An often jaunty and thoroughly entertaining story of young love.
In this fantasy/romance, a teenager’s destiny may encompass falling for a witch and saving a hidden realm of dreams while safeguarding his own world.
Heading to Wisconsin for college, Brian Danahey’s solo road trip is sidetracked by car trouble, an apparently empty tank. Luckily, Rebecca Church shows up and offers her cabin as a temporary refuge. She’s the girl of his dreams; that is, she looks just like the figure being pursued by a hangman in Brian’s recurring nightmare. Turns out Rebecca’s been waiting for Brian, certain he’s the one prophesied to stop an imagination-eating void from swallowing all of the World of Mortal Dreams. Without nourishment provided by the waking world’s cousin, people’s spirits will shrivel and die. Strictly adhering to the Witches Code, Rebecca can only relay information to Brian via riddles, dreams, or illusions. Starting with a book of Rebecca’s poems, Brian slowly learns about the other realm and the prophecy. He finds unexpected allies along the way as well as adversaries, particularly Abigail, an imp who hates Rebecca. More important, he untangles Rebecca’s intricate past: she’s effectively a prisoner, and Brian may be more determined to rescue the girl he loves than the dual worlds. Fraser’s (Faulty Bones, 2016) Romeo-and-Juliet tale brims with preternatural turns and diverting romance. Thwarting the void entails a few tortuous decisions, such as Rebecca having a limited number of times to see Brian before disappearing forever. But the young couple’s evolving relationship is the engaging story’s focus and true essence. The two are generally apart, making their shared scenes all the more endearing, while Fraser opts for more lighthearted humor than sweet nothings. Readers, for one, are treated to a glimpse of possessive Rebecca telling Brian’s video store co-worker: “I see you’re still hanging around my Brian!” Traversing another realm likewise allows for enjoyable appearances by a historical figure or two and a tie to a relevant, centuries-old event in Salem.
An often jaunty and thoroughly entertaining story of young love.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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