by Laura Benedict ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2007
Full of ghosts and gore, sure, but only a good read for the gullible.
A debut novel about a small town’s murderous secrets and the woman who leads to their unraveling.
Kate Russell abandoned her past to start anew in idyllic Carystown. Just when she thinks she’s escaped, the ghost of Isabella Moon, a girl whose murder two years earlier remains unsolved, brings Kate to Isabella’s grave. The discovery leads Kate deep into Carystown’s secrets, while her own dangerous past threatens to overtake her. The otherworldly elements, namely Isabella’s ghost, make for a poorly told campfire tale. The dead-of-the-night ghost scenes are clichéd, lacking the thrill and chill of a successful murder mystery. As a whole, the novel is more plot-driven than character-driven, and even then it’s no page-turner until another, more brutal murder occurs—this time involving someone close to Kate. Benedict tackles the gruesome and the disturbing without hesitation; however, Kate never takes shape, morphing from scared and meek to strong and vengeful without ever developing a personality. The most engaging scenes are Kate’s flashbacks that unfold alongside the present story as both become increasingly sordid. Throughout, the text fails to provide motivation for Kate’s actions, damaging the story’s credibility. The same frustration occurs with Sheriff Bill Delaney. Presented as a major figure, he battles feelings of lust for and suspicion of Kate, as well as pressures to unravel the town’s web of sex, drugs and violence. But insight into his character is erratic and the Kate-Sheriff relationship is neglected. Stock characters make up the rest of the ensemble: the wealthy, aging matriarch and her spoiled son, the drug-and-sex-addicted vixen, the wise, retired schoolteacher, the irreverent hippie, etc. The various ways in which they are involved becomes tiresome, and the conclusion lacks pay off.
Full of ghosts and gore, sure, but only a good read for the gullible.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-345-49767-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
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by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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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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