Accomplished achronological storytelling with a fabulous final twist.
A group of former sorority sisters harboring secrets and struggles reunites to finish a cross-country road trip cut short by tragedy 20 years earlier in Klepper’s novel.
In 2019, physician Lisa Callihan is nervous as her husband answers their ringing landline. Thankfully, it’s not the reporter who recently left a voicemail on her cell asking about the 1999 car crash in Texas that killed driver Parker Harrison, whose older brother Tripp is now intending to run for the U.S. Senate; Lisa had secretly “signed away her integrity” regarding that event. The call is, however, a different trigger stirring up the past: It’s from recent divorcée Mary Blake, inviting Lisa to join her and her fellow former college sorority sisters Helen, Annesley, and Charlie to complete their Virginia-to-California road trip that halted abruptly—in Texas, in 1999. Chapters of the book then alternate between 2019 and 1999 and the third-person viewpoints of each woman. Various past and present issues are conveyed (including problematic parents, a suppressed college rape, and a recent recurrence of cancer) amidst the unspooling of the series of events on the 1999 trip that led to the rupture in Texas. By the novel’s end, the “do-over” trip has brought forth renewed bonds and several disclosures, although Lisa still remains silent about the motivations that fueled her long-ago choice. Klepper deploys admirable and engaging craft in this weaving together of five women’s backstories, their assorted interpersonal dynamics, and the two time periods. While readers will naturally root for or relate to some of the women more than others, the author effectively depicts the coming-of-age and adult concerns of each to make all past and present actions understandable. Her final full recounting of what happened that deadly night in Texas is particularly masterful, offering suspense as readers brace for the established upcoming crash, and surprises as Klepper reveals why Lisa will continue to keep some elements of the story to herself.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
