A flawed but tense and satisfying thriller that does justice to its weird and macabre premise.
In this debut psychological novel, a painter’s new method unlocks the power of extrasensory perception, giving her access to the dark secrets of others.
Kira, a painter living in New Orleans, has just started a new business called Canvas of Life. When her mother died and was cremated, Kira made a work in her honor by mixing her mom’s ashes with the paints. Now, for a price, she makes paintings that commemorate the deceased and incorporate their ashes. Her first client is a woman named Louise Grayson, who is shocked by the final product. Kira has somehow accurately rendered Louise’s father without seeing a picture. Kira’s second commission is from a widower named Wes Kingsley, and again, her painting says more than she’s been told. It shows that his wife committed suicide because Wes beat her. When he sees the work, he is shocked: “ ‘Oh my Nina!’ he finally exclaimed quietly. ‘It’s her! How did you…how could you…?’ ” Things really get interesting when Kira takes on a third client, Sean, a farmer from Kansas City whose adoptive father has just died. Sean is an empath—“I feel people’s feelings around me,” he tells Kira. When he visits New Orleans for a consultation, they immediately fall in love. But Kira’s painting of Sean’s father begins to unearth dark secrets he hid from his son. Summers’ entertaining novel is well structured and briskly paced. With plenty of foreshadowing and characters stricken by one premonition after another, the taut tale achieves an enjoyably ominous mood. But the author relies too heavily on dream sequences, which, fueled by ESP or not, grow tiresome after a while. Sean, in particular, is a wearying character: Not only can he read a person’s every mood, he also feels the need to comment on it. On top of that, he writes terrible poems: “In your eyes I saw a light / That shines into my heart so bright.” A real empath would keep the verse to himself.
A flawed but tense and satisfying thriller that does justice to its weird and macabre premise.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73317-750-4
Page Count: 399
Publisher: JS Books Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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