A sometimes over-the-top thriller whose frenetic cadence will keep readers’ heads spinning.
A debut psychological thriller that offers wealth, romance, obsession, and terror in abundance.
In Lovett’s novel, loner businessman Richard White is Warren Buffett-rich, heartthrob-handsome, and crazy as a bag of cats. He’s obsessed with Cadence Weaverly, whom he dated 10 years before when he was a student at Harvard University and she was a high school senior, recently accepted to Juilliard to study the flute. But immediately after she took him to the prom, she kicked him to the curb; although he had looks, brains, and even “impeccable posture,” he talked like a robot and had no friends. Fast-forward a decade and Richard, now a billionaire with a California mansion and “luxury properties in Aspen, as well as the Bahamas, Spain, France, Greece and New Zealand,” drugs and kidnaps his former love, now a professional flautist. He then flies her in his jet to his private island where he aims to marry her. She protests the idea of a wedding but acquiesces when he threatens to hurt or even kill her fiance, Christian Davidson, a New York Philharmonic cellist who has “gentle, twinkling brown eyes.” Richard doesn’t make idle threats and he’s not above committing murder; for example, a servant who tries to help Cadence escape is “dispensed with a quick and painless single bullet to the head.” Cadence seems doomed to spend her life in secluded luxury with Richard, who wants her on a fast track to pregnancy. Overall, Lovett does a good, fast-paced job of quilting together scenes from Cadence’s high school days, her more recent romance with Christian, and her present abduction and imprisonment by the deranged Richard. Sometimes Richard is a genuinely terrifying character, but at other times, he’s too much like a cartoonish, Snidely Whiplash-style villain (“You had your ten years, and now your life is mine,” he tells Cadence firmly. “And nobody else will share it, nobody except our children”). It’s also unclear why he is so attracted to Cadence, or why, in the past 10 years, this attractive jet-setter couldn’t have acquired a good therapist—or a romantic match who would enjoy his positive attributes.
A sometimes over-the-top thriller whose frenetic cadence will keep readers’ heads spinning.Pub Date: March 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4917-8852-3
Page Count: 252
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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