A charming, heavily New Age–influenced SF thriller that requires deep dives into dharma.
An academic and author, celebrated for revealing a scientific cosmology that refutes the Big Bang theory, fears harm will befall his lover as she embarks on a lecture tour.
Heaven (or Buddha or Vishnu) help those attempting to read Kelley’s sequel without first pilgrimaging through his debut New Age/SF thriller, The Lost Theory (2021). The discipleship curve is steep. Romantic literature scholar Sean McQueen published a hit book elucidating the theory of “constant creation”—an alternative cosmology to the Big Bang that has a strong correlation to Eastern mysticism. The result: Materialism-inclined villains invested in the status quo (particularly big tech heads, espionage types, and authoritarians) nearly killed Sean and his soul mate, scientist Emily “M” Edens. Several years later, the lovers run a female-oriented yogic college, Deeksha West, in coastal Oregon. M enjoys rock-star status as she starts a European lecture tour that challenges an upcoming human-machine digital interface. Meanwhile, Sean prepares a sequel to his bestseller, The Lost Theory (of course entitled The Devil’s Calling). But cherished mentor Juno gives Sean a troubling prediction that M will soon be “lost.” Potential threats include an old CIA enemy; Petrovsky, the post–Vladimir Putin Russian dictator; and those behind the trendy push to mass-link human brains everywhere in cyberspace (promising a utopia but setting the stage for a zombie takeover via artificial intelligence). Are Juno and Sean just paranoid? What is behind the bad vibes? With the hero’s dense, first-person prose covering reams of pop-culture references (song lyrics, especially), this novel offers a liberal arts milieu in which possibly fraudulent stanzas of Shelley and an antique painting hold immense importance. Imagine Umberto Eco emerging from a Shirley MacLaine retreat in Sedona, Arizona, where perhaps Dan Brown blockbusters were the only distraction. Things take an awfully long time to happen, and when they do, much verbiage results before anything is settled. Even then, a cliffhanger ending points pagodalike to the next volume, with many of the chess pieces still in play. Kelley’s ideas are intriguing, and readers will suspect the smart author is more of a grounded realist than his vision-struck, alien-believing narrator, Sean. But the engaging text is an acquired taste for adventure seekers, with the emphasis on seekers.
A charming, heavily New Age–influenced SF thriller that requires deep dives into dharma.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62634-962-9
Page Count: 476
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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