An engrossing novel but one with structural issues and a rushed ending.
Roberts debuts with an interracial love story that follows the adventurous life of an aspiring model–turned–wife and mother of twins.
Torey Jackson is a tall, beautiful Black girl growing up in an impoverished urban neighborhood in Seattle with her loving, dedicated single mother, Carol. She dreams of becoming a famous model and fashion designer, but she first must get through the realistically portrayed mean-girl melodrama of high school with her best friend, Shorty, and her White star-quarterback boyfriend, Noah Kirkland, who captures her heart despite their personal and familial differences. While Torey comes from a poor childhood of struggle and dysfunction, Noah is the son of a billionaire aeronautics entrepreneur. Somehow the pair’s love surmounts these issues, and afterward, the story takes some jarring, sexually explicit detours as the novel morphs from an entertaining coming-of-age novel to a steamy, explicit love story about randy young adults. The love-struck Torey and Noah quickly marry and raise their family in a big house in Seattle. But complications ensue in the form of Noah’s marital indiscretions and corporate machinations along with a football tragedy involving a son. The author inexplicably saves a life-altering deus ex machina for the final pages, which snaps the story to a sudden close and sets the scene for further adventures. Roberts invests the story with good pacing and crisp characterizations as he creatively and entertainingly deals with the challenges of interracial relationships and wealth disparities in a marriage. The chapter headings incorporate the author’s illustrations, which add a unique zest and color to each section. Despite the far-too-hasty conclusion of the book, Roberts’ enthusiasm is obvious, and the opening pages hook readers, who will be eager to discover what will become of Torey and Noah and whether their love can last. What resonates most over the course of the book is its focus on realizing dreams and making the most (and the best) of any situation.
An engrossing novel but one with structural issues and a rushed ending.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63985-937-5
Page Count: 444
Publisher: Fulton Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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