A dark, romantic mystery full of twists and turns.
In the late 1800s, a woman investigates the mysterious circumstances behind her brother’s death.
Janie Van Duyvil has always felt like a wallflower, even among her own family. Her brother, Bayard, and her cousin Anne were best friends, leaving her out. Her imposing mother clearly favored Bay while expecting Janie to follow all her orders. When Bay takes a trip to London, he comes home with a mysterious new wife, Annabelle. No one seems to know much about Annabelle’s past, especially not Janie. But when Janie and Anne find Bay dying during a lavish party at his house, a knife stuck in his chest, everything changes. Annabelle is nowhere to be found, and Janie is the only one who hears Bay’s final word: “George.” As people gossip and the papers invent stories about Bay and Annabelle, Janie wants to find out the truth. Rumors swirl: that Annabelle was having an affair, that Bay murdered her, and that Annabelle might actually have been an imposter. Together with a reporter named Burke (and against her mother’s wishes), Janie begins to secretly investigate Bay’s life and the circumstances behind his death. As she learns more, she starts to wonder whom she can trust. Is her own family hiding things from her? What about the man from Annabelle’s past who claims to know who she really was? And does Burke really care about her, or is he just using her to get a story? The multitude of characters can be a bit confusing at first, but as the plot picks up, the novel turns into an engaging read. Willig (The Other Daughter, 2015, etc.) creates a story that is full of rich historical details about the Gilded Age in New York—the jewels, the luxurious fashions, the opulent homes, and the scandal that lurked behind the beautiful exteriors. The mystery is not easily solved, and readers will find themselves guessing until the very end. And though the story is primarily about the mystery behind Annabelle and Bay, it also features a satisfying romance between Janie and Burke.
A dark, romantic mystery full of twists and turns.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-05627-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
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
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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