This masterful detective tale launches what could be a transcendent hybrid series—a must-read.
Set in an art colony on the Southern California coast, this series opener blends elements of urban fantasies, amateur sleuth mysteries, and magical realism.
Although Skysill Beach may seem like just another tourist trap—featuring numerous parks, art galleries, and even a psychic district—there’s a shadowy side to the secluded community of artists. For generations, the talented painters who relocate to Skysill never seem to leave. And, even stranger, many artists utilize “Higher colors” in their works that are not only undetectable to the normal eye, but can also be used to manipulate various emotions. When former wunderkind artist Asher Gale—whose ability to see the spectrum of these colors may have driven him to a mental breakdown—is tasked with investigating the apparent suicide of the daughter of a wealthy patron, he quickly discovers the motives behind the young woman’s death are not only complicated, but dangerous as well. His inquiries give him insight into the obscure origins of Skysill, and also reveal details about the mysterious disappearance of his parents years earlier. Powered by consummate worldbuilding, superb character development, and nonstop action, Hincker’s wildly original storyline—which features ghosts, murders, psychics, and even an unlikely romance—is only the beginning of a much more grand-scale narrative. Also of note is the author’s witty—and effortlessly readable—writing style. Although there are countless examples of his unique use of imagery and analogy, a few examples follow: One character is described as having “snowy skin and white hair falling taut off one shoulder, the way starlets played nuns in the 50s,” and an older woman is “stooped like a question mark.” Another character squints through her bifocals and tight lips and makes “the sound horses do, thinking about hay.”
This masterful detective tale launches what could be a transcendent hybrid series—a must-read.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9798987630167
Page Count: 264
Publisher: manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.
A news presenter and a police detective are brought together by murders in the British village where they both grew up.
There is precious little that can be revealed about the plot of Feeney’s third novel without spoilers, as the author has woven surprises and plot twists and suspicious linkages into nearly every one of her brief, first-person chapters, written in three alternating narrative voices. “Hers” is Anna Andrews, a wannabe anchor on a BBC news program whose lucky break comes when the body of one of her school friends is found brutally murdered in their hometown, a woodsy little spot called Blackdown. “His” is DCI Jack Harper, head of the Major Crime Team in Blackdown, where major crimes were rather few until now. The third is unnamed but clearly the killer’s. Happily, none of the three is an unreliable narrator—good thing because plenty of people are sick of that—but none is exactly 100% forthcoming either. Which only makes sense, because you can't have reveals without secrets. In a small town like Blackdown, everybody knows everybody, so it’s not too surprising that Anna and Jack have a tragic past or that each has connections to all the victims and suspects while not being totally free from suspicion themselves. Who is that sneaky third narrator? On the way to figuring that out, expect high school mean girls, teen lesbian action, mutilated corpses, nasty things happening to kittens, and—as seems de rigueur in British thrillers—plenty of drinking and wisecracks, sometimes in tandem. “Sadly, my sister has the same taste in wine as she does in men; too cheap, too young, and headache-inducing.”
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26608-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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