A page-turning look at the aftermath of a parent’s worst nightmare.
On the 15th anniversary of her sister’s disappearance, a young woman launches her own investigation in British author Barber’s U.S. debut.
Rosie Archer was only a baby when her 3-year-old sister, Emily, disappeared at Astroland, a Florida amusement park they visited while on vacation from England. Her parents haven’t given up hope that Emily is still alive, but Rosie and her younger brother, Rob, have largely borne the brunt of the fallout. The high profile of Rosie’s famous music producer father has ensured that everyone knows who Rosie is. It’s not the kind of celebrity she wants, and her parents are understandably overprotective; Rosie chafes at this situation with risky behavior. Fifteen years haven’t blunted the guilt and blame that cycle between Emily’s parents, and while it’s obvious they’ve done their best by Rosie and Rob, the siblings' lives have been irrevocably shaped by the sister they never knew. When Rosie finds out that the trust set up to fund the search for her sister is about to run out, she decides she’s going to find out what happened to Emily and hopefully get closure for herself and her family. Meanwhile, in Florida, 18-year-old Anna Montgomery lives with her reclusive, ultrareligious mother, Mary, and is ecstatic to be heading for the forbidden Astroland with her boyfriend, William. It’s there that she flashes on some disturbing memories, and a letter hand-delivered to her mailbox calling her by another name causes Anna to question her entire existence and do a little digging (literally) of her own. Readers will quickly know the “who” of the story—it’s the “why” that’s the focus, and Rosie’s and Anna’s dual narratives lend intimacy and emotional resonance. Anna’s story often veers into Carrie territory, and Barber renders the Archers’ heart-wrenching plight with realistic emotional intensity. While it stretches credulity a bit that a teen, even a clever one like Rosie, would have more luck than all those Scotland Yard investigators and private detectives, readers willing to just go with it will find a lot to enjoy.
A page-turning look at the aftermath of a parent’s worst nightmare.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-0899-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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