A tense, unpredictable, character-driven thriller about a complicated evil stalking Boston.
A series of church fires in Boston leads a reporter to suspect more serious crimes plague the city in this novel.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dana Pierson’s life in Boston is quickly complicated in many ways as this tale commences. Dana is going to be the guardian of 17-year-old Mia for the school year, for one thing. While waiting to pick up Mia from the airport, Dana learns that her ex-husband, Drew, the father of her long-lost son, Joel, is back in Boston as well. And it isn’t long before Dana hears from her longtime journalist partner, Kip Connor, who calls her late one night from the scene of a fire at St. Barbara’s, a decommissioned Roman Catholic church. Dana quickly learns that St. Barbara’s is only the latest old Boston church to catch fire—St. Aloysius and St. Lawrence suffered the same fate. In all three cases, there were reports of a blond-haired “ghost” in the vicinity right before the blaze. This seems like more than a coincidence, and the investigation that follows distracts Dana from the progress of Mia’s school year and her ongoing infatuation with the reporter’s dreamboat young nephew, Zac. “His eyes were dark, and his smile, a little bit naughty, turned up ever so slightly in the corners in a sly way,” Mia enthuses at one point. “Showing beautiful sexy teeth. Could teeth be sexy?” Dana and Kip encounter some baffling conduct by Catholic officials in the course of their investigation—and strange behavior on the part of Fire Marshal Ryan Kelly, who shows a curious amount of interest in the particular details of the blazes (and whose young brother, Gabe, a victim of church-ignored sexual abuse, has angelic looks and long blond hair). Jones keeps these and a half-dozen other subplots spinning in the remarkably smooth and readable story. The narrative speeds along, largely propelled by dialogue, and the author skillfully raises intriguing questions about virtually every character, from steadfast Kip to the missing Joel.
A tense, unpredictable, character-driven thriller about a complicated evil stalking Boston.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
