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LIAM'S PROMISE

Name: LIAM'S PROMISE
Author: John F. Picciano

SECOND EDITION

by John F. Picciano ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

John Worthington “J.W.” Mayfair used to fly bombing missions during the Vietnam War, and now he’s the vice president of a...

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In this debut thriller based upon a real-life 1996 plane crash, a young man must uphold his family’s honor while also facing ethical challenges posed by terrorists and the U.S. government.

John Worthington “J.W.” Mayfair used to fly bombing missions during the Vietnam War, and now he’s the vice president of a software company. As he leaves New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport for a business meeting in Paris, he decides to call Liam, his estranged son, from the plane. While he leaves his message of reconciliation, however, he sees a surface-to-air missile launch from a nearby oil tanker, and his plane, TWA Flight 800, is blown from the sky. Authorities eventually rule that the tragedy was simply the result of a short circuit. Two years later, Liam, who never got J.W.’s message, still has nightmares about his father’s death, and his own life seems adrift and aimless. His mother, however, wants him to become involved in her planned lawsuit against TWA for negligence. Then Liam finally hears the answering machine message he missed so long ago, and he realizes that it could prove that terrorists attacked the plane. If he reveals the message to others, however, his mother’s potential financial windfall could vanish. Liam’s situation worsens when shady figures start gunning for him and anyone else capable of challenging the “short circuit” theory. Debut author Picciano delivers a meticulously crafted thriller packed with details that re-create the Flight 800 tragedy all too well: “The sea was covered with floating corpses…and the bizarre coating of gold glitter which had been blown out of boxes and now covered the hair and clothing and faces of the dead.” However, the story’s main strength is the author’s finely tuned characterization. For example, Liam, unlike his overachieving brothers, is described as being “like the boy who suddenly realizes that the only way he can see the hidden tiger in the 3-D image is...by simply relaxing and allowing it to reveal itself.” Sometimes the author’s colorful imagery fails, however, such as when Flight 800 is callously compared to a “Chinese firecracker.” Such a description makes the gravitas that Flight 800 brings to the narrative feel unearned. The novel could have entertained readers just as well by using a fictional tragedy. A page-turning thriller debut but one that overreaches by pulling straight from the headlines.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Page Publishing

Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

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Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

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Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.