Confusing sci-fi elements within an unconvincing romance.
Josie finds herself embroiled in a time-travel mystery in Ford’s (Black Moon Draw, 2014, etc.) latest series.
Josie’s visiting Tombstone, Arizona, with her aunt and uncle when she decides to take a quick survey for a $50 gift card—and the chance to talk to Carter, the attractive young man conducting the survey. The questions are unusual: “If you could go back in time to prevent atrocities such as the Trail of Tears experienced by the Native Americans...would you?” She agrees that she’d time travel to save lives in an instant, thinking nothing of it. But over drinks, Carter claims he’s got the power to actually do it: he can send her to 1842, where she could make one change to stop a million deaths. Tipsy, Josie goes along with the joke, letting Carter compare her with a Doctor Who companion and acting impressed when Carter tells her he could plant microchips in her brain that would give her access to historical data and the ability to speak all languages. She doesn’t suspect he’s telling the truth until she wakes up in the Wild West and is directed to find a Choctaw named Running Bear and another man named Taylor Hansen. On September 24, Carter says, one of them will start a war between settlers and Native Americans, and it’s up to Josie to stop it. Of course, Josie has no idea how to do this. Soon, she discovers that Carter’s microchip gives her access to the emotions and memories of those around her, living and dead. She realizes that she’s not the first person he sent back in time—and that the ones who came before her were murdered. Now she has to save herself, too. Josie describes herself as resembling “the perfect blond haired, blue eyed, bubbly cheerleader,” and there’s not much more to her character. Without Carter’s help and that of her convenient empathic abilities, she’d be helpless. And her romance with Taylor feels forced; he’s handsome, she trusts him for no reason, they have sex to fulfill the requirements of the genre. The premise is interesting, however, and hints of Carter’s mysterious agenda give the series something to explore in future installments.
Confusing sci-fi elements within an unconvincing romance.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1623781613
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Guerrilla Wordfare
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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