessed public. An intriguing murder investigation, credible worldbuilding, clever gender-role dynamics, and a fast-paced narrative are paired with morally compromised characters, a predictable plot, and a didactic and sometimes heavy-handed message about male violence.
A conflict-rich story that demands a safer world for women.Pub Date: March 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-33678-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.
A disturbing household secret has far-reaching consequences in this dark, unusual ghost story.
Mallory Quinn, fresh out of rehab and recovering from a recent tragedy, has taken a job as a nanny for an affluent couple living in the upscale suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey, when a series of strange events start to make her (and her employers) question her own sanity. Teddy, the precocious and shy 5-year-old boy she's charged with watching, seems to be haunted by a ghost who channels his body to draw pictures that are far too complex and well formed for such a young child. At first, these drawings are rather typical: rabbits, hot air balloons, trees. But then the illustrations take a dark turn, showcasing the details of a gruesome murder; the inclusion of the drawings, which start out as stick figures and grow increasingly more disturbing and sophisticated, brings the reader right into the story. With the help of an attractive young gardener and a psychic neighbor and using only the drawings as clues, Mallory must solve the mystery of the house's grizzly past before it's too late. Rekulak does a great job with character development: Mallory, who narrates in the first person, has an engaging voice; the Maxwells' slightly overbearing parenting style and passive-aggressive quips feel very familiar; and Teddy is so three-dimensional that he sometimes feels like a real child.
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81934-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.
Another Brown (Inferno, 2013, etc.) blockbuster, blending arcana, religion, and skulduggery—sound familiar?—with the latest headlines.
You just have to know that when the first character you meet in a Brown novel is a debonair tech mogul and the second a bony-fingered old bishop, you’ll end up with a clash of ideologies and worldviews. So it is. Edmond Kirsch, once a student of longtime Brown hero Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist–turned–action hero, has assembled a massive crowd, virtual and real, in Bilbao to announce he’s discovered something that’s destined to kill off religion and replace it with science. It would be ungallant to reveal just what the discovery is, but suffice it to say that the religious leaders of the world are in a tizzy about it, whereupon one shadowy Knights of Malta type takes it upon himself to put a bloody end to Kirsch’s nascent heresy. Ah, but what if Kirsch had concocted an AI agent so powerful that his own death was just an inconvenience? What if it was time for not just schism, but singularity? Digging into the mystery, Langdon finds a couple of new pals, one of them that computer avatar, and a whole pack of new enemies, who, not content just to keep Kirsch’s discovery under wraps, also frown on the thought that a great many people in the modern world, including some extremely prominent Spaniards, find fascism and Falangism passé and think the reigning liberal pope is a pretty good guy. Yes, Franco is still dead, as are Christopher Hitchens, Julian Jaynes, Jacques Derrida, William Blake, and other cultural figures Brown enlists along the way—and that’s just the beginning of the body count. The old ham-fisted Brown is here in full glory (“In that instant, Langdon realized that perhaps there was a macabre silver lining to Edmond’s horrific murder”; “The vivacious, strong-minded beauty had turned Julián’s world upside down”)—but, for all his defects as a stylist, it can’t be denied that he knows how to spin a yarn, and most satisfyingly.
The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-51423-1
Page Count: 461
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
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