A harmless parlor game of a book but a little lacking in the skin-crawling suspense department.
With his first wife, Rebekah, dead, Max Winter brings another young woman to Asherley.
"Last night Rebekah tried to murder me again." With that close echo of one of the most famous opening lines in literature, Gabriele (The Almost Archer Sisters, 2008) pulls back the curtain on her update of Daphne Du Maurier's 1938 classic, Rebecca. Manderley in Cornwall becomes an opulent estate called Asherley, on Long Island; the nameless heroine's nemesis is not a resentful housekeeper named Mrs. Danvers but a prospective 15-year-old stepdaughter named Dani; Rebekah has died in a fiery car crash rather than by drowning. But water remains an important factor. When she first meets millionaire New York State senator Max Winter, our orphaned, naïve, and hardworking heroine is living on Grand Cayman, where she is employed by "one of the richest women in the Caribbean," the owner of boat charter companies all over the islands. Some of the more amusing lines in the book are the narrator's representation of her boss's Australian accent: "Oym an idiot for baying sore ginerous. Oy aughta foyer you both." Though celebrity client Max Winter is old enough to be the narrator's father and she believes herself hopelessly plain and uninteresting, the two are launched almost instantly into a smokin' hot affair that soon enough leads to a diamond ring and a return to Asherley. There, she must contend with the specter of Rebekah, the woman who nabbed Max the first time around and who has left behind her unbelievably bitchy and precocious daughter. Dani texts her father as soon as she gets word of the new relationship: if you bring ur fucking fling home daddy ill kill myself. Just wait till you get a load of the kid's 31,000 follower Instagram account.
A harmless parlor game of a book but a little lacking in the skin-crawling suspense department.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-55970-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Michaels’s fan base isn’t likely to be increased by this improbable distaff pastiche of Mission: Impossible.
The Sisterhood takes on yet another evildoer in their endless quest to right wrongs against unjustly maligned women.
Architect Isabelle Flanders’s life was destroyed when her coldly ambitious employee Rosemary Hershey framed her for vehicular manslaughter and stole her ideas and her fiancé Bobby Harcourt. Now the Sisterhood (The Jury, 2005, etc.) has devised a diabolical plan to help her get revenge and recover her reputation. Wealthy Sisterhood stalwart Myra Rutledge installs Isabelle in a luxurious office and buys a Virginia property to set up a bogus contest in which local architects will be invited to design a sumptuous horse farm, planning to make Isabelle and Rosemary the only finalists. Meanwhile, Bobby, long fed up with Rosemary’s greed, sues for divorce, planning to start his own architectural firm. Rosemary, who’s receiving anonymous letters reminding her that it was she and not innocent Isabelle who ran down and killed a family, is sinking into a funk as the Sisterhood increases the pressure. A rainy night in a cemetery, bogus snakes and a broken rope finally get Rosemary to confess and leave the Sisterhood ready to plot their next adventure.
Michaels’s fan base isn’t likely to be increased by this improbable distaff pastiche of Mission: Impossible.Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7278-6349-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
