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
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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