Muesch (Rising Above the Wave, 2011) sets sail with a fast-paced mystery about a former leper colony.
Planning to film a documentary about an abandoned leper colony (which shares the name of the book), Elias “Ely” James leaves New York for an island off the coast of Trinidad. Once there, he hires a young pierced and tattooed female skipper for two weeks. Rachel expresses a similar interest in Chacachacare, saying that she’s taking photographs for a coffee-table book about the colony. Both soon reveal their true reasons for wanting to explore an island overrun by vegetation, graffiti and deeply guarded secrets. Ely wants to learn what happened to two lepers: his first love as a teenager and his mother. Rachel, raised by nuns at a nearby convent, seeks information about the parents she never knew. As the pair dig deeper into the past, they unravel the existence of a secret society, the mysterious actions of the convent’s nuns and a ghostly figure in white. The unveiling of long-buried secrets comes at a steep price, with several deaths and escalating danger for Ely, Rachel and their friends. Although the novel begins unsteadily with some stilted dialogue and unwieldy chunks of back story, it soon finds its sea legs, transitioning to a well-paced tale with every deciphered clue leading to another unanswered question. The abandoned leper colony and the convent offer a suitably spooky backdrop described with the right amount of detail. The lengthy flashbacks to Ely’s childhood, while slowing the novel’s pace, provide a heartrending glimpse of the emotional life of the lepers in the colony’s heyday. Rachel and Ely’s interactions appear most believable when they are actively sleuthing, which fortunately comprises the bulk of the book. The resolution of the mystery is the best kind, being a surprising and logical turn of events. The novel’s ending itself feels a bit pat with a return of the awkwardness from the early pages. A solid mystery in an unusual locale offers plenty of twists to keep the pages turning.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2011
ISBN: 9781614344483
Page Count: 281
Publisher: Booklocker
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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