by J.P. Mac ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 29, 2016
An imaginative back story and a rollicking plot make this an entertaining addition to the genre of occult fiction.
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A university gets ensnared in a paranormal battle over a dangerous book in this debut horror novel.
Miskatonic University’s new president wants to shut down the college’s ancient and controversial Armitage Memorial Library Antiquities Section. Special Collections Curator Mercy O’Connor would rather be chugging lime-a-ritas than courting her family’s magic lineage that the library protects. Meanwhile, the warlord Obed Whateley disguises himself as Leland Janus and appeals to university president Armand Deale’s desire to shut down the Antiquities Section. Janus promises a handsome reward if Deale can get the Necronomicon, a powerful volume in the library. He’ll need the book by Hallow’s Mass, the legendary sacred holiday for Janus and his people. Deale enlists the intellectual prowess of Audrey Klumm-Weebner, and the help of a Native American and a social media buff to get the volume. The library chairman falls strangely ill, and with him gone, Deale and company create a smear campaign, claiming the Necronomicon belongs to its rightful people, the oppressed Dunwich. Mercy finds herself suddenly in charge of the library, and despite her best efforts to protect it, the Necronomicon falls into the wrong hands. By the time Deale and his companions realize who Janus really is, it might be too late to save the university town, and Mercy will have to step into her family’s heritage to find her purpose. Wit and humor color the novel, which includes hashtags as well as a heavy-handed satire of political correctness. The worldbuilding is thorough, explained by periodic articles, excerpts, and interviews that accompany the chapters. More nuance would have enhanced some of the characters, such as African Joe, who is as much the butt of jokes as he is the sidekick Mercy needs. Momentum builds rapidly as the plot to get the Necronomicon unfolds, but then it sags in the thick of a melee, including more characters than can be kept track of. Despite this, the well-crafted novel comes to a satisfying conclusion, with Mercy more developed than when readers first encounter her.
An imaginative back story and a rollicking plot make this an entertaining addition to the genre of occult fiction.Pub Date: April 29, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Cornerstone Media
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by J.P. Mac
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...
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
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SEEN & HEARD
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.
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.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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by Lisa Jewell
BOOK REVIEW
by Lisa Jewell
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by Lisa Jewell
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