Religious mystery fans, people suspicious of the Catholic Church and anyone who enjoys supernatural thrillers will welcome...
A classy Christian thriller with a dark mystery at its heart.
One misty night, Dr. Jonathan Marshall Keats encounters a mortally wounded nun who thrusts a baby into his arms as a mysterious blond stranger looks on. After 15 years, that child, Serenity D’Evele, arrives with her nun grandmother at an elite Catholic boarding school in California. But when tragedy strikes, heralded by Serenity’s prophetic dreams and spiritual proclivity, the teenager learns that her bloodline stretches back to Joan of Arc and the prophet Enoch. Furthermore, she may just be a key player in the end of the world. She sets out to discover the truth and protect her friends and family, all the while being tempted by a love that could bring about the Judgment. From its somewhat standard mystery setup, Burnham’s story explodes into a globe-trotting adventure featuring vast conspiracies, secret religious societies, biblical prophesies, angels, demons and other beasts drawn straight from the pages of Catholic and Gnostic religious mythologies. The book is theologically complicated, but Burnham does an excellent job of keeping it from going over the reader’s head. Themes of faith, trust and inner strength make this story more than just an action-adventure tale, though the author sometimes presents those themes more heavy-handedly than best suits them. The lush prose matches the setting and subject matter, and each character, even the minor ones, crackles with conflict and complex motivations. Burnham keeps the reader on the edge of her seat, with each plentiful twist deepening the far-reaching plot. While the dialogue is occasionally stiff and characters’ inner lives, though complex, are often told rather than shown, overall the book is gripping and brimming with life.
Religious mystery fans, people suspicious of the Catholic Church and anyone who enjoys supernatural thrillers will welcome this book.Pub Date: July 16, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4500-1815-9
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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