A sometimes-derivative but delightfully suspenseful thriller.
In this sci-fi novel, a young woman suffering from depression turns to time travel to save her murdered boyfriend.
After Kat Chambers’ significant other, Michael, is killed in a mass shooting, she drops out of the University of Colorado Boulder, hardly eats, and rarely leaves her room. After her best friend, Cathie, forces her to go outside and get some air, Kat feels inexplicably compelled to follow a mysterious stranger. He leads her to a physics lecture at the university, where Dr. Marcus Mallory discusses his project to build a time machine. Kat begins obsessively concocting a plan to go from her present, September 2017, to March 2016, so that she can kill the person who would later shoot Michael, and thus save her boyfriend’s life. She contacts Michael’s friend Jeff Newton, a physics graduate student, intending to use him to get access to the time machine. However, he’s convinced that time travel could have disastrous effects on the present. If Kat’s plan succeeds, she’ll have to locate the (future) killer, get him alone, and evade the watchful eyes of another physicist, and do it all within 11 days, or she’ll be trapped in the past. Kat also has to consider whether she’s truly willing to commit murder—even to save her own future. Bell’s (How Dark the Light Shines, 2015, etc.) depiction of her self-conscious characters occasionally seems to draw on millennial stereotypes, but the novel’s fast-paced plot builds suspense and is consistently entertaining. Also, early on, Kat’s inability to care for herself and irrational thinking patterns provide readers with an unglamorous and uncomfortably real glimpse of the aftermath of trauma. The young protagonist and conversational prose style will likely appeal to fans of YA fiction, as well. An unoriginal romance subplot is far less compelling, though, and although the mass-shooter storyline is gripping, it fails to investigate the killer’s motive in a meaningful way.
A sometimes-derivative but delightfully suspenseful thriller.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-12918-0
Page Count: 245
Publisher: MTB Publishing, Inc. LLC
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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