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Reptile Wines

Name: Reptile Wines
Author: John Hewitt

by John Hewitt ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

An outrageously weird yet delightfully charming wine-country tale that unravels into pure silliness by the end.

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In this romp through the world of Napa Valley, a winery tour guide sets out to prove that his cousin faked his death—and not for the first time.

When Miles Trout, a driver for Napa Ramblers Winery Tours, learns that his best friend and cousin, Lucky Stephan Tarpitz, has suddenly died, he’s not very shocked. After all, this isn’t the first time Lucky has mysteriously perished; he previously faked his demise to escape the wrath of the elderly trailer park residents he targeted in an investment scam. When Miles finds out that Lucky’s body rolled out of the SUV speeding it to the hospital and disappeared without a trace, he is determined to uncover what really happened to his cousin. Along the way, he is waylaid by the various colorful characters who inhabit the close-knit Napa Valley wine community, including Emelina Hawkins, Lucky’s hotblooded evangelical stepsister, who is determined to revenge herself on Miles after he abandoned her at a taco restaurant on a date; Lexi Winterhaven, an elegant older woman who co-owned a racehorse named Love Blisters with Lucky; and Angelina DellaContorni, Lucky’s loose cannon of a mother, a former Las Vegas showgirl who holds “kinky wild all-night debaucheries at her modest Napa home where she lives with a tattooed woman witch named China Rose.” In his zany novel, Hewitt (One Shoe: When a Gold Rush is Not Enough, 2015, etc.) has created a hapless yet lovable loser protagonist in Miles, who despite his unfortunate life choices seems to be the sanest person in Napa—though that’s not saying much. Hewitt’s prose, littered with deliciously bizarre dialogue and other vivid details, makes his larger-than-life world feel fit for the big screen. These include his hilarious descriptions of the various wines that are the lifeblood of Napa, such as “Women’s Desires Vin Gris with a nose of tarragon, and hints of pickle relish and muscle balm,” and “Desperado Rosé wine with hints of hibiscus and saddle leather.” Unfortunately, when a subplot concerning alien visitors to Napa kicks in, the already insane story goes completely off the rails.

An outrageously weird yet delightfully charming wine-country tale that unravels into pure silliness by the end.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher

Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2016

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.