Fans of romance and ghost stories will find the respective genre elements diluted.
Set in 1959 Virginia and blending romance with psychological horror, the sequel to Griffin’s Stonebridge (2023) continues the storyline of Rynna Wyatt, haunted by the ghost of her dead husband.
With her abusive husband dead—after a tragic accident—Rynna and her unborn baby are finally free of Stonebridge Manor, a sprawling, spooky property that’s been in her family for generations and is the site of her husband’s death. With the help of her dead husband’s cousin (and love interest) Ted Demeray—confined to a wheelchair from debilitating arthritis—the two marry less than a month after her husband’s death and set up house in a neighborhood close to the university where Ted teaches geology. While still under a cloud of suspicion that the two were somehow complicit in her husband’s demise, Rynna and Ted begin a new life together. But when her baby is born, the duo find they can’t break free from the past so easily. The ghost of Rynna’s dead husband begins to beset the house with “minor annoyances”—flickering lights, sounds in the night, slamming doors, etc. As Rynna’s sanity begins to unravel, Ted attempts to help her. Together, they try to find a way to somehow communicate with, and remove, their ghostly visitor. The elegant Georgian manor makes an intriguing setting with its dark Gothic atmosphere, which blends decadence and decay: “Stonebridge was beginning to resemble the proverbial sinking ship.” Readers looking for a compelling work of supernatural fiction, however, will be disappointed by the subtleness of the paranormal subject matter. Most of the scary moments take place in Rynna’s dreams, which makes for a detached and decidedly low-intensity experience. The two main characters also come across as needy, dysfunctional, and emotionally unstable, constantly doubting the validity of their relationship.
Fans of romance and ghost stories will find the respective genre elements diluted.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
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
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