A whirlwind of sex and scandal that will leave readers more dazed than thrilled.
A fiery woman’s entanglement with dangerous men spirals out of control in Jhacks’ erotic thriller.
Jordyn Banks is quick-tempered, outspoken, and unafraid to show her sexual side. (Even her drink order announces her insatiable desires: “A Flaming Orgasm. Extra flame.”) When her ex, Eric, suddenly reappears in Los Angeles, she can’t help but be drawn in. Eric vanished without a word, but she “still feel[s] the pull emanating through the phone” when he calls and thinks about the bulge in his pants. Their reunion sparks an immediate and torrid sexual relationship, but Jordyn’s friends and co-workers begin to suspect that Eric is hiding something very sinister. Meanwhile, another man, Raymond Black, a confident music producer with a reputation as “a man’s man,” wrestles with his own jealous impulses and an unhinged ex, Felicia, whose fixation on him soon erupts into violence (and some unsettling sex acts). As the lives of these passionate people collide, their secrets and betrayals combine in a volatile mix of lust and danger that none of them can control. When Jordyn becomes entangled in a shocking act of violence, she finds herself accused of both sexual transgression and murder—and unsure of how she will escape the twisted, dangerous love quadrangle unscathed. Jhacks uses brisk dialogue and unflagging energy to propel this sprawling narrative; the pages are filled with outrageous fights and audacious twists. However, the book’s relentless plotting—the story is bursting with betrayals, side characters, and very graphic sex—results in a feeling of incoherence. The eroticism borders on absurd, making more serious moments of misogyny and police violence feel dissonant; the author’s tone swings from gleeful B-movie exploitation kicks to grim thriller elements so fast that readers will feel whiplash. There is fearless, irreverent humor to enjoy, and the trial in the latter half gives the narrative some much-needed focus, but the onslaught of nonstop chaos quickly makes even the most shocking sex acts feel numbing.
A whirlwind of sex and scandal that will leave readers more dazed than thrilled.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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