A romantic thriller that would have benefited from more characters’ perspectives.
In the first installment of Bell’s thriller series, an antiquities appraiser and a wealthy womanizer try to escape the curse of an ancient necklace.
Twenty-eight-year-old Annalisse Drury wants to leave the launch of New York City’s Zavos Art gallery. The owner, Generosa “Gen” Zavos, is her favorite client, but today is the birthday of Samantha Freeman, Annalisse’s recently murdered best friend, so she’d rather not listen to partygoers’ gossip. Gen’s handsome son, Alec, tries to woo Annalisse, but she’s wary of his lothario reputation. Then she notices a gold bib necklace with “a neat row of horses hanging from the collar” on display—one that’s similar to a bracelet that Sam’s killer stole. Annalisse believes that the murderer will come after the necklace, too, which makes the gallery a possible target. Although Gen initially disregards her concern, Annalisse explains that the ancient Persian jewelry is cursed. Later that night, Harry Carradine, Annalisse’s boss, falls unconscious, and he’s revealed to have been poisoned. When Russian-speaking men break into Annalisse’s house, demanding the necklace and threatening to kill her and Alec, the pair flee with the jewelry to the Catskills and then to Greece. Before long, they’re face to face with their true enemy. Debut author Bell delivers a great, slow-building romance, gently examining her characters’ painful pasts: Annalisse blames herself for her parents’ deaths 15 years ago, and Alec was married to a woman who suffered a mental breakdown after a late-term miscarriage. However, it will be hard for readers to become invested in other elements; it’s sometimes unclear why the two main players are willing to put themselves (and their loved ones) in jeopardy for a necklace rather than involving police detectives early on. Annalisse says that “giving it to authorities may put us in more danger,” but it’s hard to believe that holding onto the necklace is worth all the violence and loss that befalls them. Also, the conflict would bear more weight if Bell included the evildoers’ motivations and points of view. Fortunately, it’s easy to let much of this slide and simply watch the romance unfold.
A romantic thriller that would have benefited from more characters’ perspectives.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9995394-0-8
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Ewephoric
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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