A gripping, disturbing tale about the importance of love, acceptance and letting kids be kids.
A young girl’s paranormal gift—or is it a curse?—of sight makes her the target of a murderous madman in Landry’s (Mirror Deep, 2012) shadowy thriller.
Ten-year-old Emma inherited psychic powers from her paternal grandmother, Dottie, including the ability to see into the past and future and have out-of-body experiences. But the craft is a source of shame for her hotheaded father, who has made Emma suppress her skills and speak of them to no one. Her talents don’t stay secret for long, though. When Emma unintentionally sees a serial killer of young girls and reveals herself to him, she becomes his next intended victim. Suspecting something amiss, teacher Christina Tyler contacts her ex-boyfriend, detective Hank Apple, and Emma reluctantly begins to help him on the dangerous case. Landry’s characters are beautifully written, full of subtleties and complications. Emma in particular is superbly drawn—stoic, clever, yet still a child who will curl up with a teddy bear for comfort. Even when overwhelmed by fear, she displays an unassuming strength that makes her seem much older than her years. In fact, her maturity often surpasses that of the squabbling adults around her, especially her disappointing parents; her volatile father and bland mother largely remain unsympathetic even as they attempt to make up for the many years of not supporting their daughter. Emma’s aunt and maternal grandmother step up as dependable advocates for Emma, as do Christina and Hank, but all four are still flawed in their own ways. Christina and Hank find that their feelings for each other are rekindled as they fight to protect Emma’s secret while hunting down the crazed murderer. But go-getter Hank struggles with work-life balance and emotional vulnerability, and bighearted Christina has trouble forgetting a past infidelity, so theirs is a deliciously clumsy stumble toward a relationship. The stakes are high in this dark novel, but the story never feels overdone thanks to Landry’s nimble balancing act between supernatural mystery and stirring character drama.
A gripping, disturbing tale about the importance of love, acceptance and letting kids be kids.Pub Date: April 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0996044196
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Book Beatles LLC
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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