An ordinary murder mystery energized by extraordinary, impassioned characters.
In Lipinski’s debut thriller, a young man digs into his late mother’s buried history, but he may have been better off not learning the family secret.
Zane Clearwater, 26, and little sis, Lettie, were lucky they weren’t at their trailer the night their mother, Sherri, died in a fire. Zane is dismayed that he can’t remember that night (he was drunk), but an anonymous text is even more unsettling. “Sherri Clearwater doesn’t exist,” it says, directing him to a story from 30 years ago about the murder of two teens and the prime but ultimately exonerated suspect, ominously named Jeremiah Doom. Zane and Lettie surmise that not onlywasSherri actually Jeremiah’s then-girlfriend, Lily, but Jeremiah is Zane’s father, who Sherri said had died before Zane was born. Father meets son, but there’s trouble ahead for Zane: Jeremiah may be running a meth lab, and cops soon believe Zane killed his mother in addition to another victim or two. Lipinski’s novel begins as a mystery but is less concerned with the siblings’ amateur investigation than with a slow buildup of anxiety and distrust. Zane, for starters, can’t even eliminate himself as the arsonist, and he’s terrified that he may have caused Sherri’s death. And despite Jeremiah’s dubiousness—there’s something off about him carrying a “thick roll of bills”—readers are never completely sure he’s guilty of murder or worse. The same is true for many of the people Zane and Lettie encounter, including Cap, a bar owner who had an affair with Sherri, and Jeremiah’s other sons, Clyde and Link. Delving into Sherri’s past stirs up even more murder, blackmail, and kidnappings. Romance for Zane is, fittingly, murky: he loves dress designer Emmaline, but she doesn’t seem to reciprocate, as she’s more invested in securing her spot on a TV reality show than helping or sympathizing with Zane. Lettie is a merciful bright light in the story; the sibs’ bond is unbreakable, most tellingly expressed when Zane, worried about caring for her, dreams that the two are scouring a trash can for food. By the end, readers will be hooked on the brother-sister team and assorted shady characters to the point that they likely won’t mind the few unanswered questions.
An ordinary murder mystery energized by extraordinary, impassioned characters.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9964676-1-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Majestic Content Los Angeles
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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