An unsettling but shapeless suspense novel.
A recent high school graduate attempts to save her mother and the world in Park’s YA horror novel.
Josie Morris isn’t happy to see the ghost of her dead father at her high school graduation ceremony. She doesn’t believe the ghost is real, of course, but the last time she saw him, her mother forced her to take antidepressants. Even so, the ghost offers her a cryptic warning from across the crowd: “Ten days.” He tells her a story about a Kentucky dragon, an extinction event, and a swarm of creatures called blacklegs located deep in the ground that are about to surface like cicadas. Josie has an even more disturbing vision that night at the Brooklyn apartment she shares with her mother: a winged figure with hooves and a glass mask dragging a chained woman down the hallway. When Josie escapes her hallucination, her girlfriend Clara is there to comfort her, but they soon discover Josie’s mother has gone missing. Desperate to find her mother, Josie follows a trail of clues left by her father before his suicide—including a confusing notebook and a long-lost cellphone—to her father’s hometown in Kentucky, where her Uncle Don may hold the key to these strange happenings. Whether the coming apocalypse is real or merely a madness specific to her family, Josie knows she has to solve the mystery if she doesn’t want to suffer the fate predicted in the one word the glass-face man spoke to her: burn. Park succeeds in creating a feeling of disquiet that pervades every sentence, as here when the girls land in Kentucky: “The air here was heavier than in New York, strong with pollen, like a close-up inhale of dandelion weeds. Past the lot, a tangle of concrete highways cut them off from chain hotels and a distant amusement park. But that tense pull wasn’t going away. Something knew they were here.” Unfortunately, disquiet is pretty much all there is; no recognizable world or relatable characters are established to anchor the reader, and the plot unfurls by means of a dream logic that, while creepy, never makes much sense.
An unsettling but shapeless suspense novel.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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