An engrossing and suspenseful mystery.
In Watkins’ (Sarah and Zoey, 2017, etc.) mystery-series starter, a young doctor is haunted by hallucinations and anxieties regarding her mother’s death.
When Kate Pomeroy, a second-year surgical resident at a Los Angeles hospital, wakes from a nap before a scheduled procedure, she overhears a conspiratorial conversation between assistant chief of psychiatry Dr. James Conway and an unknown man about an apparently illicit exchange of money. Kate thinks that it’s probably just a common bribe by a pharmaceutical rep, and heads into surgery. However, as she’s about to start the procedure, she’s waylaid by some kind of nervous breakdown and collapses into a mental fog. She’s committed to the psychiatric unit, where she experiences hallucinations as Conway illegally treats with her experimental drugs. After Conway’s subterfuge is uncovered, Kate’s father, Hamilton, sends her to Storm Island, where the family vacationed as a child, to recover. However, she’s still plagued by dark visions—including some involving her mother, Cassandra, who died on the island, an apparent suicide, when Kate was young. Kate then discovers several of her mom’s old journals, but the last, recording the year of her death, is missing. The young woman becomes determined to find out what happened to it, and in the midst of her investigations, she realizes much of what she thought she knew about her mother was false. Throughout this mystery story, Watkins artfully captures the distinction between reality and fantasy. Indeed, her depictions of Kate’s hallucinations are terrifying, and it’s often deliciously unclear whether the protagonist is experiencing a mental mirage or a clearheaded epiphany. The author builds the suspense in a cautious manner, meting out just enough information to keep the tale moving forward, but not so much as to lessen the gripping drama of the story. That said, the plot is a touch convoluted, overall, but one can’t help but be impressed with the aplomb with which Watkins weaves all the errant threads into a single narrative tapestry.
An engrossing and suspenseful mystery.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-944815-08-0
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Argon Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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