A love story that skillfully shows that abusers don’t need to use physical violence to control their victims.
A mysterious cop sweeps a single mother off her feet, but is this Romeo too good to be true?
Unlucky-in-love Teresa Lansing isn’t looking for romance when she meets Frank McAllister, a “disturbingly good-looking” cop who’s just taken a new job in the small town of Cougar. But sparks fly immediately between the two, and before long the persistent Frank has won over Teresa. Yet the dream guy is not quite what he seems in this cautionary romance from Griffin (Seventeen Days, 2018). Sure, he’s charming and attentive and more than willing to open his wallet to pay for nice dinners. But his intensity is off-putting. After only two dates, he convinces Teresa to join him for a romantic weekend on the coast, where he starts talking about marriage and his plans to pay for her deaf son Aiden’s cochlear implant. The skittish Teresa, still reeling from her ex-boyfriend’s recent infidelity, is rightfully troubled, thinking that her new beau “had skipped several steps in their relationship without her permission.” But Frank doesn’t take no for an answer and Teresa, eager for security, is gradually persuaded that he can be trusted even as the red flags are waving. Frank’s gaslighting is disturbing—the author clearly has a handle on the warning signs of emotional abuse—and Teresa is sympathetically drawn. Even as it’s obvious to readers that Frank’s intentions are suspect, she never comes across as a fool for succumbing to his manipulations or ignoring her best friend’s warning that “rushing things is one of the signs of an abuser.” But as the story progresses, the plot begins to strain credulity. Frank, it turns out, is no garden-variety abuser. Griffin tosses in a lurid backstory involving his ex-wife, who died via autoerotic asphyxiation, and throws in a serial killer who’s been murdering young women in the Cougar area. Still, the final confrontation between Teresa and Frank is legitimately frightening as she discovers to what lengths he’ll go to make her his.
A love story that skillfully shows that abusers don’t need to use physical violence to control their victims.Pub Date: July 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5092-2659-7
Page Count: 220
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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