A crowded but memorable account of a righteous quest.
An environmental thriller in which a California teacher travels to a parallel world.
It’s 1998 in Santa Cruz, California, where Aurora Bourne is a fourth grade teacher, an ardent surfer, and a lover of nature. The city faces many problems, ranging from poor conditions that farm workers must endure to financial cutbacks to the local school system. Aurora gets particularly fired up, however, by the fact that toxic methyl bromide is being used in the strawberry industry, as she sees that the dangerous chemical is adversely affecting the local population. Francis Hilman, like Aurora, is determined to fight for what’s right; the two meet on a group hike centered on exploring physics in nature. They have an instant, mutual attraction, which is complicated by the fact that Francis is a Catholic priest. After Aurora dives into a local swimming hole, she discovers an alternative version of Earth that exists alongside the one that she knows. Francis informs her that the other version of the world is experiencing its own problems, and although Aurora’s major battle may be with the strawberry industry, the story goes on to encompass the illegal removal of swallows’ nests; far more serious crimes involving sex trafficking and gang violence; and the ghost of a murdered boy. Despite the many different narrative elements, the sharp focus on Aurora herself allows the tale to progress steadily. At more than 600 pages in length, the book will prove to be a challenging ride for some, but it’s a consistently entertaining one. However, the dialogue sometimes sounds as if it were lifted from an informational brochure, as when Francis explains the importance of the Monterey Submarine Canyon by saying, “Seasonal currents bring cold water upwelling from down deep, loaded with rich nutrients.” Between such textbooklike moments, though, there’s plenty of action to keep things lively; in the wilds of California, even a well-intentioned beach cleanup can turn ugly, and terrors, both natural and human-made, can await in the woods.
A crowded but memorable account of a righteous quest.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-949139-73-0
Page Count: 653
Publisher: Paper Angel Press
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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